Trauma Work
By Maggie Locke, MFT, CBT

continued
I was not the only one to express a deep sense of spiritual peace following the exercises. I contacted nothing traumatic, nor did I feel the need to intellectualize my experience. Others did feel and express material from experiences that have caused ongoing pain. All of us experienced gratitude for the opportunity to deeply and simply experience our bodies, losing our bossy minds for awhile to the childlike pleasure of pure incarnation.

I have been using Berceli's exercises during the two months since attending the workshop. For my clients accustomed to bioenergetics, the exercises have deepened and strengthened their experience of self. For clients reluctant to try expressive work, the exercises have successfully introduced them to the pleasures of spontaneous expression of the body. These clients have become willing, even enthusiastic, to discover their truth in their bodies rather than in their heads.

Through the exercises, one of my clients, hampered for years by somatic symptoms with no medical basis, re-experienced a childhood rape. It had been a cloudy memory shadowing her adulthood and she referred to it from time to time in the two years of her therapy. Her entire body convulsed for several minutes as I supported her head as she lay on the ground, and assured her of her present safety. Near session's end, after she had oriented herself into a sitting position and connected clearly with my eyes, she remarked "well, that was interesting!" She stood up, said she didn't feel like talking about anything, smiled brightly and sailed out the door. She has since reported a "strange" sensation of "feeling at home" in herself and "feeling relaxed in myself".

This middle class, white professional woman experienced the same relief of living life fully in the present moment as much as one of Berceli's Sudanese villagers who witnessed marauding soldiers maim and kill. And they are not so different bodily than the gazelle that escaped the lion and shook herself free of terror through the instinctive vibrations of her body. We just need to remember. Berceli is helping us do that.

Maggie Locke MFT, CBT is in private practice in Point Loma. She can be reached at (619) 222-4743.

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