Practical Psychology is a weekly newspaper column I have been writing for over 20 years. It is designed to address psychological topics that are most useful to its readers. Please feel free to re-print any of them in any form you wish. I ask only that you give the information about how to subscribe and credit for authorship. Thanks.

THE BODY NEVER LIES
By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

More and more people are paying attention to their bodies. We are keeping our bodies "fit," shaping them up, making them up and over (extremely), keeping them alive longer, maintaining their health, and enjoying more being in them. Your body does more than just move and maintain heat. It communicates! It tells about your emotional history and deepest feelings. It speaks of your character and personality. It responds to energy from others. It takes in environmental stimulation and events, recombines them internally, and then sends out its own informational energy in the form of behavior.

It is often easy to recognize a person, even at a distance, by his or her walking style. A drooping head, slumped shoulders, a caved-in chest, a slow burdened gait, respectively reflect feelings of weakness, defeat, victimization and discouragement. While a head carried erect, shoulders straight and loose, a chest and abdomen comfortably breathing fully and easily, and a light gait communicates energy, vitality, confidence and comfort. Indeed, the language of the body has been studied and interpreted by contemporary psychologists, physiologists and health professionals. "Body therapies" have emerged under a variety of names: applied kinesiology; bioenergetics; Hakomi therapy; Reiki; character analysis; Rolfing; and massage therapy. These are but a few of the body-oriented approaches to physical and psychological wellness. The focus of a "therapeutic practice" has changed dramatically away from the purely verbal approaches of previous decades.

The "talking cure" seems to have become a metaphorical dinosaur. Holistic behavioral medicine now focuses more on action and doing...how and why we move, stand, or position our bodies. Mainstream medicine has come to realize the importance of the "informational energy" that keeps our bodies alive and functioning normally. The staggering of a drunk and the graceful walk of a ballet dancer tells us as much about how they move through Life as it does about their progress down the street. Muscular habits and patterns formed in childhood as well as those operative in adulthood, often deviate from the "ideal body," which reflects the free flow of energy, feelings, and thoughts. Such deviant patterns restrict and limit one's options (freedom) and are detrimental to living happily and joyously. For example: shoulders that are constantly held high and in a chronic state of tension (a pattern based on fear) destroys personal ambition and the ability to "reach out" for closeness, contact or whatever is really wanted; a fixed pattern of breathing only from the chest, developed and maintained out of anger, inhibits our sense of personal well-being and stresses our bodies with every breath. There are only a limited number of basic, common and fixed muscular patterns. But the number of combinations of these patterns is limitless.

The infant is born with the capacity to be a whole and integrated human being. When babies are given love, understanding, protection and support needed to effectively meet the demands of healthy growth and fulfillment of its human potential, the possibility exists for every baby to develop into a whole, fully-functioning human being. But it is a fragile possibility. There are innumerable forces to which humans must adapt with muscular and internal movement or habitual blocking of bodily energy. These adaptations become expressed in the way s/he stands, moves and expresses his/her thoughts, feelings, and ideas. To those who are able to read the language of the body, enormous amounts of information is available about being human. The body after all, never lies.

"Full Wave Breathing," he says, "was the key to reclaiming myself. I was able to make decisions that were for my good, and follow through with those decisions." He retired from the computer industry which gave him new found freedom. "I wanted to live my life for me, and without the breathwork, I would not have given myself the chance to do something that is joyous." Art now guides group and private breathwork sessions with his partner, who also became a Full Wave Breathing facilitator.