Embodiment through Rhythm
Cornelia Elbrecht AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA, IACAET
Life is rhythm. Every cell in our body pulses in rhythmic repetition. Our breath flows. Our heart beats. Our muscles expand and contract allowing us to move. Blocked rhythm might feel like a lump in the stomach, a stiff neck, or we register it as pain.
When we dance with a partner, joy and elation are generated through synchronizing our movements with each other. When we make love, we need to find mutually satisfying rhythms together. When we fall out of step with loved ones, we suffer from asynchronous patterns, which we tend to identify as rejection or loneliness. We thrive in an environment that offers safe resonance.
Rhythmic repetition is the key feature of Guided Drawing. Not only do clients draw bilaterally on large sheets of paper, and adults preferably with their eyes closed, but most important is the way how clients draw in rhythmic repetition. When we dance to music, our foot taps the rhythm until our body eases into the beat; in Guided Drawing we dance to our own inner music.
In a therapy session just like in life, we experience many different rhythms. There are earthy, deeply grounding rhythms or the most delicate heartfelt flutter. We feel moved by emotions. There are delicate vibrations with a transpersonal quality. There is the pulsing of pain, the bracing in fear, and the disrupted rhythms due to shock, accidents and trauma.
Clients will either find their own rhythmic patterns or the therapist might suggest drawing a simple shape such as a rocking movement or a round flowing breathing pattern. Such shapes can support alignment with the felt sense in the body. (Elbrecht 2018) This resonance is a highly individual, momentary state, that is confirmed by body signals: we might feel better with the right movement or out of step with one that does not align. The ability to express tension or relaxation, anger or joy has no other objective than one’s sense of inner congruency and the ensuing feeling of satisfaction.
Some clients might find it easier to imagine having a bodywork session rather than the idea of making art. We can project the experience of, say, “fluttering butterflies in my stomach” onto the paper, using repetition to test and try out this inner sensation. By directly translating an internal movement into a drawn movement on the paper clients can flutter with the crayons just as “it” flutters in their stomach.
Guided Drawing differs from well-known scribble drawing exercises in so far as it encourages the alignment with body sensations. Rhythmic repetition supports this implicit connection. Drawing inner tension patterns increases client’s sensorimotor awareness. As they notice their bracing patterns, they begin to connect with their need to move forward. The emerging shapes and their rhythmic repetition have the purpose of creating flow where before there had been rupture.
Over time clients build trust in their own ability to create change. Gradually they draw embodied, reliable structures. This is important especially for clients who are afraid of their inside. Many traumatised individuals fear their body sensations and experience them as a threat. However, Guided Drawing empowers clients to actively respond to such threats through rhythmic movement patterns that can ease activation levels. They become able to express physical or emotional pain, often without a story, but with a clear intention to find ways of releasing unbearable charge. In connection with their felt sense, they organically develop their own healing strategies.
Emotions also have implicit rhythms. Fear might make the heart race and the gut churn. Grief weighs us down, while excitement wells up; joy flows with ease and anger always rises. The expression of tension and rupture or relaxation and flow evolves out of a process of tracking the felt sense. (Gendlin 1981) Particular shapes such as round flowing patterns or angular lines can offer a container for emotions and allow the therapist to structure chaotic or overwhelming experiences.
While life flows in rhythmic patterns, at the core of trauma is the rupture of these rhythms. Our ancient brainstem, which assures our survival, operates like a jellyfish contracting and expanding. It freezes, when disturbed, and propels itself forward in rhythmic pulsing, when it deems its environment safe.
Our autonomic nervous system learns this basic rhythmic regulation as a foetus in the mother’s womb. If the mother feels safe, her sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal states are regulated, and such information is passed on to her baby. If the mother is dysregulated due to depression, fear, trauma or else, so will be her infant’s nervous system baseline. (B. Perry 2005)
Peter Levine has made us understand that trauma therapy does not necessarily require the story of what happened to be remembered. (Levine 2010) He even speaks about the tyranny of memory but emphasises that a successful approach will bring clients out of shutdown and frozen dissociation through re-membering their flow of life; through reconnecting them with their life’s rhythm.
Rhythms can be blocked, broken, and stuttering if a client lacks self-confidence, in a situation of crisis, or when there is underlying trauma. Clients may have learnt to mask such broken rhythms either with strict self-control or with excessive business. Dissociation may present as too much control of the drawn rhythm; the movements can become uncomfortably slow and deliberate. Boredom and fatigue arise; I catch myself as a therapist finding it difficult to be present. Too much movement is being held back, because the client does not trust the natural flow in the body.
Others avoid sensory resonance by moving too fast. They can appear superficially dynamic, but their hyperactivity overrides their feelings, especially those uncomfortable internal sensations related to weakness, shame, incompetence, and helplessness.
As a basic rule I watch the rhythm in Guided Drawing as a main indicator of authenticity. I may intervene until I gain the felt sense impression that clients’ motor impulses are in sync with their inner rhythms, because only then will their sensory feedback loop of body perceptions, associated feelings, and memories come alive.
The best approach is experimentation. By carefully trying out different rhythms and shapes, clients’ awareness becomes increasingly attuned to their felt sense. Gradually the movements begin to create congruency between body sensations and their rhythmic manifestations in the drawings.
Such a focus on rhythmic repetition bypasses the ego, the control systems of the mind, and the associated belief systems; it also bypasses the trauma story. Instead, it begins to build a flexible, implicitly reliable sense of identity. Rhythmic repetition in Guided Drawing teaches us to trust our own flow. It is an empowering way to unblock bracing patterns and reconnect dissociated parts. The simple rhythmic repetitions foster a sense of trust and inner truth that is more profound than any brilliant cognitive insight.
Works Cited
Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2018. Healing trauma with guided drawing; a sensorimotor art therapy approach to bilateral body mapping. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Gendlin, E. T. 1981. Focusing. Toronto: Bantam Books.
Levine, Peter. 2010. In an unspoken voice; how the body releases trauma and restores goodness. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Perry, Bruce. 2005. "Applying principles of Neurodevelopment to clinical work with maltreated and traumatized children: The neurosequential model of therapeutics." In Working with traumatized youth in child welfare, by Webb, 27 - 53. New York: Guilford Press.
AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA, IACAET
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