Tag Archive for: Soma-Drama

Transformational Theatre: An Introduction to Soma-dramas in Wholebody Focusing

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Are you at the edge of a next step, yet one that feels hard to take? Are you aware of a chronic pattern, one that seems hard to break? Today we are going to embark on a journey, an embodied journey from intention through blockage to expression. I have been experimenting over a number of years with integrating elements from embodied improvisation and drama work in my practice of Wholebody Focusing. It has opened new avenues in my own growth and development as well as presenting exciting and expanded possibilities for deepened engagement with clients and students. Since Focusing is all about facilitating direct experiencing and bodily knowing, why have we restricted the practice to mostly verbal symbolization and the connection of head to torso? Why do we practice mostly with eyes closed and in a sitting position, when this can be very restrictive, limiting and disconnected from the visual field with another? Are not the eyes our gateway to the soul? Do we not body forth our patterns and life-stances in interaction? We all experience internal theater of inner dramas and characters that “inhabit” our personal world. The dynamics of WBF oriented drama-work is to allow our internal theater to be “played out” in an interactive space with others.

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Theater of the Living Body: Expressive Improvisation in Focusing-Oriented Therapy

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One can make an analogy between the living body and theater, as both are “sites” of dramatic events and experiences. In fact, the original meaning of theater is “A place for viewing or seeing; a place that is the setting for dramatic events, where significant actions or events take place.” Based on Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit (implicit understanding/ bodily knowing), the process of Focusing in general, and Wholebody Focusing in particular involves the coming alive and spontaneous unfolding of bodily lived events. They are forms of improvisation in the sense that what comes is not pre-scripted or predicted, but emerges in its own way and time, from the wellspring of the living body’s attunement to the right feel and next steps of its development.

Over the past few years, I have noticed how a wholebody focusing process, as an individual session or over a course of therapy, has the flavor of a journey and can be thought of as enacting a story or drama from the living body. This can be in the form of a gesture, movement or posture that carries a bodily knowing or implying of something that needs attention, next step of living (I have elsewhere called these implicit leads, Fleisch, 2008). The dramatic aspect can be played out between two distinct gestures or movements that can interact with each other. This can also be explored via a bodily sensation, energy or connection between some part of the client and myself as we both Co-Presence the felt sense of what is emerging. When allowed to move outward into expression, movement, interaction, enactment etc., the bodily coming that arises has a more full-bodied way of being experienced, expressed and carried forward. I will show how this process functions both in my therapy practice and in another paper, in retreat/workshop settings, where the whole group serves as a container for the process of each person “on stage.”

In this article, I will present some ways that I have observed and developed this process I have termed the theater of the living body. The main purpose here is descriptive of instances and examples, as these form the foundation of then stepping back and attempting to explicate what makes this type of process “work.” Thus, the theoretical implications are still in process and will be presented in a future paper.

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Pantomiming: An Expressive Element in Wholebody Focusing-Oriented Therapy

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A pantomime is a form of theatre and performance in which the actors play parts or express certain characteristics or feelings through nonverbal means. Thus, something done in pantomime would occur via gestures, facial expression, physical movements, often in a farcical or exaggerated manner. As I have been integrating a more Wholebody perspective (as originated by Kevin McEvenue) into Focusing and Focusing-oriented Therapy, I have observed how frequently important aspects of experiencing are expressed through movements, gestures, posture, musculature, etc. The bodily expressiveness can be different from the verbal content of speech or can amplify and extend the implicit felt meaning of what is being verbalized. Pantomiming is a more explicit invitation for clients to further play out or enact how their body is carrying or expressing some aspect of themselves to which they are referring. It is especially helpful and freeing for clients who tend to suppress or curtail aspects of their experiencing and/or are aware of certain ingrained or repetitive patterns or parts of themselves.

Click here to download the entire article.