Clinton:

Hello! This is Clinton Power, founder of Australiacounselling.com.au. Its my great pleasure to be speaking this evening with Bruce Stark who has over 25 years experience in the field of therapeutic body work and as a practitioner and advanced instructor of ortho-bionomy. Bruce teaches ortho-bionomy extensively through Australia and New Zealand and maintains a full time private practice in Sydney. Prier to moving to Sydney from Chicago in 2001, he was on faculty on the university of Wisconsin medicine medical school for 12 years where he taught medical interviewing and physical examination skills. Hes been a trainer with the Somatics College of Body Oriented Psychotherapy in Sydney and has presented with a Somatic Psychotherapy Institute in Australia. Bruce also supervises body work and Somatic therapists in Australia and New Zealand, so welcome Bruce.

Bruce: Clinton:

Thanks Clinton. Its great to be here. Great, well Im going to be speaking with you and I have to start straight over asking you what is ortho-bionomy. I only recently heard about it myself this year. Im sure many therapists are asking the same questions. Sure thing, its a question I get often asked very frequently actually. Orthobionomy is a type of therapeutic body work that was developed by an osteopath in the UK and it uses very gentle movements and positioning of the body to facilitate change and supports structural balancing without using any kind of force. One of the specific dynamics I like about ortho-bionomy work in particular because of its gentle nature, its a layer of interacting with the structure of the body to facilitate change without trying to force something to happen, but rather allowing the changes to merge from within. That sounds like a very gentle therapy. Quite gentle. In fact one of the things that this type of work is particularly helpful for is for people who cant tolerate a lot of force in their body or who have serious sensitivity to pain or contact or touch. Its a very effective way of being able to work with a lot of different conditions without actually causing pain or injuring anyone. Bruce, how did you come to be interested in ortho-bionomy? For me its been certainly personal journey. My background, my history growing up was pretty much very mental or about just being in my head, very intellectual in a lot of ways. Although I was also a musician at the time and my background was being trained as a musician, but I have been working in a type of banking area and had a lot of physical problems. I was working with my own neck and back pain and was wanting to find a type of body work that would address that and was referred to this person who did ortho-bionomy and went to see her. I

Bruce:

Clinton: Bruce:

Clinton: Bruce:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

was really amazed to see how effective the changes were without having to use any kind of force in my own body, but what was more significant for me was that I actually discovered that I had a clearer sense of how my body worked. The way in which she was interacting with my structure was allowing me to tap into understanding how why I got into the situation that I was in and then how to access the resources to get out. Clinton: I titled this interview Embodiment in Practice, listening to the language of the tissues which are actually stole from the previous presentation of yours because I loved it so much, but I really would love to hear from you about what can as therapist as profession really learn from becoming more attentive to the bodies of our clients because obviously this is something that you re doing you do day in, day out. Youre working with bodies, youve become incredibly attuned and attentive to people structures. What are your thoughts about that? I think what I find significant, especially about the term embodiment, is that embodiment isnt something that suddenly happen s. Embodiment is something that is a combination of experiences. Its a combination of various different types of physiological sensations and physiological dynamics that go into the nervous system for instance and then create opportunity for the experience of having a sense of ourselves. Embodiment isnt just being able to track our bodies, but its being able to have access to greater intellectual capacity, greater emotional capacity, greater physical responsiveness. I think that it shows up in terms of how helpful it is or how it can be helpful in we paying attention to these things as therapists by looking at a couple of different perspective. One is the fact that we are relational beings. As a lot of people already know theres a lot of research recently in to the social system. Its the social nervous system that helps us gives us a sense of ourselves and just in isolation we tend to lose track of our selves. Who we are we can have intellectual concept, but really its not until we relate with someone else that we start to get more reflective back to us about how we are and who we are. Part of what this type of awareness doing embodiment or what embodiment brings to us is actually activating those social nervous system dynamics that give us that self referencing perspective. Another thing that it creates as a therapist is the dynamic of empathic resonance, whereby we are tracking the various state changes or affect change that are going on for our clients. Affects or affective states are those dynamics those experiences which originate in a physiological signaling mechanism that are then interpreted as emotions and then an emotional interpretation can come about from those. For example of different physiological state would be a shortness of breath or fast heartbeat, sweating, general jaw tension which could be associated with fear, but it can be associated with excitement.
Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

Bruce:

Those two types of physiological experiences can be interpreted a different way based upon contexts, based on past experiences, based upon expectations, so what were looking at is finding ways to track those shifts in the affective state and certainly my experience of body worker is that I track and feel what is happening in a physiological level as Im holding the tissues, I notice changes that are in part connected to or interacting with that specific affect of dynamics. Theres also then what I find important is the difference between events and process that we have a lot of different events, so an event could be a car accident for instance, if Im working with someone thats been in a car accident or fallen out of a tree. What that does is that particular event initiates healing process or self regulating process from that particular moment on. Whereas we cant go back and change the event we cant change the fact that someone was hit or something were in a car accident or something like that had happened, but what we can interact with are the ongoing processes of self regulation and self healing which were initiated by that event. Part of what happens then by paying attention in tracking these somatic signals for instance, is that were able to tap into an awareness of this ongoing self healing, self corrective process. That means that we are able to actually see how has gotten to this state. What has their system been able to do to create the present time awareness of their healing process? Then how as Practitioners and therapists can we meet them and help them understand more about what they are doing right now, so that then they can have better choice or additional choices and resources in which to address whatever it is that seems to be playing out. Clinton: I think youd started to add to my next questions which was really that one of the benefits of observing and identify somatic signals if am hearing you right, I think youre kind of saying that part of that tracking observing and identifying is about helping people realize where their blocks are and also facilitating their bodys natural movement towards health. Is that what you are implying? Yes. Certainly part of the basic philosophy of ortho-bionomy work from its developer is that what were tapping into is the bodys self corrective or self responsive or self regulating mechanisms. I think that been born out of the research now too discussion about neuroplasticity and the capacity of the system to be able to self regulate and self monitor and self balance and self correct. If the body has these self corrective mechanisms then there must be a way to tap into them and to touch them literary both physically hands on, but also relationally between therapist and client. I would say that one of the key benefits is just being able to access that self regulating capacity that a lot of problems or a lot of distress comes out of the circumstances where people have lost track of how to self regulate or have lost
Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

Bruce:

track of the mechanisms that help them to be able to address the anxieties or the stresses or the circumstance that they find themselves in, so their inherent responsiveness has been limited or impaired in some way. By working with the somatic signals and creating presence and creating a mindful awareness of them that then helps people be able to access the inherent self healing mechanisms that we have within our beings. I think another thing that I find particularly helpful is the feeling of being heard, the feeling of being met that by tracking these particular states by bring awareness to these particular physiological states were able to meet our clients in such a way that we create a container for their experiences, so we create a holding so that we are able to notice whats going on within them a very safe and supportive framework. From that piece again, as the perhaps the vigilant qualities are able to settle, then the healing dynamics are able to emerge from that particular setting. I think that the other probably the most important thing is about the fact that it brings us into present time. The present moment really is the only place, only area where we have the opportunity to create change. Obviously we cant change the past, like I mentioned before, but what we can do is work with and observe and look at options for changing present experience, so by keeping it in the present moment, and keeping in the present experience, were able then to allow for the self integrative responses to occur both neurologically, physiological emotional, on all those levels. Clinton: Bringing this back to the therapist client relationship and perhaps even a person who is not a body worker like yourself, how can we use this observations and also these sensations in our therapeutic work? I think thats a question that I work with every day. That certainly what happens with every single client that comes in is Im looking at, well, how is this what are the mechanism that will be helpful in interaction thats going to access that self regulating capacity that increased responsive capacity and certainly creating that container in a very conscious way and is a very significant way of helping people be able to again, notice that they have more options the potential options in the ways that theyre responding. An example that I think about is as a practitioner, as a therapist, I need to be able to create an experience of the relationship that allows them to feel safe, allows them to feel supported, allows them to have a sense of benevolent expectations for good to emerge in the course of the work. By my holding the space in my own physiology feeling of what it means to be heard or felt of supported that my clients are going to resonate with that. That part of neurological social nervous system component is that Im tracking my clients, but my clients are also tracking me. My current clients are paying just as much attention to me, if not more, perhaps even because of their own hyper vigilance or their own distress or their own

Bruce:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

discomfort of whatever is going on, so theres a way in which we can ... as we modulate our own experiences as therapist, as practitioners that then the client will have something to respond to. Having a model of what a more relaxed resource place might feel like or might be experienced. I can think of that in terms of someone presenting to me with really acute lower back pain. Very often there is a lot of fear, theres a lot of anxiety, theres a lot of distress around the fact that every movement causes pain and I were to match and meet them at that level of that anxiety, we would probably be stirring up more anxiety and stresses in trying to help to find a way to find a position thats going to help alleviate the problem. Instead if I come from the perspective of really holding the space of calm, of openness, of receptivity or of exploration, slowing the timing down, so that theyre not spinning out or Im not spinning out with them in the distress that they may be falling into, but instead holding a space where actually we can find a place of meeting that will perhaps turn down the volume of what they are experiencing as far as distress and to notice more about what the resource and what the healthy responses are or helpful responses are, so that we can bring that into the session very directly throughout. I think it also helps to interrupt as a good was of interrupting ongoing processes. People get themselves caught up in ongoing cycles and to bring things to a present moment since were tracking whats happening in the present moment as far as sensation, as far as physiological experiences, that can start to interrupt the story, because sometimes its the story that maybe spinning around again and again and again and by adding the element of the physical sensation that brings a different element to perhaps either interrupt story or actually to create a possibility for more insight into the story Clinton: I think I wanted to ask you is it enough to, for example, myself Im not a body worker, I dont touch my clients, is it enough to draw the clients attention to whats happening somatically. Is observation and asking the client to notice whats happening inside of them enough? Well, thats I think a really good point because I think its also just as important for the therapist to be able to recognize within him or herself self what those dynamics are as well, what those sensations and somatic experiences are as well. Theres an exercise that I do, that I teach that where I have people in pairs and one persons the therapist, the other persons the client and the therapist role is simply to be present and notice first off what their internal experience is, just to become aware of their internal experience is as their on their own and then to notice in relationship with the client, then client then goes through and imagines the changes in states, various affective changes. Without any discussion about them, without any other outward display of what those are. The role of the therapist then is just track and notice what changes within themselves in their relationship with their client in that circumstances.

Bruce:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

Whats really quite interesting is most people most of the time are able to track, are about to notice when their client has changes states. Very often theres also some congruence in the actual interpretation of understanding what those state changes are why are the therapist tracking their own responses. I would say in answer to your question certainly clients tracking their own experience is growing to be significant and helpful and I think just as important and I think perhaps even more important for our role in observers is the fact that we need to observe not only what we can observe just externally about them, but what we observe from the internal sensations that we get in response to whats happening in the therapeutic dynamic. Clinton: Bruce: This is very [inaudible 00:21:46]. Its about attending to your own somatic experiences as well as observing your clients? I think that in fact the more that were able to track and understand our own internal experiences, the greater our capacity to respond is just in general and the greater the more that we can bring to the therapeutic relationship with our clients. In fact self work, sel- care is incredibly important in that observational capacity. Bruce can you give us an idea of perhaps some examples of some of the qualities and characteristics of the various tissues instructors that relate to emotional states. What are some of the most common ones you see? This is very close and dear to my heart because for me the working teaching anatomy and physiology which I have been doing in the somatic psychotherapy community as well as the body-work community, my perspective has always been that, first up there is no distinction between the brain, mind and body. Theyre all inherently one and the same. Its just that we still havent been able to get some way of describing the fact that they are all completely interconnected, so the ways in which we are able to track information three specific types of ways that we track information coming in from the body. One is through proprioception. Proprioception comes primarily from the joints the joint receptors is what they are called. What they do is that they give us information about the position of our body as well as velocity, how quickly things are moving. Then there is intraception, which is the information that comes from the other tissues, from the organs and from the affective signaling from all of the nervous system that is a sensory input coming in from the rest of the system. Then theres the body schemer, which is how we feel our boundaries or how we feel the edges of our bodies, the shape, the size, the direction of orientation. From all of those were looking at the different types of tissues of the bone muscle, connected tissues, nervous system, fluids and even breath, and the mechanisms of breath, which I think is also an important dynamic to pay attention to .

Clinton:

Bruce:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

All of the sensory information comes via all these different elements, so the interesting thing is that there is no one place where we experience every part, but certainly we get different qualitative experiences depending upon the type of tissue. The qualitative experience of bone for instance tends to be more structural, tends to be a sense of solidarity, more of a sense of groundedness, so having a sense of our bones or our bones state helps give us a sense of we have a way something to give support, to be able to respond form or to have sense of power in terms of orientation with gravity and orientation with our environment. Musculature gives us a sense of empowerment to be able to move, to be able to engage or to be able to withhold, to be able to protect by using force or by pulling something towards or keeping something away or being able to run away. All of those things come from muscular sort of dynamic. Connective tissue is kind of the buttressing or support for the muscular tissues; its like a secondary support system. Its all of the membranes that are around the muscles, the bones, the organs or on the inside of the skin. The connective tissues itself creates this whole lattice work, interconnected network within our system that actually provides a sense of support through motion where I think bones gives us a sense of our support through imposition and some of the more esthetic states to get a sense of ourselves the capacity to move comes from the connective tissues. Fluids tend to have more of a kind of representation or a flow of emotional states. Some fluid is very movement oriented and we sometimes talk about emotions as motion is a part of that word. How things are moving and fluids states are ways in which we move between various states. I would say that fluids are one of the ways that we experience the bridges between the emotional states as well. I dont see that its a specific place that I feel happiness in my elbow and I feel anger in jaw, but I can certainly feel from the tension in my jaw that there is a certain rage or anger that might be part of that or a certain frustration that could be coming out of that. The sensation and what other context internal context that you are experiencing will help us identify or access different emotional qualities as well. Clinton: We the most imagining whats more important is making the observation and being curious about that and allowing the meaning to emerging from the client. Is that part of this process, rather than interrupting saying, Your jaws tightening, you must be angry? Yeah. I think thats such an important component of it. Naming and identifying sensation is different than interrupting sensation. The interpretation very much goes back to perhaps story and doesnt necessarily open up for a possibility for something to be different. If am asking someone to pay attention, to notice whats going on and I notice that they might be bringing more rapidly and I ask them, What are you feeling?Hes responding, Im feeling panicky. Okay, so youre feeling panicky, but whats the physical sensation, what are you actually feeling happening in your body? Well, Im feeling a tension in my chest and Im

Bruce:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

feeling that Im not able get him to breathe for you, or, Theres a constriction in my throat, and its like having that piece of information, Im feeling a constriction in my throat, gives me an opportunity to notice when that changes and the fact that that can change. Maybe I start paying attention to what else happens in my body and then come back and check in , How does your throat feel now, or What are you noticing what youre feeling in your throat now at the moment? Then we can notice if something has changed. Very often when were paying attention to some other sensation the previous ones start to shift as well because its all within the context of that. I think it was a very interesting YouTube video I saw a while ago, it was on scientific American about pickpockets and the fact that they were able to do their job really well because we really can when were paying attention we can only pay attention to one sensation at a time, but cant pay attention to multiple sensation, so thats why when the bump us in the back someone can actually literally take the watch off of our wrist and we dont feel it because we are actually tracking that particular sensation there. Whatever were paying attention to then draws more focus and also turns up the volume internally in terms of the nervous system signal, so that then we can become more aware of possible responses or possible changes as well Clinton: For therapist that want to bring more somatic awareness into their psychotherapeutic relationship, is it enough to observe, to ask the client to stay with the sensation to describe the sensation or would you encourage therapists to also have their clients experiment perhaps even with moving changing position or moving out of their current structure? Yeah. I think that noticing where we are is certainly one thing then noticing the impulses for movement is another part of the dynamic. I think one of the things I noticed around just in embodied experiences that embodiment comes from a sense of impulse removement and following through with impulse removement, so if Im noticing a restriction, but also Im noticing an impulse to move away or push away, that in fact could be quite a very helpful thing to do to actually physically follow with through that impulse thats arisen in the awareness. The other thing too is that as we move we change the internal states, so one of the common things that we do to change our state of tension or boredom or whatever maybe to yawn. Yawning is using the breath in a different way that we are able to feel something differently. Stretching and gentle movement and exploration of movement starts to give perhaps more fuller signals into our nervous systems about what we are experiencing and how we are experiencing it. Thereby having more options that then can be presented by the fact that were actually moving beyond our specific or particular confines of how we might be holding ourselves.

Bruce:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

We talked about moving out of our comfort zones and that sort of expression. I think the comfort zone is the area that we feel that were able to feel in the most control or that we may feel like were most regulated, but in fact its the place that tends to be the smallest or the smaller than what we can potentially experience. As we step out of that confinement that we have or that we give ourselves because it does feel comfortable were able to actually increase our capacity to respond which means that we become more capable in responding in a fuller way or responding differently. Movement in particular is a fantastic way of being able to shift some of the perhaps stagnant or holding patterns that we maybe experiencing in that internal sense. Clinton: Wonderful Bruce, youve certainly inspired me to want to be much more attentive to whats going on in the bodies of my clients when am sitting with them as well as attending to my own. I think that its something when we can get caught up in content its very easy to leave that dimension out. Thank you for bringing this important conversation into our work. What resources would you recommend for therapists and perhaps want to learn more about embodiment? I think that there are certainly all of those resources people are aware as far as social nervous system or the work of Daniel Segal and Steven Portges and all of those pioneers and looking to get somatic awareness and how that somatic awareness actually interacts with us. I was recently introduced to some work from a psychotherapist, psychologist and researcher by the name of Allan Fogel who published a book a couple of years ago called The psycho physiology of self awareness, and in that book he wanted to bridge the gap that was apparent between talking about neurological states and the interpersonal dynamic component which is certainly becoming clearer and clearer how to work with that these days, but to also bring in touch and bring in contact and bring in actually whats happening in the physiological state when there is that direct contact or direct sensing of that somatic experience and bring that somatic awareness and semantic sensitivity into the therapeutic setting. Theres also theres another work he just published too just called Body Sense which is a practical book that talks about specific exercises that in the self care way that one can do to start to increase that semantic awareness involved What was the name of that author again? His name is Allan Fogel, F-O-G-E-L Allan Fogel. Wonderful! Well put that next to those resources on the replay page as wells and whats the best way for people to contact you if they would learn more about the orthobionomy, I know you provide training around Australia and New Zealand and also perhaps if they would like to contact you for a consultation. What is the best place to find you?

Bruce:

Clinton: Bruce: Clinton:

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd

Bruce:

The best place to contact me would be my website which would be BruceStark.com.au. There lists of all the training courses on offer across Australia and New Zealand as well as a learning community. I have an online learning community there that people can sign up for, log in to and get resources that help them to learn about other aspect of embodiment or body work practice Wonderful! Thats BruceStark.com.au. Thank you Bruce, its been great to speak to you today, I hope we can speak again. This information has been so valuable. I really appreciate your time this evening Thanks. Its been great. I really appreciate this and look forward to talking again soon. My pleasure. Bye for now. Right, bye bye.

Clinton:

Bruce: Clinton: Bruce:

Visit http://www.australiacounselling.com.au for more information and resources for therapists and counsellors.

Embodiment in Practice: Listening to the Language of the Tissues Copyright 2013 Australia Counselling & Consulting Pty Ltd