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The
Therapeutic Goals and Concepts
of
Radix®
Work
(Seminar
#1 of the Radix Training Program)
by
Narelle
McKenzie, Director of Radix Training Australia
INTRODUCTION
When I entered the Radix training program in 1981, there was no
material available that helped me integrate my learning of this
approach with my training and experience as a psychologist.
Since completing my training, I have given considerable thought
as to how the two fit. This is a summary of a paper I presented
at the Radix Conference in Florida in May 1999,where I discussed
the foundations and boundaries of Radix work from a general therapeutic
perspective.
THERAPEUTIC GOALS
In working with clients from a Radix framework, there are four major
or primary goals: consciousness, aliveness, choice, and body-mind
integration. None of these goals are unique to Radix. Rather,
it is the combination and emphasis we give to them and the way we
go about achieving them that gives our work its unique flavor.
Consciousness
As a Radix practitioner, if you achieve nothing else in your work
with clients, you want them to leave each session more present or
connected with themselves, and/or more present with their world,
than when they arrived. It doesn't matter if nothing substantial
has changed as long as they have attained some increased awareness
of what keeps them stuck. Consciousness is more than intellectual
awareness. It is a whole body knowing. It comes as a result
of accurate tracking of a client's process by both the client and
the practitioner, and requires both to be very present in the here
and now. It is possible in all kinds of therapy to work with clients
so that they develop more awareness of what they do intellectually.
In Radix work, we want them to experience what they do. If
the process of doing this is overwhelming and the client dissociates
from the experience, the practitioner, while helping to decrease
the overwhelm, helps the client notice how this is occurring and
helps him/her attend to this process at an experiential level. This
is what I call consciousness.
Working in this
way is very demanding. It requires you, the Radix practitioner,
to be present at all times. It also requires you to develop
an attitude of acceptance for whatever is happening in the session
and a deep sense of curiosity regarding the client’s process.
It is not about being an expert. Perhaps the hardest task
is helping the client cultivate this acceptance and curiosity about
their own process. Sometimes this means that several sessions
will focus on working with the judgments that interfere with their
acceptance of some emotion, thought or behavior.
Our training and
the tools we use help us attend to consciousness at a very high
level of skill, and to be aware if this process is not
happening. To achieve this goal in session with a client requires
knowing your own process very well and attending to the fine nuances
of a client’s process and experiences. Don't be disheartened
if it takes time to master.
Aliveness
In Radix work, we not only want someone to become more conscious
in the present but we want them to do this with an experience of
aliveness. We want them to experience the charge of the radix
pulsing through their bodies and the pleasantness of the discharge,
whether they are engaged in quiet meditation or noisy interaction.
Being alive means being fully engaged in what you are doing.
You can only be engaged in your experience, whatever it is, when
the radix is flowing. That is why as a Radix trainee you not
only learn how to bring yourself and your client consciously into
the present but you are also trained to work with pulsation in order
to facilitate a flow of the Radix throughout the body.
Choice
Most people come to therapy because something is not working in
their life and they experience themselves as having no choice or
power to change it. Assisting clients to understand their
process at an experiential level gives them this choice. As
a Radix practitioner, if I have a client who is dissociating
I am not particularly concerned about the fact that they dissociate
in the session (although it may be of concern outside of sessions).
I am concerned if they have no conscious awareness of what they
are doing or of how they achieve it. I am also concerned if there
is no aliveness in the process. This implies that they have
no choice about when and how they dissociate. Dissociation
is only a problem when it is unconscious and stagnant. Similarly,
if a client is afraid of crying too much ('breaking down'), I may
help them become very aware of what they do to stop themselves from
crying. When they are familiar with this process they have
a choice about whether to cry or not.
Body-mind integration
A great deal of emphasis in the Radix training program is on teaching
you to observe and work with bodily processes. However, a significant
goal of the work is to integrate the body and mind or rather thinking,
feeling and behavior. The specific principles of how this is achieved
for each client will be taught over the course of the training program.
With some clients this is achieved by developing and building the
client’s experience of their body as a container. At another time
or with another client, this will be achieved by facilitating emotional
expression or experience. At all times, we want there to be a congruence,
a working partnership, between the body and the mind. They are different
expressions of the same radix substratum.
What about emotional experience and expression? You will notice,
I hope, that nowhere in this description of the goals of Radix
is there mention of discharge of emotions or emotional release or
emotional work as a primary goal of our work. Radix training teaches
you to work with emotional experience and expression better than
any other therapy that I have encountered. However, emotional expression
and release is not a primary goal of the work.
For clients to become
more conscious of what they do, think and feel, and for them to
truly engage with life with a sense of choice and body-mind integration,
most need to focus, at some stage, on what they think and do with
their emotions. In our society, the importance of emotions
for fulfilled and functional living is still so poorly understood.
This is why in order to achieve the above goals, we as Radix teachers
often find ourselves working with clients on emotional issues and
helping them obtain this knowing. So a large part of Radix training
focuses on how to work effectively with emotions. However this is
to achieve the larger goals of consciousness, aliveness, choice
and integration.
BASIC CONCEPTS
How do we as Radix practitioners achieve these goals? Primarily
by working with the basic concepts underlying all Radix work. These
are simple concepts but they have a profound depth to them.
Over the course of the training program, you will be taught about
these concepts inconsiderable detail. Initially in your training
course you will learn and practice with your group a variety of
techniques and activities which reflect the concepts. As you become
a really effective Radix practitioner, you will generate your own
activities based on your understanding and application of these
concepts.
Contact
This is one of the most central concepts in Radix work and the concept
that makes our work so powerful. Without contact you can't have
a shift in consciousness. So at the beginning of every session,
regardless of what you have decided to do or what the lesson plan
requires, a good habit to develop is to ask yourself the following
questions:
Is this client here? Are they present?
Do they have good contact with me?
If not, what interferes with this?
If yes, what would change this?
Do they have good contact with themselves?
If not, what is interfering with this happening?
If yes, what might change this?
Most problems presented in therapy or in personal growth work are
about contact. Clients, in one way or another are expressing a desire
to have better contact with themselves or with the rest of the world
or both. When you start practicing, sometimes with a particular
client or in a particular session, you will notice that the client
does not have good self-contact or other-contact. If you notice
this, then that is where the session should start. The focus of
the session becomes assisting the client to become aware of this.
If this is achieved, you may move on to helping them notice how
they break or interfere with this contact.
At other times,
you will notice that the client is reasonably present with himself
or herself and with you, so you may move on to doing something more
active with them to see if they can maintain this as their level
of engagement increases. However, you will be continuously
checking the level of presence or contact as you proceed.
How do you know
if the client has good self contact or contact with the world? This
is where your Radix training is so valuable. In your training you
will be systematically taught how to observe aspects of the body
that indicate this presence. Examples of presence are being responsive
in the eyes, having an easy flowing breath, moving, even gently,
with an aliveness and fluidity, and speaking with a connected and
modulated voice.
Pulsation
Another central concept in Radix work and one closely related to
contact is pulsation. (See seminar #2 for a definition of pulsation).
Some people can be present or in contact but only if they keep shut
off from their aliveness and energy. They can be with you
but only if they have a deadpan response to things. Others
can be very alive and interactive with other people but at the cost
of having little or no contact with themselves. When you are
around someone like this you have a sense that you can't quite connect
with them or that there is a quality of phoniness or acting to their
behavior. In contrast, some other individuals can have a very
energetic lower body as long as they keep their upper body tense
and restrained. And some people keep the charge of their pulsation
so low that this prevents them from establishing a sense of contact
either with themselves or others. In all of these cases, the
pulsation of the life force or radix is blocked. Before you
even commence Radix training, you probably have an intuitive feel
for this. Watching performers, whether they be dancers, singers
or even someone giving a public lecture, you can feel whether the
person is comfortable with their pulsation and connected. If they
are, there is a sense of engagement and aliveness.
Most of us have
learned to live by restricting our pulsation in some way or another.
Doing so has had its rewards. Usually when people present
for therapy or growth work they are saying that this no longer works
so well. It is time for a change. Thinking of and working
with people in terms of what they do with their pulsation is a very
objective and non-judgmental way to work.
Radix training will
teach you how to observe and work with these pulsations or rhythms
of the body. Very detailed information will be given to you
about the concepts of charging and discharging which are the instroke
and outstroke of a pulsation. In learning to work with client's
pulsation you will discover what a profound effect this has on their
behavior, emotions and thinking.
Some questions that
are effective to ask regarding pulsation are:
Is there a flow and where is it?.
Is it strong or weak?
Can the client maintain contact with himself/herself
and change the intensity of this flow?
What happens with this flow when you engage with
him or her?
Answers to these questions assist you to make decisions about the
interventions you will use in a session: decisions like whether
you may need to build a charge, contain a charge, facilitate discharge
or maybe build some body boundaries. As your understanding
of these concepts develop, you will find that these questions are
important to consider whether you are working verbally or working
directly with the body. They are simple guidelines for effective
therapy in any discipline. Once you become familiar with these
concepts, they will also assist you in decisions about when to work
directly with the body and when to do more verbal work. For
example if you want to build a charge in a client and you notice
that they start to do this when they are talking then you may decide
to continue talking for a while. On the other hand if you
notice that when they talk they maintain a low ineffective and isolating
charge, you may decide to intervene with something more active.
Grounding and Centering
Other concepts central to Radix work are grounding and centering.
By grounding, we mean being in touch with reality: having a
grip on the world, being able to stand on your own two feet, “Earthed.”
Centering means having the capacity to go inside and connect with
yourself and know who you are. You can see from these descriptions
that all of these concepts are interrelated. However at different
times, with the same person or with different people, you will focus
more on one than the other. All therapies address these issues
but from a Radix perspective we are interested in how the body processes
and body structure facilitate or inhibit this happening. Relevant
questions we might ask are:
Which part of the body is grounded? Head,
eyes, arms or legs?
Is this person under- or over-grounded?
Do I have a sense that this client is coming
from his/her center and knows what he/she
thinks or feels, or are they allover the
place and scattered?
What seems to center them?
What uncenters them?
Are the problems with contact related to difficulties
with grounding?
Does he/she know what he/she thinks and feels
but has inhibitions about expressing this?
Boundaries and Containment
The degree to which we can express ourselves and participate in
the world in a fulfilling way is affected by our sense of a 'boundary
'between us and the rest of the world, including the people around
us. Although there are times when we want to merge with others,
for example in intimate sexual encounters, most of the time it is
beneficial to our functioning to have a boundary, a sense of where
we end and another starts. This can be true emotionally, physically,
psychologically or spiritually.
Similarly, sometimes
we judge it appropriate to express our feelings. At other
times, we need to contain them. When we contain them we acknowledge
the experience but choose not to act on or express the feelings.
This is a very conscious process, in contrast to repression, which
is unconscious.
When people have
difficulty with emotional expression or being able to experience
themselves or others in a meaningful way, usually this suggests
difficulties with boundaries and containment. Some clients
have no sense of where they end and another starts. This can be
manifested by their being intrusive or not being able to separate
out what they feel and experience when others around them have strong
experiences. The client who always acts out inappropriately, or
lets his/her anger result in violence or abuse, has poor boundaries.
While these are behaviors and concepts addressed in most therapy
disciplines, in Radix work we are interested in how the body contributes
to good boundaries and containment. As a psychologist and psychotherapist,
as I listen to and observe a client I might be questioning:
What is my impression of the client’s boundaries?
Is this a social, emotional, physical, intellectual,
or spiritual boundary issue?.
Where does it appear that this person has flexibility
in life?
In which areas of their life and functioning
is there a rigidity?
As a Radix practitioner, I would take this a step further and ask
myself:
Where is this manifesting in the body?
...or
How is the body maintaining this functioning?
What do we, the client and I need to do in terms
of contact, grounding centering, and pulsation to change this?
THERAPEUTIC TOOLS
As I have been indicating, the questions we ask in Radix about clients'
functioning may not differ much from those one would ask in any
traditional therapy session. Even some of our concepts are
common to other approaches. What differentiates body centered
approaches is the observability of these concepts and therefore
the ease with which they can, if desired, be worked with.
This results in some wonderful tools for assessing the consciousness
and aliveness of clients and of helping them develop choice and
integration no matter what the presenting problem.
Observation and reflection
One of the things that is taught extremely well in Radix training
is observation and reflection. At first, a Radix trainee may pay
attention to diagnosis or coming up with a good intervention, and
in doing so miss what is really happening in a session. In
the training program, however, you will be constantly reminded to
come back to what you are observing. The ability to observe
these nonverbal and body processes is invaluable for working with
a wide variety of clients and in learning the application of any
therapeutic approach. It grounds you in the essentials of therapeutic
work.
A lot of emphasis
in Radix training is also given to reflecting back to the client
what you are observing so that he/she too can begin to experience
these processes. This is a very empowering tool. It
also gives the client the opportunity to develop their own meaning
of the behavior rather than be told the meaning by an expert. This
also brings a freshness to the work as new interpretations are given
space to emerge which stops the work becoming stale and predictable
for the therapist.
Eye work
The most significant tool in Radix work is the ocular work. The
training you receive on working with this segment differentiates
Radix bodywork from other body work approaches. It is the most central
tool as it relates so closely to the goals of consciousness, aliveness,
choice and body-mind integration and to the concepts of contact,
grounding and pulsation.
You learn how to
distinguish different expressions of the eyes and how to observe
the eyes as indices of presence and contact and protection.
You also learn how the eye pulsation is so central for developing
both emotional expression and containment and the fundamental role
the eyes play in the process of dissociation. It is amazing
how much working with the eyes can begin to heal trauma and abuse
problems.
In working with
the ocular segment (the eyes, the scalp, the forehead), you learn
skills related to developing the ability to imagine and how to integrate
this segment with the rest of the body. This results in an integration
of the body and mind in thinking, feeling and behavior. Working
with the eyes is a very potent tool.
Respiration
Respiration is very closely linked with a person’s state of being
and one’s ability to express oneself. In Radix training, you
learn how to observe the different strokes of the breath, the inhale
and the exhale and how to develop a flow between them. You
learn how to observe the breath in different segments of the body
and how to encourage a full body breath pulsation which can substantially
reduce the general experience of confusion or ambivalent feeling
states.
Sound
Radix teachers can distinguish sounds that come from the gut from
those made in the throat. We are not blown away by someone
making a very loud angry sound. In fact at times when this
is happening, we may be more interested to find out if this same
person can make a very soft sound too. In your training, you
will learn how sound is related to aliveness and consciousness and
the relationship of sound to therapeutic problems like depression
and anxiety. Many people as adults are afraid of making sounds
so your training also teaches you ways of helping people to learn
to make sounds.
I worked with a
family who had experienced a lot of violence and abuse. The
second youngest child was having behavioral problems at school.
She didn't know how to stand up for herself and was desperate to
be liked by the other girls. This meant that she was pushed
around a lot by the bullies and was also attracted to them.
In her sessions, one thing that emerged was how terrified she was
of making sounds or hearing loud sounds. So we had a session
where she and her younger sister attended. We built cubbies
out of cushions and mattresses and rugs and then we climbed up on
chairs and leapt into the cubbies yelling as we did so. At first
she couldn't make any noise but by the end of the session she too
was shouting with her sister and me. She left the session
more grounded and more confident.
Sound of course
also means just being able to verbalize your experience. Many
people can talk about their experiences as long as they are not
experiencing them. When they experience they are so overwhelmed
by feeling that they lose the capacity to speak. This leaves them
quite defenseless. Radix work assists them to feel and think
and verbalize at the same time.
Movement
Observing a client’s movement helps you distinguish spastic and
robotic movements from those that flow naturally and express life.
The Radix training teaches the use of movement to charge or discharge
a particular area of the body, to redistribute a charge or to loosen
an area of tension. Movement, particularly slow movement,
is also used to increase body awareness and consciousness of process.
Touch
The Radix training teaches how to touch clients effectively and
non invasively: how to use touch to increase awareness, comfort,
to soothe, to charge, to encourage, to facilitate discharge, or
to build a relationship. In traditional therapy circles there is
still a lot of debate about the ethics of touch. However in
Radix training, when touching you clients, you learn how to watch
the body for physical cues that your touch is appropriate and helpful.
Asking a client may not always the best or only indicator of this.
Theoretical grounding and observation are essential in determining
when and how to touch.
Transference and the Therapeutic Relationship
Sometimes in the therapeutic process some clients will need the
therapist to recognize and work with the transferential process,
involving positive and negative transference and countertransference.
In positive transference the client sees only the really positive
aspects of the therapist and idealizes these characteristics.
You know this is happening when you feel like you have been put
on a pedestal where you can do no wrong. In doing so the client
is not really seeing all the aspects of the therapist. Negative
transference occurs when the therapist's behavior is seen to be
negative: abandoning, destructive, hostile or critical of the client.
In both situations some of what is observed and commented upon may
be correct but it is not the whole picture and is colored by the
past experiences and expectations of the client. In countertransference
exactly the same processes occur, except it is the therapist
who gets stuck in a limited view and can’t really “see” the
client. Transference occurs to some degree in all relationships,
and if worked with well can contribute to the development and resolution
of therapeutic issues. Some clients seem to need to work through
such processes more than others. Traditionally in psychoanalysis
transference is central to the therapeutic process.
Radix does not work
with transference the same way that psychoanalysis does, as in psychoanalysis
the entire focus of the session is on the transferential process.
Nevertheless, the relationship between the Radix practitioner and
the client is central to the work in a Radix session. The
training program addresses transference and countertransference
issues, especially as they relate to the body processes and character
structures of the client and the therapist.
When you become
skilled in observing the pulsations of your clients and their ability
to ground, center, contain, and to establish and use boundaries
appropriately, you develop some very effective and more objective
tools for assessing and resolving transference issues. Your
knowledge of your own processes and character gained from your personal
work will sensitize you to when you need to address countertransferential
issues. What is significant in relationship issues is seldom
the content of the relationship but rather the patterns of engagement
and disengagement that occur between you and your client. Radix
training teaches you to acutely observe these patterns and to reflect
them, and gives you some tools for effectively working with them.
The relationship
you as a Radix practitioner are trying to establish with your client
is best expressed in this quote by the psychoanalyst, Ehrenberg.
"A meeting at the 'intimate edge' is not simply intellectual,
in which case either participant would be involved in an exercise
of his own cleverness rather than in a more personally profound
exchange. Nor is it simply affective, since it is quite possible
for either participant to be emotional without ever being touched
by the other. Nor is it simply personal, since sharing intimate
details about oneself might be no different than a recorded speech
in which the words act as barriers not bridges. The essential qualities
of the kind of engagement I am describing are reciprocity and expanded
awareness through authentic relation. Finding and making explicit
the point of optimal closeness and distance in the relationship,
a point which is constantly changing from moment to moment, provides
the kind of experience in which the participants' awareness expands
via the relationship as they clarify what they evoke and what they
respond to in each other. This can only move in the direction of
new experiences of mutuality and intimacy, and towards increasing
self knowledge and individuality.' (Ehrenberg, Darlene.
The Intimate Edge. Contemporary Psychoanalysis Vol 10
No 1 1974 pp423-437.)
CONCLUSION
The Radix training program is very detailed.
It is easy in the process of learning all the details of the concepts
and tools of Radix to get bogged down in this process and to lose
the bigger picture of how all this fits with general therapeutic
goals. Hopefully at those times, if you take a moment
to retread this paper, you will be reminded of the bigger picture
and how it all fits together.
In completing your Radix training, you are not
abandoning your other therapeutic skills. You are increasing
the breadth of your therapeutic tools and deepening your sensitivity
to the therapeutic process. It is a wonderful training program
and I wish you an exciting adventure.
STUDY QUESTIONS
1. Name the 4 major therapeutic goals and write 1 paragraph
for each, of what you understand these goals to be.
2. How do you know when you are being conscious? Unconscious? Be
specific and refer to parts of your body.
3. How do you experience aliveness in yourself? Deadness? Again,
be specific and refer to parts of your body.
4. Why is contact important in therapeutic work?
5. Take a moment and check what degree of self-contact you're
experiencing right now. How do you know this about yourself?
What might increase or decrease your self-contact right now?
6. Check yourself right now: how alive are you at the moment?
to what extent are you deadened? Is it different in different
parts of your body? How do you know this about yourself?
7. Define "grounding". Define "centering".
How grounded are you right now; how centered are you? How
do you know this about yourself?
8. What do you understand "boundaries" to be?
9. "You are sad." "I see tears in your
eyes." What's the difference between these two observations/reflections?
Hint: what's the difference between interpretation and reflection?
10. What is the most significant tool of Radix work, and why?
11. Name 2 ways to determine whether your touch of a client is appropriate
or not.
12. Think about what is your view of the nature of the therapeutic
relationship. You do not need to write
an essay on this right now, but comment on your reaction to the
section titled "Transference and the Therapeutic Relationship".
Narelle
McKenzie is Director of the Radix Training Program in Australia.
PO Box 232, Daw Park, SA5041, Australia. Email:
iam@merlin.net.au Website:
www.holistic.com.au/radix
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