Working With Incongruence in a Wholebody Focusing Oriented Approach to Psychotherapy: Towards a Mutuality of Shared Presence

TITLE PAGE of PCEP JOURNAL SUBMISSION: SPECIAL ISSUE ON INCONGRUENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

KAREN WHALEN, PH.D

Word Count: 8717 words including references

Author’s Biography:

Karen Whalen, Ph.D is a clinical psychotherapist in private practice in eastern Canada and a Certifying Coordinator of the Focusing Institute of New York. She teaches Wholebody Focusing Oriented Therapy world-wide to health care professionals.

Karen Whalen, Ph.D

Clinical Psychotherapist

Certifying Coordinator of Focusing Institute, New York

1116 Toney River Rd

RR#4

River John, Nova Scotia

Canada B0K 1N0

902-485-9340

Karen.whalen@eastlink.ca

wholebodyfocusing@gmail.com

Working With Incongruence in a Wholebody Focusing Oriented Approach to Psychotherapy: Towards a Mutuality of Shared Presence

Abstract. The concept of congruence in psychotherapy and counseling refers to the process of achieving an organismic state of harmony between the body, mind and behavior of the client. Much time in the therapy session deals with psycho-behavioral markers of incongruence, or what gets in the way of the client expressing themselves in a genuine and spontaneous way which matches their present moment experiencing. Rogers (1980) noted in his later years that a therapist who can open to full awareness of their present moment experiencing offers a quality of presence which releases a growth capacity in Self and others. Using a Wholebody Focusing Oriented approach to the therapeutic alliance, this article explores further Rogers’ notion of therapeutic presence as a dynamic field phenomenon of wholebody-environment-situation awareness between therapist and client. We will use session anecdotes to illustrate therapist-client interactions of “true congruence” emerging out of moments of incongruence for both. We are suggesting that organismic congruence is a natural outcome of inter-relational presence, as therapist-client open up to each moment of the wholebody-environment interactive space in surprising and forward moving ways.

Key words: congruence, inter-relational presence, wholebody-environment-situation interaction, inter-penetrating fields of awareness, wholebody focusing

Working With Incongruence in a Wholebody Focusing Oriented Approach to Psychotherapy:

Towards a Mutuality of Shared Presence

Within person-centered and experiential approaches, congruence is one of Rogers’ six classical therapeutic conditions. It is most simply understood as being real, where one’s experiencing of self matches both one’s awareness of self and one’s psycho-behavioral modes of self-expression. Rogers suggested that the congruent client was a fully functioning person (Rogers, 1959). In his later years Rogers (1980) began referring to the role of therapist’s presence, this capacity to be open and fully connected to one’s awareness of self-in-the-present moment, as an important catalyst for growth in Self and in Other. Geller & Greenberg (2002) postulate that empathy and congruence may be one way that presence is expressed in the therapeutic encounter, with therapeutic presence as the foundation and necessary precondition to the relationship conditions of empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard.

While therapeutic presence is an attuned, empathic, and receptive state of being which is offered in the service of the client’s well-being, it has been suggested most recently that those moments of the therapist being touched and changed by the client’s presence are considered to be pivotal change moments for both therapist and client. Mearns & Cooper (2005) emphasize the notion of relational depth as an important determining factor in the outcome of therapy, whereby the therapist meets the client in “the between” of an I-Thou relationship (Buber, 1958) in which both are open and receptive to being touched by the other, human being to human being. Villa-Boas Bowen (as cited in Stillwell, 1998, p.30) refers to empathy as “something someone is… their presence” and that we are essentially mutually involved with one another. She speaks about getting into the mutual space of I and Thou, a space of mutuality she calls Inner Self, which is universal (Stilwell, p.31) and that “by being the Inner Self with the client, the client realizes that Inner Self which is both his and the therapist’s”. Levinas (1985) emphasizes the primacy of Other in the meeting between two people and how the face and presence of Other takes priority over the needs of self and demands a response to it. Schmid & Mearns (2006) recognize that the personal resonance of the therapist’s own experience to the client leads to an exchange of mutuality which is a responsive interactive mode and can be also named dialogic resonance. Grafanaki & McLeod (2002) discovered that moments of incongruence were present even in the most successful therapies and that it is impossible to view congruence as a process occurring within an individual person, but is rather a relational and inter-subjective experience in which both “counselor and client are congruent and co-present with each other” (p.29). Most recently, Fleisch (2011, 2012) describes the transformational effects of the shared field of co-presencing on both therapist and client during Wholebody Focusing Oriented Therapy sessions.

These recent developments in the conceptualization and practice of congruence fostering processes in person-centered and experiential therapies emphasize the power of meeting the client inside of a shared space of relational depth (Cox, 2009; Knox & Cooper, 2010; Mearns & Cooper, 2005), inside a mutual encounter of co-experiencing (Schmid, 2002) and within a mutual sharing of inter-relational co-presencing (Fleisch, 2011, 2012; Whalen & Fleisch, 2012). Wholebody Focusing Oriented Therapy (WBFOT)) is a recent development of Gendlin’s (1981, 1996) experiential process method of contacting the felt sense of one’s direct experience. WBFOT emphasizes the inter-relational space between Therapist and Client who meet each other from an expanded embodied experience of Self in grounded presence. Attention is paid to a particular quality of bodily consciousness as it contacts and meets Other inside of the entire living field of the wholebody-environment-situation interaction. The field of awareness between our two living bodies becomes the primary purpose of the therapeutic encounter. Charged with life energy and potential, this inter-relational field of awareness comprises four primary body spaces: 1) the space of the physical bodily container and its particular manifestations 2) the more subtle space of the inner proprioceptive felt sensing and energetic body which gives rise to the emergence of an expanded experience of “Me Here” 3) the inter-relational space of WE between the living bodies of Therapist and Client 4) the gravitational space of the environment around and between our two living bodies as a larger living field of the I/WE situation. WBFOT adopts a quantum field perspective (Rosenbaum & Kuttner, 2006; Stapp, 1979; Umezawa, 1993; Wolf, 1989; Whalen & Fleisch, 2012) of the therapeutic dyad in which subtle intersecting fields of wholebody awareness meet, resonate, and respond to each other, in a rhythmic and meaningful way, thereby impacting one another during the session hour. Moments of incongruence emerge from the shared experiencing of Therapist and Client alike as opportunities for more fully meeting, being, and seeing each other as we genuinely are in our human vulnerabilities and limitations. We concur with the theoretical description of congruence/incongruence put forward by Grafanaki & McLeod (1995, 2002) as a continuum of relational possibilities which are co-explored and co-experienced as Therapist and Client meet in real time, human being to human being.

Using a Wholebody Focusing oriented approach to the therapeutic alliance, this article explores further Rogers’ and Geller’s notion of therapeutic presence as a dynamic field phenomenon of wholebody-environment-situational awareness between Therapist and Client. As Therapist and Client mutually connect to an expanded and consciously embodied experience of Self we term grounded presence, a palpably felt field of inter-relational presence opens us both up to each moment of the wholebody-environment-situational interactive space in often surprising and forward moving ways. We are suggesting that a freshly emerging experience of holistic organismic congruence is a natural outcome of inter-relational presence when both Therapist and Client are open to experiencing Self and Other in this deeply connected way. The author, an experienced PC psychotherapist of 18 years, will offer client session anecdotes to illustrate how the field of inter-relational presence functions within a Wholebody Focusing Oriented approach to working with moments of incongruence during therapy sessions. Precise session details will be altered and pseudonyms will be used to protect client anonymity.

The Inter-Relational Field of Shared Presence During Sessions Of Wholebody Focusing:

Wholebody Focusing Oriented Therapy invites both Therapist and Client to be aware of their bodily consciousness as it touches and is supported by the gravitational space of the wholebody-environment-situation interaction of the therapy hour. Therapist and Client pay particular attention to how the body as a whole seems to have a life of its own which responds actively to the support of the ground, the holding effect of gravity, the support of the chair, the more subtle support of the ambient environment with the sounds, temperature, and familiar objects which impact us, and, finally, the inter-relational field dynamics between Therapist and Client. By connecting to something larger than me, in a wholebody way, I can relax into the wholeness of my current field of experiencing and open my mind and body up to receiving, resonating with, and responding to the signals coming from this wholebody-environment-situational interaction. The field of shared presence between Therapist and Client is a dynamic interactive space containing information and life energy which can carry us both forward into more possibilities of wholeness (congruence). Van de Kooy & McEvenue (2006) have stated elsewhere that the body functioning as a whole implies its own forward movement and has a knowing about how to complete its stopped or incompleted life processes.

Inside of this expanded field of wholebody-environment-situation awareness, the parts/issues of the Client which feel safe enough, present themselves to bodily consciousness for sorting out. This implies a sense of trust in self which builds up over time for the Client and also a sense of trust in me, the Therapist, which also builds up very naturally over time. The previously unconscious or disconnected parts of self respond to the Client’s expanded experience of Self in grounded presence. Both Client and Therapist connect to the life of the whole living body (mine and theirs) as it interacts with the supports and life of the environment, the life situation in question, and the life and support between Therapist and Client. This much vaster inter-relational field of intelligence, this larger Self or Body Wisdom that is WE, knows how to connect to the life of the wholebody-environment-situation interaction. This larger Self recognizes the life in Other (my Client) and what might be needed to move their process forward or complete a stopped or incompleted life process.

This shared space of deep listening awareness between us is more important than what may be spoken or manifested. The huge inter-relational field of the four bodily spaces appears to activate all sensori-motor activity, impulses, felt sensings and shifting, thoughts, emotions, mental images, memory, as well as the bio-energetic life processes. Table 1 lists the six phases of the Wholebody Focusing process which we detail below.

Table 1 : Six Phases of the Wholebody Focusing Process

Embodying Grounded Presence: Connecting to Self and Environment with my Whole Body
Awakening Inner Directed Movements of the Body Wisdom: Expanding a Sense of “Me Here”
Holding the Dynamic Inner Space of Not Knowing: Letting Go of the Need to Control\
Welcoming the New Knowing that Wants to Emerge
Holding Both with Equal Positive Regard: Wholeness of Self and Something that Wants my Attention
Allowing Life Forward Movement and the Fullness of the Situation to Complete Itself Through the Whole Living Field of Shared Presence: the We of the Wholebody-Situation-Environment Interaction

The Six Phases of the Wholebody Focusing Proceess:

1. Embodying Grounded Presence: Connecting to Self and Other with my Whole Body

Grounded Presence allows Therapist and Client to connect to self and other inside of the present moment of the therapy session in a whole body way. Our two living bodies are instruments of awareness engaged in wholebody listening, attunement to self and other, resonating with and responding to the whole living interactive space between us from an experience of wholeness of Self. As a way of tuning into this interactive space of awareness, I invite us both to embody grounded presence so that we can meet from a mutuality of shared presence inside of the session hour. This inter-relational field of shared presence between us serves to “potentiate what is being implied and facilitates a whole bodily process of carrying forward blockages and stopped process into next steps of healing and transformation” (Whalen & Fleisch, 2012, p.98). Both Therapist and Client open, resonate with, and felt sense into what is emerging for both, from the ground up. The feet and legs, pelvis, belly, chest and shoulders and arms, throat and neck, and head of the one are invited to resonate with the whole living body of the other. This inter-relational field of shared wholebody presence catalyzes an experience of more aliveness in both.

My own bodily felt sense of the Client’s experiencing offers a kind of inter-subjective gateway to a mutuality of shared resonance between us that can be deeply healing for both. I invite us both to notice whatever is happening inside us and outside of us in the environment. This might include noticing energy flow, spontaneous movement, gesture, postural realignment, sensory-affective information, a certain quality of breath, environmental information, a certain quality of my Client’s presence that supports me (for example, they are relaxed and present to themselves and me) or perhaps distracts me (for example, they are stressed or caught up by their issue, not yet able to be fully present to themselves and this session hour).

We observe how bodily consciousness adjusts itself very naturally to the omnipresent pull and support of gravity, the ground under our feet, the chair under our sit bones. The legs may feel themselves to be more solidly here. The hip joints may open in response to the gravitational support from the ground up. Shoulders, head, and chest may open up to their own expanded awareness of themselves, a result of gravity’s support, of the support of the lower torso, as well as the more subtle support of the space above the head, below the feet and ground, and around the whole body. More and more of me is here now, present to these very natural connections with my environment which includes the Client. I invite my self-aware living body to open from the inside out, to take up all the space it needs inside of the shared space of WE. The qualities I embody while connecting with grounded presence greatly influences the outcome of this practice. I am the neutral equanimous observer of my own experiencing, gentle, curious, accepting and open to what might emerge and rise up inside of our shared field of awareness. Being the detached observer of my whole field of experiencing, is very different from adopting an inner attitude of intense waiting for the Client’s responses or feeling intensely into their inner experiencing. The bodily felt qualities of “neutral and detached” open my sensory and physical field up to really being here with the Client, exactly the way they are, meeting them exactly the way I am with no agenda of my own.

Whatever I do notice, I observe it and accept it exactly the way it is whether it is pleasurable or uncomfortable. Whatever seems to be manifesting inside of the Client’s field of awareness, we invite it to self-explore and be even more than it is. The Client picks up on my gentle spacious presence over here across from them, and something in them begins to relax, melting away inner fears and tension, and opening them up in a bodily way to the possibility of making space for themselves and maybe even space for me.

Throughout the therapy session, I have a clearly defined wholebody sense of self separate from my Client which allows me to open even more to a connection with them. If I begin to get drawn into the contents of my awareness or theirs’ and lose a sense of self, I return to my connection with the ground and the environment. This gives me the safety and space to notice what wants my attention and the client’s, while maintaining a connection with the whole living body of WE.

Client Anecdote #1:

Delia walked into my kitchen for the first time, offered me a steady look and hand-shake while at the same time moving away from me and breaking into peals of laughter for no apparent reason. It was clear to me that I was witnessing a somewhat fragmented Self with nevertheless authentic resources of life energy, enthusiasm, and a natural effusion of feeling and longing to connect. She had worked for several years previously with a PC therapist on relationship difficulties with her life partner and sexual trauma in childhood.

It struck me how, from the very first moments of our time together, Delia’s laughter filled me with delight. My larger and more connected Self recognized the lively, whole and connected human being sitting across from me who at the same time was in deep despair about her marriage and the absence of parental care and protection during childhood. Her laughter would rise up in a way that was strikingly incongruent with her bodily posture of collapse into moments of shame or a welling up of tears as she contacted a poignantly felt meaning of her experiencing. She would apologize for her laughter but I would find myself entirely disarmed and delighted by it.

During session #4 with Dehlia, I shared my bodily appreciation of her laughter and how her light heartedness and goodness lived inside me like a precious gift of personhood and friendship. I noticed how very present and still she became when I shared my sense of her laughter and how it impacted me. Over time, each time that we observed and resonated with her laughter inside of the inter-relational space between us, a very curious thing would happen. My whole body and being would bubble up with inner delight and a lightness of being. In contrast, her whole body would become very still, she would drop into a spacious experience of her own grounded presence and some new awareness or healing process would present itself to her. Together, each of us present to the larger wholebody-environment-situational interaction between us, we would keep one another company there and each draw benefit from it in our own right ways. To this day I am aware that Delia’s laughter taught me to value the life bearing aspect of it because I listened from my wholebody resonance with it. If I had been a novice therapist, I might have identified her laughter as a blockage or impediment to moving her process forward. If I had stopped her laughter, I would have also stopped an important inner resource and source of aliveness for her.

2.Awakening Inner Directed Movements of the Body Wisdom: Expanding a Sense of “Me Here”

The whole self aware living body begins to naturally and spontaneously open, unwind, and sort itself out when it feels my conscious connection with it through grounded whole body presence. I begin to notice the emergence of inner directed movements such as a structural bodily realignment, an inner pulsing or tingling, a sense of inner flow or warmth, or perhaps a more balanced experience of the upper and lower torso, or the left and right sides of body. Our two nervous systems, Therapist’s and Client’s, settle themselves down and take in the expanded resources of this wholebody-environment-WE present moment. Implied within this inter-relational field interaction is a knowing about how to move both our organisms forward (Gendlin, 1996, 1997). This expansive and shared field of aliveness that is WE becomes activated and responds to our shared grounded presence the way a living body does: through sensory awareness and movements. The intelligence (life energy and information) of our respective Body Wisdom begins to re-organize the organism and to bring into the Client’s and Therapist’s awareness that which feels safe and ready to bring into consciousness. In WBFOT, the adult observer Self (Therapist & Client) makes space for and welcomes these inner directed movements, tracking them with precision as they bring new awareness about the Client’s life issue or situation, and often, the Therapist is changed by this process.

Client Anecdote #2:

Debbie has been living with her estranged husband for three years, both longing to reconnect with him and wanting to express her hurt and rage about his rejection of her. She is frozen by this core inner conflict which has plagued her in other ways her whole life long. Her experience of her center of gravity has shifted in the last few sessions from shoulders pulled back over heels, to a forward tilt of pelvic basin over in-step. This current session begins with her standing, looking out over the wilderness area of my back yard. The whole body rocks from side to side and her arms begin shaking for no apparent reason from shoulder to finger tips. I encourage her to welcome that movement without seeking to understand it, stepping back and giving it all the breathing space it needs to self explore and become conscious of itself as a bodily experience. The right arm and hand are particularly active while the left arm and hand grow quieter and soon lie still at her arms.

She notices sharp hot electrical sensations in right arm and hand “as though they are on fire”. I notice how my feet and legs also feel hot and anchored to the floor while my whole upper body feels open and neutral. I invite Debbie to notice the contrast between right and left arms/hands and to invite them to be aware of each other. I am sensing that they have some important information for her although I do not say this to her. “My right arm is angry and wants to take some kind of action. My left arm and hand have been frozen in the past but today they are alive in their stillness. They feel so alive in their inaction”.

These words come for me to say to her: “This left side of you has been open and receptive to connecting with your husband. Right now this part is simply you, open to being yourself – almost detached from the suffering of this situation”. Debbie begins to cry and nod while her right arm/hand rises up and rests over her chest and heart. She says: “This is how it would be to stand inside my own life”. Her whole body is swaying in a figure eight movement and I notice that I have been making a similar movement for some time, before she does it. I invite Debbie to make lots of space for the right and left arms and hands to be even more conscious of themselves from the inside, whilst being aware of each other. I notice how my own experience of inner space has gotten much bigger and how my whole body, from head to toe, continues swaying in a subtle figure eight pattern. The fiery aspect of Debbie’s right arm and hand has cooled off noticeably and is now making long sweeping movements across her face and chest. After a few minutes of this rhythmic figure eight movement and the sweeping movements of her right arm, she says: “I have a good reason to be angry. And I can also look after my own needs”. By end of session, Debbie is experiencing a kind of earned congruence, embodying both righteous anger and at the same time a peaceful and strong sense of self. I am reminded of my own issue of unexpressed anger and experiencing a heightened sense of vitality around a situation which has immobilized me for some time. I too have been changed by Debbie’s wholebody focusing session.

3. Holding the Dynamic Inner Space of Not Knowing: Letting Go of the Need to Control

As the living body of both Therapist and Client begins to awaken and respond to the grounded presence and the wholebody-environment-situation interaction of WE, we make space for the inner directed movements. We welcome them, without needing to know their meaning. The re-organization process which is initiated by the much larger Self of the wholebody-environment-WE field of awareness, is free to unfold until the new information and life energy (consciousness) emerge into the Therapist and Client’s field of awareness. In the example of Debbie above, when her body began to sway and her arms/hands to shake, we remained fully present to the whole situation and simply said yes to the movements, observing them in a precisely bodily way that is detached from or neutral to their significance until their meaning pops into awareness.

4. Welcoming the New Knowing that Wants to Emerge

Up until now Therapist and Client do not know what the movements or discomfort is about. We have been stepping back, observing, resonating in a bodily way, with the inner directed movements and tolerating the “not knowing” of all of this activity. Now the bodily movements tend to become more subtle (like Debbie’s right arm and hand and tiny figure eight movements of whole body) and purposeful. There emerges a bodily felt sense of how all of this activity is related to Debbie’s own specific life story and situation. The organism is in the process of reorganizing itself. Therapist and Client say yes to this process, connecting now with a new knowing of her own Body Wisdom which arises out of the intentional body movements themselves. In the example above, I invited Debbie to really make the space for both arms to self-explore and also to notice each other. With the new energy and information of the open calm and “standing strong Self” of the left side, comes a reliable inner resource or true Self which is more conscious. As a result, the chaotic anger of the right arm and hand opened up to new ways of being angry. The right arm and hand could be free to express their anger without the “neediness to connect” while at the very same time having an enhanced capacity to also nurture Self. A new way of being with the troubling and long standing life situation of daily marital estrangement was welcomed and invited to integrate more fully into the whole living body culminating in the client’s statement: “I have a good reason to be angry. And I can look after my own needs”.

5. Holding Both With Equal Positive Regard: Wholeness of Self and Something that Wants my Attention

As we have seen in the four previous phases of the WBF process, new information about the Client’s life situation arises directly out of this subtle body movement re-organization process emergent from the expanded inter-relational field of awareness which includes the four body spaces. T and C observe these subtle inner directed movements from the dynamic inter-relational space of the wholebody-environment-situation of WE. Felt sensing into the whole of me, from head to toe, including the environmental connections and supports, makes more information, more words, more awareness, and more life energy, available to me in a way my thinking mind cannot begin to comprehend. My unified field of awareness and the newly emerging consciousness know how to work together. My wholebody awareness supports my new way of being (and the client’s) and living inside my body; my new way of being and living inside my body needs my wholebody awareness of it to continue emerging as a reliable inner resource. The whole living body (as a unified field of awareness) and the newly emerging consciousness or self-part are in fact co-emergent and co-dependent. Something new can come because we dynamically hold both inside of our inter-relational field of awareness.

We propose the metaphor of information as vibrational wave forms emerging and shifting bodily consciousness (information and life energy) to explain the transformational process of “Holding Both with Equal Positive Regard”. The homing beacon of my expanded self-aware living body (grounded presence), as part of the I/We-Situation-Interaction, may act as a master wave form signal (Whalen & Fleisch, 2012) that attracts to it and entrains the wave form signals of the part which is already implying the life forward direction for the whole organism. The self-organizing principle of my wholistic organismic vibration vitalizes and entrains the vibration of my emerging self-part. While the underlying essence of each remains unchanged, the meeting of wholeness of Self and the self-part creates an amplified master wave form signal whereby each mutually supports and enhances each other. This matching resonance between both amplifies the energetic and vibrational signal of each (= CONSCIOUSNESS) without changing their underlying qualities.

In the previous client session example, Debbie held both the bodily felt sense of left arm and right arm inside of her unified field of awareness (grounded presence) until something shifted at a wholistic organismic level of functioning. From being angry, needy, and shut down, she experienced herself as standing strong and calm inside of an appropriate anger response which could also nurture and support her whole life.

WBFOT begins with an expanded experience of the four body spaces of awareness which invites the parts to sort themselves out, supported now by the intelligence and aliveness of the whole living body-environment-situation interaction. Whalen & Fleisch (2012, p. 98-99) explain:

The billions of cells of the body need us to observe them, in a very precisely physical way, with our awareness of the body functioning as a whole, so that they can remember their own possibilities of whole function. The wholebody master wave-form frequency (posited by quantum field theory) entrains the wave-form frequencies of the part/issue (and its groupings of cells and tissues) which are wanting and needing my awareness of them. This vibrational wholebody entrainment allows the part/issue/limiting behavior to emerge as a new firing pattern or life forward movement. This is why, in WBFOT, we invite our neutral, curious, and bodily awareness to float back and forth between awareness of the whole body and awareness of the part that is wanting attention. In this way, the self-aware (observed) living body knows how to move itself forward in most situations in a way that we, as conscious observers, often cannot”.

6. Allowing the Life Forward Movement and the Fullness of the We-Wholebody-Environment Situation to Complete Itself

The Client needs to resonate with a direct experience of this integration and completion phases from a continually expanding sense of Self in grounded presence. The inter-relational co-presencing space of WE between Therapist and Client become the dynamic stillness and huge wholebody-environmental space which activates and supports this sophisticated enlivening and reorganization process. A lot can continue to happen outside of session. The living body in its own wisdom knows the forward moving steps into a more wholly functioning organism. I need not interfere with this subtle re-organization process by mulling over it, talking about it, or trying to analyze it. On the contrary, what is needed is a return to everyday moments of living, giving the larger Self and Body Wisdom the permission to continue moving the issue and organism forward towards more wholeness and rightness of being. At the end of Debbie’s session above, lots of time was taken to invite both sides to relate to each other, to embody that fully, until the Client has a clear sense of the new forward movement direction.

Oftentimes, as I sit inside of my own grounded presence and feel the wholebody presence over there in my Client, I have the distinct impression that something larger than us both, perhaps the ambient field of awareness which surrounds us and in which we are both choosing to consciously participate, supports an energetic mutuality of connectedness to Other. This expanded experience of Self-in-Presence listens, attunes to, resonates with, and responds to Other in a way that serves us both. A breadth and depth of information and life energy flows between the Therapist and Client in a shared experience of mutuality of wholebody presence, establishing the conditions of a true meeting in the between of wholeness of Self (congruence) meeting wholeness of Self. (congruence). There is a rightness of rhythm in the energy and information exchange between us. The tuning fork of our two self-aware living bodies very naturally listens, felt senses, resonates, attunes to, responds and expresses itself in a mutual back and forth. As Therapist, words often come for me to say which surprise me, as though I am accessing information which is somehow beyond the purview of what I consciously know. It turns out, most of the time, that a much larger knowing is at work between us. The words that come for me to share with the client empower their process and move them forward in their lives. I am generally deeply touched and often changed by the Client’s process of contacting new awareness and fresh aliveness around their life situation. I embody a kind of trusting innocence and humility as I invite my whole living body to become more and more connected, alive, and conscious of its field sensing abilities.

Client Anecdote #3:

Joline is an experienced Counsellor and has been a client of mine for the past two years. She is well integrated and highly functioning yet experiences moments of lassitude and grief around her family history which includes loss of father and brother through death, and loss of other siblings and mother through emotional distance (theirs). Recently she was experiencing what seemed to be a fresh wave of loss and hopelessness, about her current life situation which she qualifies as “one which is full and deeply satisfying, or at least, should be”. The sense of loss and hopelessness did not have the sticky feeling I picked up from the shared field between us in the past. When she put out the word “hopelessness”, I giggled, which is quite out of character and not habitual for me. I apologized for my giggle, but it brought out a giggle in her too. I mirrored back to her that I was bodily sensing into a lot of life in the word “hopelessness” and so it felt like a “funny word” in my bodily living of that. She became very quiet, both inwardly and outwardly, and reported feeling “intrigued” by our mutually shared bodily response to “hopelessness”.

I invited Joline and myself to make lots of space for “hopelessness” inside of the shared inter-relational space of the wholebody-environment-situation interaction. As Therapist, I noticed how my awareness was drawn out to the environment (a lovely summer day, trees fluttering in the wind, the sound of birds, the smell of freshly cut grass). It was as though something larger than me was pushing me out of my Client’s way so that she could explore her own possibilities around all of that. The Client was silent for a few minutes. I could feel the spaciousness of her presence and so I actively resonated with that, enjoying the space of Pure Being and Not Knowing the forward direction that those words, or the energy behind those words, might lead her. Neither of us had an agenda of the next step in the session. Her next words seemed to come from very far away. My bodily sense of Joline became misty or insubstantial, or perhaps simply extremely subtle. What she shared next was indeed coming from another time and another place.

“I remember riding my bike across our two farms when I was a wee girl. I remember observing the land, the changes in the river, the trees, but really really enjoying noticing how the land had a life of its own and I was fascinated by its many changes. I remember feeling how that was my land, or, I was a part of that, and the land was a part of me. Then I am remembering my connection with my Dad and his connection to the land. When we left the farm I never really got that it was no longer mine, that I might never go back to it. That is what I am missing now. I have always missed a connection to the land that I am a part of. I know that I have this gorgeous big house with a lot of land on it, and gardens and this full rich life. But I have never been able to fully settle in here knowing that I am coming home to my land. That is what the hopelessness is about. That I have never had that same connection between myself and the land since and I have gotten apathetic about how I never will again. I have given up on the idea of finding land to live on that we can share in a community way. It is all just too much of a pipe dream.”

As I listened to Joline’s story I was captivated by the aliveness in her words and my own bodily energies as she shared the child’s connection with the land. I found myself catapulted back into my own childhood, wandering along the coastal wilderness of my island home as a young child, feeling intimately connected to everything, knowing the land intimately and feeling its pull to me, its holding of me. I was able to entirely relate to and resonate with Joline’s experience. I recognized this same longing in me to fully arrive home on the land, the home of my ancestors, my true home. I asked Joline whether she wished to hear my experience of her sharing that story. When I did, fresh life seemed to infuse the space between us. It was as though the hopelessness, the loss, the giving up, had entirely dissolved. In the meeting in the between around an issue that we both held and lived in our own uniquely bodily way, a new life possibility had popped into our awareness. Recently I made a most unexpected decision to build a small structure on a piece of land that has called me to it for several years. Meanwhile my client has opened herself to the possibility of co-inhabiting a piece of land that feels like home and which she can fully inhabit as she did in the distant past. Without this meeting as two fully present human beings, I doubt whether I would have taken the action steps I did. On a final note, Joline has reported a “conspicuous absence of the melancholy” which has burdened her life for the last many years.

In the previous client anecdote, my seemingly incongruent “giggle” to the Client’s sense of “hopelessness” activated a richly multi-layered and meaningful story about what was needed for an experience of a more deeply connected and fulfilling life. The lives of both Therapist and Client were impacted in a manner which brought forward movement and accompanying concrete action steps for Therapist and Client alike. The following fourth and final client anecdote is an example of what can happen when Client incongruence is met with Therapist incongruence (confusion) and how to move the session forward when it is apparently stopped for both. Grounded presence plays a pivotal role in supporting the WE in that challenging situation.

What to do When the Inter-Relational Connection Between Therapist and Client Gets Lost:

If the Therapist loses a sense of connection to the Client, it could be because the Client is no longer consciously connected to a sense of Self (GP) and is caught up within a shield of resistance or overwhelmed by a vortex of trauma. Any invitation to the client to reconnect to the larger Self may ignite a primitive rage in the traumatized part that is unconsciously shielding the Client’s awareness from the place of trauma, yet unaware of the additional resources of the present moment. The Therapist’s grounded presence is especially needed in offering the primitive part some breathing space to experience itself more directly exactly the way that it is without an agenda of any kind. Gradually, over time, as trust deepens inside of the therapeutic relationship, the primitive parts will open up more and more to their own consciousness and activate their own forward movement. There is a knowing, a rightness, and a sense of timing within these traumatized parts that open to their own healing and reconnect to the functioning whole living body in their own right way and time. As Therapist, I prepare the relational space, assure safety, unconditional positive regard, and bodily consciousness, so that this opening and healing process can awaken and complete itself without our interference.

It could also be that the Therapist gets drawn into the Client’s vortex of intensity or reactivity, losing a sense of themselves and their connection to self. The following fourth clinical anecdote is an example of how the Therapist reestablishes a connection internally as well as with the Client. Out of a sense of connection to my own expanded experience of Self, I invite the Client to return to bodily awareness as a whole starting with the grounding from the feet up. I want to feel that connection with the Client at all times. When it is not there, I suggest something that might bring it back.

Quite often, the Client requires space and time to reconnect to the present moment in a safe and non-directive way. Inside of such a space of shared stillness and silence that is still connected to the physicality of our mutual presence, something dynamic reorganizes itself inside of the Client’s Body/Mind. Somehow I know when this is happening and I receive an inner signal to step back and simply witness the Client’s emergent process.

Client Anecdote #4:

Martin, a severely traumatized client arrived for a first session. The client had spent many years in therapy and was terrified of the traumatizing effect of revisiting his story of ritual sexual abuse. He had heard about Wholebody Focusing and decided that he was ready to invite a different relationship with his bodily experiencing and processing of that childhood trauma. When I invited the client to connect to a sense of the physical supports of the chair, the ground, and the space of the room, his body and mind froze into a state of immobilized terror. As therapist I did not know how to proceed with the session. Even before we had begun, Martin was suffering an acute experience of habituated PTSD. He held his feet up above the floor to prevent the terror from growing yet stronger.

As a way of supporting myself and with a clear awareness of not knowing how to be with this client, I reconnected freshly with a sense of my whole body, supported by the physical contact with the chair, the floor, the familiar space of my office, and the lovely summer day outside the floor-ceiling windows. I noticed how my attention was drawn to the space of the environment, as though my consciousness were fetching around to find a doorway to move my client and our session forward. I noticed how the whole of me, from head to toe, was also open to keeping this client company in his terror without having any idea how to do that. Quite out of the blue, the following words came out of my mouth, much to my and the client’s surprise. I said to him: “I have a river just out through my back gate with a lovely little forest path down to it. Would you like to take a wander down there with me?”

Something quite unexpected occurred in Martin . He perked right up, smiled broadly, settled his feet back on the floor, took a deep relaxing breath and said, “I would just love that”. We walked down to the river together. I directed the client to notice how, with each step, his feet were supported by gravity and contact with the living earth. I invited him to notice how his body was taking in the experience of the trees and greenery, the smells, and the sounds, in effect, the whole environment, while we walked down to the river. He was able to put words to his inner bodily experience of all that. When we got to the river, I proceeded to offer him a session of Wholebody Focusing, teaching him the various phases of observing direct experiencing from a sense of his own whole body grounded presence. His words for this session were surprising to him. “It can be a delight to make space for my trauma in this whole body focusing way. This is the last thing I was expecting”. It turned out that Martin’s one reliable resource for coping with the recurrent symptoms of PTSD was to walk in nature with his dog. The earth and the natural environment had only ever supported and nurtured his being and living body.

Discussion of Experiential Anecdote:

The bodily living of our past suffering and history is usually very different from how the ego identity, this smaller sense of “I”, lives the suffering. The body in its state of instinctual innocence doesn’t care about the contents of the story. The body is only interested in its directly lived experience of the story. While my client had prepared himself to be traumatized prior to the session, his actual bodily lived experience was quite different. Something inside of the interactive body-environment space informed me how to proceed with the session when I had no idea how to do so. Something in the client’s own lived experience likely informed me about a safe doorway to proceed with the session. I made space for my own vulnerability. The pause of not knowing how to proceed was possible because I invited my wholebody awareness to notice its connection to the whole environment, which included the inter-relational space between us. Precisely the right words, and only those words, came for me to say. I was as surprised by these words as my client. I could never have anticipated the outcome of this radically new direction to the session as I had never, and have never since, invited a client to walk along the forest path to the river bordering my maritime home.

Discussion and Concluding Remarks:

A Wholebody Focusing Oriented Approach to working with incongruence in the therapy session is pointing towards a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize and live from a radical ecology of Self which invites a profound connection with our clients and environments. We recognize that others have been calling for a more wholistic envisioning of the human being and experience (Barrett-Lennard, 2009; Tudor, 2010; Whalen & Fleisch, 2012; Wilberg, 2010) and a more interactive inter-relational approach to the therapeutic encounter (Fleisch, 2011; Knox & Cooper, 2010; Mearns & Cooper, 2005; Whalen & Fleisch, 2012; Wilberg, 2008, 2010). During client sessions, grounded presence serves as a container of wholebody-environment-situation awareness for both Therapist and Client. Grounded Presence, in addition, creates a dynamic inner space of consciousness which activates the implicit energies and information inside the parts/issues of Clients presenting themselves during sessions. Generally because of trauma or some incompleted developmental life process, the inherent life processes of these parts/issues have been stopped or somehow blocked from completing or carrying themselves forward into the functioning whole organism. As we have seen in the three client sessions, grounded presence acts as an alchemical container of transformation which holds both the emergent objects/phenomenon inside of adult bodily awareness and the larger adult experiencing Self in her current state of wholeness (the wholebody-environment-situation interactive field of awareness). This “holding of both” constitutes an organismic experience of wholeness whose knowing and energies transmute blocked or incomplete processes into a more integrated bodily experience of wholeness of Self.

We recognize the limitations of this intimately inter-connected and inter-active approach to therapy. Fragmented clients and those with fragile self processes will have difficulty contacting themselves so directly and will have even less capacity to open up to a genuine experience of the Therapist. In such cases, the Therapist will embody and model grounded presence for the Client. Over time, the Client will grow in their capacity to embody their own energies and eventually open up to experiencing the natural mutuality of interrelatedness which the Therapist offers them. We also recognize that this depth and quality of being and inter-being which WBFOT offers can be applied to and enhance any therapeutic approach. We encourage Therapy Training Programs to offer their trainees the potent inner resource of grounded presence which serves as a reliable antidote to empathy fatigue and the occupational stresses of vicarious trauma (Stebnicki, 2007). Meeting inside the WE of a mutuality of shared presence also neutralizes the unconscious inter-relational response patterns related to transference and counter-transference. Therapist and Client are free to open up to a genuine and heartfelt meeting from a mutual experience of congruence or wholeness of self. We concur with Geller & Greenberg (2012) when they suggest that therapeutic presence is the state of having one’s whole self in the encounter with the client by being completely in the moment on a multiplicity of levels – physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual. We propose the additional factor of inviting a bodily consciousness of the shared inter-relational field of the wholebody-environment-situation interaction – the subtly interconnected field sense of WE during the session hour. We welcome the possibility that future qualitative and quantitative research studies will further explore the subtleties of the dynamic interactive field phenomena of meeting from a mutuality of shared presence in the therapeutic encounter. Exploring the shared field effects between Therapist and Client and what gets in the way of that and what supports this wholebody inter-relational resonance may offer potential fruitful directions of inquiry.

Acknowledgements:

Heartfelt thanks to Soti Grafanaki for her invitation and invaluable feedback to multiple drafts of this article. Thanks to Glenn Fleisch for the shared conversations which have nourished our many rich collaborations. Many thanks to Dr. Julia Ritchie for the ongoing collaboration and friendship which supports the forward movement of this and future projects.

REFERENCES

Barrett-Lennard, G.T. (2009). From Personality to Relationship: Path of thought and practice. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 8:2, 79-93.

Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou. New York: Scribner’s Sons.

Cooper, M. (2005). Therapists’ Experience of relational depth: A qualitative interview study. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research: Linking Research with Practice, 5:2, 87-95.

Cox, S. (2009). Relational Depth: Its Relevance to a contemporary understanding of person-centered therapy. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 8:3, 208-223.

Fleisch, G. (2011). Co-presencing in wholebody focusing oriented therapy: Carrying forward blocked process and structure bound states through interactive engagement. The Focusing Connection.XXVIII (1), Jan.2011.

Fleisch, G. (2012). Theatre of the Living Body: Expressive Improvisation in Focusing-Oriented Therapist. Unpublished Manuscript.

Fleisch, G. & Whalen, K. (2010). Wholebody Focusing Oriented Therapy: Four avenues of wholebody felt sensing for transforming symptoms of trauma (unpublished manuscript).

Geller, S.M. & Greenberg, L.S. (2002). Therapeutic Presence: Therapists’ experiences of presence in the psychotherapy encounter. Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, 71-86.

Geller, S.M. & Greenberg, L.S. (2012): Therapeutic Presence: A Mindful Approach to Effective Therapy.Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Gendlin, E.T. (1978/1981). Focusing. New York, NY: Everest House.

Gendlin, E.T. (1996). Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Grafanaki, S. & McLeod, J. (1995). Client and counselor narrative accounts of congruence during the most helpful and hindering events of an initial counseling session. Counselling Psychology Quarterly. 8:4, 311-324.

Grafanaki, S. & McLeod, J. (2002). Experiential Congruence: Qualitative analysis of client and counsellor narrative accounts of significant events in time-limited person-centred therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research: Linking research with practice, 2(1), 20-32.

Knox, R. (2008). Clients’ experience of relational depth in person-centered counselling. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 8(3), 182-188.

Knox, R. & Cooper, M. (2010). Relationship Qualities that are Associated with Moments of Relational Depth: The Client’s Perspective. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 9:3, 236-256.

Levinas, E. (1985). Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo (R.A. Cohen, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

Rosenblum, B. & Kuttner, F. (2006). Quantum Enigma: Physics encounters consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schmid, P.F. & Mearns, D. (2006). Being-With and Being-Counter: Person-centered psychotherapy as an in-depth co-creative process of personalization. Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, 5:3, 174-190.

Stapp, H. (1979). Whiteheadian approach to quantum theory and the generalized bell’s theorem. Foundations of Physics.9:1.

Stebnicki, M. (2007). Empathy Fatigue: Healing the Mind, Body, and Spirit of Professional Coounsellors. American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, 10:4, 317-338.

Stilwell, W. (1998). Questing Voices. La Jolla: CA: Center for Studies of the Person.

Tudor, K. (2010). Person-Centered Relational Therapy: An Organismic Perspective. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 9:1, 52-68.

Umezawa, H. (1993). Advanced field theory: Micro, macro, and thermal physics. College Park, Maryland: American Institute of Physics.

Van der Kooy, A. & McEvenue, K. (2006). Focusing with your whole body. Toronto:Reprint Press.

Whalen, K. (2009). Participatory Spirituality: The inter-relational field of shared presence between Wholebody Focuser and Listener. In Focus. IX(1), Jan.2009.

Whalen, K. & McEvenue, K: (2011). Wholebody focusing, active consciousness, and the living body. Toronto: Reprint Press.

Whalen, K. & Fleisch, G. (2012).Quantum Consciousness: An Explanatory model for life forward movement in wholebody focusing.The Folio: A Journal for Focusing and Experiential Therapy. Vol.23 (1).

Wilberg, P.(2010). From Psychosomatics to Soma-Semiotics: Felt Sense and the Sensed Body in Medicine and Psychotherapy. Eastbourne, Sussex, UK: New Gnosis Publications.

Wilberg, P. (2004). The Therapist as Listener: Martin Heidegger and the Missing Dimension of Counselling and Psychotherapy Training. Eastbourne, Sussex, UK: New Gnosis Publications.

Wolf, F.A. (1989) Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for non-scientists. New York: Harper and Row.