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Psychodynamic Foundations of Bioenergetic Analysis

Experiencing, Understanding and Healing the Body and the Mind
Healing through or with the body
Volume 1 Part 1: Body-Awareness and Human Growth Chapter 1.1

Healing Through or With the Body

Opportunities and Limitations of Self- Regulation
Magdalena Glück, Gustav Glück

This essay is a plea for body-exercises and the corresponding confrontation with the life issues and resistances that are triggered by the exercises. The authors take an autoethnographic approach to the phenomena of healing, grounding, experienced limitations and the potential space of one’s own experience. Their guiding concepts and supporting ideas are body- and character-armoring, Reich’s three-layer character model, the therapeutic journey in the sense of a medieval wandering and serendipity. The essay is rounded off with personal experiences of overcoming limitations and creating new spaces of opportunities.

Link to the original publication at Routledge

Download all questions/answers as PDF
  • A therapeutic process can be compared to a medieval journey on foot or on horseback. Relatively soon the travelers reach unknown territory, are confused
    and occasionally disoriented. They slowly work their way through the undergrowth and thickets of the mind. For long stretches, adversity and encounters with strangeness occupy their full attention.
  • The outermost layer of Wilhelm Reich’s three-layer character structure model is the façade of trained sociality and compulsive politeness. Hidden underneath is the repressed, or Freudian, unconscious. In the center is the biological core, which is home to natural sociality, the ability to love, sexuality and the spontaneous joy of work. The three layers have no direct contact with each other. An impulse from the biological core is rewritten by the character- and body-armoring and brought into the world with the opportunities of the façade.
  • Serendipity requires a life movement full of the thirst for research, because it is only when you search that you can discover something. Through ingenuity, unexpected events can be recognized and transformed into new knowledge.
  • In the image of life as a spiral of development, there are no steps backwards, only forwards. What feels like a relapse is actually a step forward.
  • Body-exercises tailored to the individual’s character structure and physical needs, supplemented by strengthening and mobility-enhancing exercises, lead to a significant improvement in posture and overall well-being – provided they are carried out regularly and consistently.

Three Suggestions for Reflection/Self-Observation

  1. How much time (per week or per day) do I spend on my physical well-being?
  2. How is my posture in everyday life? What bad postures have crept in? Perhaps I bend forward? Or I lean backwards? Maybe my pelvis is pushed forward or back? Am I perhaps sitting slumped over at the computer?
  3. What significance did, and does, physical exercise/sport have in my life? What do I include? What is excluded?

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Magdalena Glück
Magdalena Glück

Magdalena Glück, MSc, bioenergetic analyst, psychotherapist in training under supervision (KIP), horse trainer, western riding instructor, certified trainer for equine-assisted...

 Gustav Glück
Gustav Glück

Gustav Glück, Mag. Dr., studied business administration and psychotherapy, systemic therapist, further training in applied Bioenergetic Analysis. In the therapeutic...

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