Final Project Theory Paper

Introduction

This paper is the culmination of my studies at the Seattle School of Body

Psychotherapy. As part of graduating from this 3 year program, my final project is

to demonstrate my understanding of all that I have learned in my training in Core

Energetics. Core Energetics is a therapy modality that focuses on finding where our

energy is blocked and releasing it to allow for greater freedom. Core Energetics

began with Wilhelm Reich, a student of Sigmund Freud, whose research into

orgone theory formed the basis of understanding for how energy moves through

the human body. Reich’s students Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos continued

Reich’s work into Bioenergetics, deepening our understanding of the body and its

developmental stages. Core Energetics emerged from this combined work, as well

as from a woman named Eva Pierrakos or “the Guide,” whose teachings further

explained the practice. Core Energetics is helpful for anyone seeking relief from

such varied issues as childhood trauma, physical pain, or depression. The work of

Core Energetics can show us the underlying reasons for our stuck patterns, help us

heal and change, and move us toward freedom.

The Five Levels of Human Experience

In Core Energetics there are five levels that make up our existence. These

levels work in functional unity, together forming what is called the mind. The five

levels are a bio/psycho/social system, affecting each other and interacting as a

living organism. As all living beings, the human being is permeated by waves of

energy, emitting and receiving electromagnetic fields. This energetic exchange

connects humans to the world around them.

The first level is the body level. Our musculoskeletal system makes up our

body level. In health, the body is flexible and allows energy to flow. Our energy

flow moves vertically from our center of our body out through our head, our feet,

and our arms. When we use our muscles to hold energy back, keeping it from

being expressed freely, we develop blocks in our body; these blocks develop

horizontally at places such as the back, neck or pelvic girdle, thus disallowing the

energy that would move vertically. These segmental blocks affect us on all of the

levels. Our expression and movement is often stifled as a result of the energy being

trapped in our body from these blocks that do not allow it to flow. For instance, an

ocular block at our eyes can create a barrier that prevents this energy from flowing

freely through the eye area, which then creates physical tension. An oral block at

our jaw and mouth can restrict our ability to take in nourishment and can make it

hard to smile or freeze our smile in place.

The second level is the emotional level. This is the endocrine system, as

emotions are governed by our hormones. Emotions are energy molecules in

motion. The release of hormones is a chemical reaction that takes place to move

the energy (chemicals or information) through the body. In health, one’s emotions

are fluid, one can feel a full range of emotions, and the emotions one feels are in

the context of here and now, not what happened in the past. If we block the energy

of our emotions, we may have a hard time feeling and may not be able to reference

from ourselves. We may not be able to feel such emotions as joy, sorrow, or anger,

but these emotions are trapped, not gone. We could also have an unexpected

emotional outburst when we block our emotions, as the energy needs to be

discharged in some way after being trapped for too long.

The third level is the mental level. This is our neural network system (in our

brain). The mental level makes sense of our experiences. The stories we tell

ourselves come from the mental level, and images we have based on repeated

patterns or beliefs in our lives can fuel these stories. For example, someone grew

up in a household where drinking alcohol was labeled “bad.” In adulthood, if

someone around them drinks alcohol, their neurons still connect that to being bad,

and they might form a judgment about that person as being bad. In a healthy

mental state, we are capable of discernment, we can identify and distinguish detail

in situations, and we have a stable sense of self and thought processes, as well as

capacity for creative problem solving.

The fourth level is the will level. Will is about our actions and behavior. In health, one can act on things that one believes in without self-doubt and resistance. For example, if someone wants something, like to apply for a job they’re passionate about, they can go for it without making excuses or procrastinating. One’s actions match one’s words and beliefs. One can go out into the world and get

what they need for themselves. We can be assertive and say no.

The fifth level is the spiritual level. This is our beliefs about the world and

how we fit into it. It can be connected to our sense of purpose. A healthy spiritual

level will have creative power and feel a unification of the greater mystery or

universal life force. If we do not have a healthy spiritual level, we might believe

that “life is out to get us,” or that “bad things always happen to me.” In early life

we learn about the world and how we fit into it. For example, in a family with a

father who hits his child, that child might grow up believing, “Men are scary and

hurt me, and I am alone." Often these beliefs are unconscious.

It is important to understand that these five levels are each their own system,

yet inseparable from each other; they all function together to make up a human’s

experience. If there are blocks on one level, all the levels will be affected. There

are bio-psycho-social feedback loops between all the levels.

How a Stimulus Becomes an Image

Another important thing to understand this work of Core Energetics is the

pathway from stimulus to image and belief. When a child receives an external

stimulus, such as when her father shouts at her, her muscles tighten and tense in an

immediate impulse to respond. She wants to yell back at her father, but then her

fear stops that impulse to yell. She has an impulse and a reaction to the stimulus of

her father’s loud voice, angry face, and aggressive posture. If this scenario is

repeated, it stays in her system and stops her life force on all five levels.

If the stimulus becomes a repetitive incident in the girl’s life, she will form a

“mass image,” generalizing her specific situation with her father onto other similar

situations that happen that resemble that same stimulus. Perhaps she goes to a

friend’s house, sees her friend’s father, and expects that he will also yell at her.

Although consciously not aware of what is happening, on her five levels, she is

experiencing those same responses that she does around her own father. This mass

image assumes that men are scary. This mass images traps energy on all five levels

and brings us right back to a past experience, even if we aren’t aware this is

happening. The girl will feel as if she is right back in her house with her father, and

be afraid, angry, tense, heart beating quickly, etc. Her energy from the original

experience with her father has never been released; it is still there. The stimulus

that used to be “external” becomes “internal,” as we recreate patterns by

anticipating them even when they are not happening to us. The girl comes to

believe that men are dangerous. She may come to understand that with men, she

must make herself small to avoid conflict. She will not necessarily be conscious of

these beliefs, but she will act them out in her life nonetheless.

How the Mask and Lower Self Are Formed from the Essence

Now that we understand the concepts of stimulus and image, we can look at

how the mask and lower self are formed. Each of us has an essence, life force

energy that is mobilized from the center of our body, and radiates out into the

world through our limbs and periphery. This is our center of power, which allows

us to sense the world, notice our desires, and then go out into the world to get what

we want and need for ourselves. As babies our essence can be described as our

love for ourselves and our impulse to nourish ourselves as we reach out for

caregivers, who can comfort us and feed us. When our essence flows naturally

from our core out into the world, that is pleasure.

In our natural state, we express when we feel like it. If we stub our toe, we

scream “OW." If we feel sad because our friend calls us a poop-head, we cry. If we

need comfort, we reach out to a loved one and say, “Help me.” If we see a yellow

flower that we love, we exclaim, “How beautiful!” These are all natural responses

to stimuli. Throughout our childhoods, however, all of us developed some kind of

mask to accommodate external expectations from our parents and society. Often

these masks cause us to restrict the life flow of energy, our essence.

During our childhoods, we develop our “masks,” our ways of staying safe

and functioning, to protect ourselves and survive. Our masks develop in response

to the parental and societal expectations around us. If that same child with the father who yells at her needs to survive, she might adopt a mask of indifference, pretend that nothing can hurt her, put on a stony face, and build up enough of a shell that her deep emotions of fear, grief, rage, and longing are hidden deep down. Based on our conditioning, one way or another, we tense, we hold, we don’t allow

ourselves to yell or cry because our parents expect us not to.

The mask is our personality, and it controls our life on all five levels. It is

our idealized self-image, what we put our energy into protecting and believing

about ourselves. Our mask is what we think we should be, what helps us get by in

the world with all the parental and societal expectations that exist. “I am strong and

can do it all on my own,” could be someone’s mask. “I am only good if I am

loved,” could be another. Our mask is the face we show the world, our forced

identity rather than our true essence. We use our mask to get love, to control others,

or blame others for our experience. The role of the mask is to keep our true selves

hidden, both from ourselves and from others.

All that energy that we push down and hide, our life force energy, gets stuck,

trapped; this becomes our lower selves, our energy that does not get expressed. The

lower self is the life force energy, what was originally our essence that never was

expressed; now its becomes distorted energy. This lower self distorted energy is

trapped energy in our system. That same child whose father yells at her does not

yell back at her father. Her instinct might be to do so, but she knows she might

receive a punishment if she follows her natural urge in this case. She also may have

a natural urge to cry, but she holds that in, too, not feeling safe to do so in front of

her father. That energy that she holds back in her system needs somewhere to go. It

becomes the lower self. That trapped energy is still there, and it leaks out in

subconscious ways that we often do not even notice. It can turn against us or can

be used maliciously against others in a negative expression. This could look like

passive-aggressive remarks, sarcasm, or, at its worst, committing harm to someone

else. It could also look like self-loathing or doing things for others to get something

for ourself. For the girl, she might roll her eyes at her father, a subconscious lower

self attempt for trapped energy to escape. She might drag her feet when obeying a

task her father has given her, a passive aggressive way to get back at him. Or she

might tell herself mean things, turning it against herself in a self-castigating way.

The Work of Core Energetics

The work of Core Energetics is to first “melt the mask,” to begin to notice

our protective layers, how we get by in the world, our false selves. Eventually, we

begin to understand how our mask both protects us and limits us. Then we begin to

uncover the true feelings and impulses underneath the protective layer we cloak

ourselves in. In Core Energetics, we look for the images that someone holds, as

images bind energy. We are curious about the belief systems people carry, and want

to trace them back to early childhood to discover how those beliefs came to be. As

we begin to understand our patterns of armoring and beliefs, we can see how we

are stopping our life force energy, our essence, from flowing freely. The goal of

core energetics is to allow more energy to move through us, to find congruence on

all five levels. As we begin to bring attention to these different blocks in our five

levels, we can move toward health. We can then address the lower self by

acknowledging it and letting that trapped energy be released. In order to develop

new skills, we then work on the will level to put into practice behaviors and actions

that will benefit our growth and healing. Eventually, we have the capacity for

energy flow to allow us to move more freely through life.