Self-Healing

Experiencing the Self in the Body

Introduction Video (7-min😊)

Only our parts can decide to allow the Self (Hi-Self) back into the body. But there are many ways to embody once reactive protectors give their permission. For example, we can use the breath or focus on the heart, bones, spine, and crown of the head. Sometimes movement helps. The practice of yoga, medi­tation, martial arts, and other mind-body healing modalities can all help parts feel welcome and safe so the Self can embody. With these strategies we can access, strengthen, and stabilize the Self in the body, which brings alignment, groundedness, fluidity, spaciousness, and often tingling. When the Self is embodied, we are sensate and open to change, and the breath is full and effortless.

Embodiment is important for Self-leadership for a couple of reasons. First, the Self has access to our physical hardware and, second, with a solid sense of the Self in the body, parts trust its leadership more. Ironically, experiencing the Self in this grounded, physical way can also generate a transcendent expansiveness that goes beyond the boundaries of individual­ity and the body to the feeling of oceanic unity. We do, however, have one important caveat about practices that are designed to speed embodiment.

I (RS) have developed a daily embodiment practice that helps me find activated parts and discern my level of Self-embodiment. Throughout the day I check my heart frequently to see how open it is, because when I’m embodied it’s quite open. I also check to see if a vibrating energy is running through my heart. We call this Self-energy; Eastern spiritual traditions call it qi or chi or prana. If my heart is blocked, I know that a protector is doing the blocking. I might ask it to relax, or I might focus on helping it trust that I don’t need that kind of protection anymore. I also know that my most active protectors hang out as tension above my eyebrows, weight on my shoulders, and clutching in my throat, and I’ll visit those places to reassure those parts. As they release, I immediately notice more spaciousness and calm in body and mind.

Parts in the Body, and the Body as a Tool for Parts

Parts not only embody or disembody, but they can also be more or less embodied. The more embodied they are, the more their experiences and approach to life is illustrated in posture, gesture, voice, and facial expressions. They can, for example, show up as muscle tension, pressure, or trouble breath­ing; they can be numb, weak, chronically hot or cold.

As parts absorb burdens over the course of a lifetime, the body’s aware­ness, breathing patterns, ability to resonate with others, to move with ease, grace, and freedom, and to give and receive touch are all adversely affected, [but] psychic as well as physical injury [that] occurs in the body . . . can be healed in the body. (pp. 105-106)

I (RS) had one client who found a manager creating chronic fatigue symptoms in order to get care and rest for a needy little girl part. Per­sonally, I am aware of a part who has such high expectations of my body that it feels betrayed by illness and aging. Some of my parts relate to my body as if it were a bothersome plant, or a pet that must be kept in shape, nourished, and dragged around.

I have had clients whose parts hated and feared the body. These parts (and they are not uncommon) can cause us to neglect, judge, numb, or immobilize the body. They can also use powerful sensations, energies, and hungers in the body to pursue various goals. They are capable of depleting, wearing out, or even killing the body.

Parts use the body for their own purposes:

Exiled parts use it to signal their need for help
Manager parts use it to exert control
Firefighter parts use the body to either distract from emotional pain. In the service of these goals, parts can distract from and also cause all manner of physical dysfunction and pain.

Firefighters can wreak havoc in the body with behaviors such as addiction, eating disorders, promiscuity, and self-harm, though physical damage is often a side effect rather than the goal. In addition, when protectors are polarized the body can become a battleground. For example, while one part numbs, another may fight to amplify physical sensations.

When we look at protective roles, we can more or less match them to physical symptoms.

Managers – who need to contain, suppress, hold, freeze, and control—tend to show up in the muscles and fascia. Although they can be found anywhere in the body, managers can more easily handle the energies at junctions: all joints, the pelvic and respiratory diaphragms, the throat and jaw, the shoulders, and the lower back.

Firefighters – tend to activate the endocrine and nervous systems in the service of fight and flight, releasing stress hormones, increasing heart and breath rates, and dilating the pupils. As well, firefighters use physical arousal or desire (e.g., cravings for food, sex, alcohol, drugs, or sleep) to distract from emotions they view as a threat.

Exiles – often hide out in or around the heart, gut, and back.

We are by no means implying that diseases are solely caused or main­tained by parts. Of course, genetics, viruses, bacteria, injury, and environ­mental toxins all affect the body and can make us sick regardless of the state of our psyche.

But we are saying that when parts want to deliber­ately affect biological processes, they seem capable of doing so. We have heard from parts who claim to have increased immune responses (causing autoimmune disorders) or lowered immune responses (allowing viruses or bacteria to flourish).

We have also heard from parts who claim that they took advantage of existing organ weaknesses or genetic predispositions to create certain symptoms in the service of some agenda. We have no clue how they could have done this, but we do know that our clients got better when parts who said they were doing something to the body agreed to stop.

Parts can also make medical conditions worse unintentionally. When they try to fight or distract from an autoimmune disorder such as rheu­matoid arthritis, the resulting damage can be equal to or greater than the original problem. And when they fail to share information about the body with medical providers, or forget to take medication and attend appoint­ments, they put us at risk (Livingston & Gaffney, 2013).

IFS and Medicine

Nancy Shadick, Nancy Sowell, and their colleagues (2013) conducted a study in which IFS therapy was offered to patients with rheumatoid arthri­tis (RA).

Thirty-seven patients who had RA received 9 months of group and individual IFS therapy and were compared to a control group of 40 patients with RA who received just an educational intervention. Both groups were followed for 9 months after completion.

The IFS treatment group showed improvement in overall pain and physical function, as well as in self-assessed joint pain, self-compassion, and depressive symptoms, all of which were sustained at follow-up.

In addition, I (RS) have been using IFS successfully with patients on a wide variety of medical problems for 20 years. I’ve worked with patients who had cancer, lupus, or pain of all varieties, among other illnesses. If parts were involved in the creation or maintenance of the illness or its symptoms, the patient improved, often to the point of remission.