The Body's Unique Eye

The body has it’s own unique eye to the world from separate wisdom, many sub-personalities and stories. These are stored in the tissue of the body. We may experience this storage as physical tension, blocks to our energy, emotion, vitality, happiness or freedom. This tension or bound flow has the possibility of being felt, understood, and released. These exiles (a word coined by Dr. Richard Schwartz) are then free to become integrated into the internal family system.

Every drop of tension is a potential creative impulse and expression. We block our emotions as a defense against feeling overwhelmed, vulnerable or threatened. This emotion freezes in place and is held until invited to express itself. We then give our experiences different meaning and place them in our past where they belong.

We are fully recyclable beings. Often we wish we could lop off parts of ourselves that we don’t like, and drop them at the curb for pickup like our garbage, our so called ‘bad’ bits that we (or others) don’t like. We carry shame, blame, guilt and judgment, around these exiled parts. It limits our freedom to be authentic and present in our lives and relationships.

There are techniques that calm, soothe and settle  anxiety and stress as a stop gap measure but getting to the root cause and releasing the blocked emotion and energy integrates it so fewer techniques are needed.

Early experiences in life may have been ones of disrupted attachment, leading to difficulty with learning, relationships and self care. Life can be a long and difficult journey. Some people wake up in terror or find that happiness is a foreign feeling. Any happiness that is experienced comes through the intellect. Most people are frozen from the neck down and live lives constructed from the intellect.

Our neo-cortex will build an entire life for us, complete with thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. We are none the wiser for it.  Occasionally, a nagging emotional impulse arises that we quickly suppress,  sending it back to the basement where it gets stored for another length of time until opportunity knocks.

It takes a great deal of energy and tension to hold all this vitality down. It desires to be out in the world as vitality.

For more information on exiled parts and IFS (Internal Family Systems) with Dr. Richard Schwartz go to : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6QKBbbJl34