Cultivating Clear Eyes

Eyes in orgonomyOrgonomy is a mind-body approach to health. Allopathic medicine (in some quarters) is shifting toward embracing this paradigm, as physicians understand that diseases emanate from a complex interactional mind-body field rather than being limited to a silo of discreet symptoms.

In Orgonomy, we outline a map of the body as it correlates to character structure, and each area – eyes, mouth, cervical, chest, diaphragm, belly and pelvis – has its own functional capacity to open or close its gates to the movement of energy (including sensation, perception, capacity for movement and release) throughout the body.

We designate this map as the seven segments of armoring and describe how each segment acts to either fulfill or limit our capacity to experience aliveness and pleasure; depending on how armored (tense, unyielding, slack) each segment is (see blog Reich’s Understanding of Character and Body Expression, August 30, 2017).

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Your Authentic Self

your authentic selfA major goal of therapy is to help our clients build, often from the ground floor up – to find your authentic Self. Many of us suffered adversities that impinged on the developing Self as it traversed the earliest developmental years. There are significant stages of development that culminate in young adulthood where our sense of self becomes stabilized as it manifests in our inner life and in activations (actions) in the ‘real world’.

The Self is formed in years 0 to 5 and becomes consolidated in the teen years and in an additional launch phase after high school — further solidifying in college and/or early career years. Fantasy, for example, plays a role in our toddler years (if allowed) as we learn to create imaginary tales that later become the basis of our creativity and translate into unique life endeavors.

If life conditions are sufficiently healthy to foster and support growth in personal awareness and self-examination, we develop qualities needed to persist: frustration tolerance, ability to stick to our endeavors, resilience, discipline, and emotional intelligence that allow the maturation of the authentic Self.

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Mind-Body: Our Gut-Brain Connection

mind-bodyOrgonomy is a mind-body analytic approach that understands the functional relationship between the two; it does not hold a dualistic conceptualization of mind as separate from body. Orgonomy treats the problematic character defenses and how those very character patterns translate as body “armor”, and manifest in a variety of biophysical symptoms.

A relatively new area of research is making strides in the microbiome-brain connection and its relationship to mental health disorders. This research is illustrative of the profound interconnectedness of the mind and the body. The research into the microbiome-gut-brain axis, as it is referenced, is attempting to solve the riddles of how gut bacteria within the microbiota may affect our mental/physical states. Using fecal transplants and other research designs with both mice and human subjects, the edges of the puzzle are beginning to form. A decade ago, this idea was seen by scientists as hogwash and was emphatically rejected, but now international researchers are peering into the microbes within our microbiome to isolate specific ones that might correlate with certain diseases.

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Touch in Psychotherapy

Touch in psychotherapy has been a controversial topic. This is a very complex discussion as there are many considerations to balance.

First though, let’s discuss a basic misconception still prevalent within vast swaths of psychotherapists and medical professionals, as well as society at large, for that matter. Namely, the mind/body dichotomy and it is still alive and well within psychotherapy since Freud. Wilhelm Reich bridged the scientific and theoretical gap between mind and body elegantly. Reich, through years of clinical experience with patients, and a legacy of scientifically validated laboratory experiments, documented how patients’ psychic conditions were reflected in medical conditions and how physical conditions were mirrored in the psyche.

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