About: How the body remembers our story

When something painful happens in childhood, we deny our feelings. This stops the flow of life force, creating areas of stagnant energy that become held in the body.

Each body develops characteristic ways of defending against these painful childhood experiences. By learning to read these patterns, we gain insight into the primary issues each person has come here to heal.

In the mid-1960s, Eva met and later married psychiatrist Dr. John Pierrakos, co-creator of Bioenergetics. Influenced by the Pathwork Guide's teachings, he later developed Core Energetics, integrating body-centered psychotherapy with spiritual development and creating teachings about character structures.

Character structures are one way to understand what a person's body may be revealing about how their need for love was not fully met during childhood.

As adults, when our bodies are fully seen and accepted, deeper healing becomes possible. The purpose of understanding character structures is never to categorize people, but to see past the armor to the soul that has always been there.

If we listen with compassion instead of judgment, the body becomes not an obstacle to spirituality but one of its greatest teachers.

How the body holds our history

Each of the five character structures, or body types, reflects a pattern of frozen emotions. Attached to this are rigid thought patterns, or images.

This results in arrested development that reflects the trauma which occurs at each of the five primary developmental stages. Following is a very brief overview of the physical and emotional attributes of each3:

Character Structures

Schizoid

Age of Wounding

• Before birth or early infancy.

Trauma

• Hostile/rejecting mother; Unwanted and doesn't want to be here

Physical/Energetic Patterns

• Energy gives out easily; Elongated, disjointed, ungrounded; Left-right asymmetry.

Life's Work

• Pull one's life together; Join the pieces; Organize and fully manifest creative and spiritual core qualities; Surrender to being a human.

Oral

Age of Wounding

• During breast feeding period; Early childhood.

Trauma

• Abandonment; Deprivation

Physical/Energetic Patterns

• Tires easily, headaches; Undercharged, thin, elongated body; Chest collapsed; Slumped shoulders; Fallen arches; Undercharged legs; Not muscular.

Life's Work

• Stand on one's own two feet; Learn to nourish self and give to others.

Masochist

Age of Wounding

• Autonomy stage (age 2).

Trauma

• Smothering mother; Forced feeding and evacuation; Humiliated and shamed about bodily functions; Little attention to emotional or spiritual needs; Independent self-expression blocked.

Physical/Energetic Patterns

• Energy stagnant, held; Earth-bound; Muscle-bound; Heavy set; Rounded back, heavy shoulders.

Life's Work

• Develop creative self-expression.

Psychopath

Age of Wounding

• Early individuation (ages 1-2), age of natural narcissism; Later (ages 3-4) if seduction by parent has sexual aspect.

Trauma

• Seduction-betrayal; Seductive parent results in child choosing specialness over real needs, feelings, sexuality.

Physical/Energetic Patterns

• Energy in upper body, with especially strong charge in head; Big shoulders, narrow waist or hips; In women, may reverse to weight in pelvis and thighs; Ungrounded, unbalanced.

Life's Work

• Feel self as part of humanity, releasing the specialness that sets one apart from others.

Rigid

Age of Wounding

• Genital stage (ages 4-5); Strong re-emergence of conflict at puberty.

Trauma

• Sexual rejection results in splitting of sexuality and heart feelings.

Physical/Energetic Patterns

• High energy; Integrated, harmonious body; Intellect and will active; Strong boundaries; Heart is defended.

Life's Work

• Bring feeling and compassion into life activities; Connect heart and sexuality in romantic relationship.

3Introduction to Core Energetics; Susan Thesenga, April 1998.

See the wound, search for the essence

Everyone contains aspects of each structure because we all experience many of the same hurts. The Schizoid structure most clearly reflects fragmentation. But everyone has split off child aspects. The nonfulfillment of needs that the Oral is most impacted by, is also common to us all.

The withholding due to our negative intention, which shows up strongly for the Masochist, is a universal Lower Self response. And the push-pull dynamic from rejecting the one you love shows up in the Psychopathic dance with seduction and betrayal, and the Rigid's struggle to open their heart when their sexuality is turned on.

That said, most people's bodies more strongly reflect the characteristics of one or two of the structures, depending on the age at which the most wounding—and therefore defending—occurred.

What these body types are revealing are the distortions. If we look a bit deeper, we can see the essence each one is holding. We want to hold space for who a person really is beneath their wounds, and have compassion, especially as we go into dark places.

The question is always: What are we protecting?

Or said another way: What are we hiding?

A big belly may be hiding creativity. Collapsed shoulders may hide a tender heart.                           

The essence beneath the body armor:

Schizoid | Spiritual connection, intuitive.

Oral | Intelligent (strong mind, articulate), sensitive, empathetic.

Masochist | Big heart, giving; creative, fun-loving; persistent, hard working.

Psychopath | Courage, love, leadership.

Rigid | Passion, leadership, commitment, clarity, endurance.

We can also look at how our body structures relate to our primary essence or Personality Type:

Reason Type | Experienced loneliness, rejection: Schizoid, Rigid

Emotion Type | Experienced abandonment, lack of touch: Oral

Will Type | Often compensates through mastery and control after later developmental wounds: Masochist, Psychopathic

We know that when an event happens, people interpret it differently based on their own stuck energy. This explains why siblings often have differing responses to the same parent. When we don't feel our feelings, we carry these patterns into our next life.

We also know this stuck energy manifests as illness in our bodies. Life depends on movement. Muscles, for example, quickly atrophy without it.

Health issues in our bodies then are an effect, and not a cause. Answers from the Guide revealing the deeper origin of specific health concerns can be found under the topic Body & Health at www.theguidespeaks.com.

Love and sexuality

Healing is all about restoring ourselves to our original divine form—which is love. What better place to do this than in our intimate relationships?

In fact, according to the Pathwork Guide, the love force develops and matures by flowing in harmony with sex and eros. If the erotic force is denied, or if sexuality is suppressed—possibly due to society's taboos—these energetic currents will become distorted.

Our issues related to sexuality will surface as we grow into adolescence and adulthood. But their origin goes back much further.

It actually starts when we are babies. Because for babies, all experiences are physical. For there has been no mental or emotional development yet. This means everything that happens in a person's life will be recorded, so to speak, in the memory tracks of the physical body.

We talked previously about the pleasure-pain principle in which our drive for pleasure attaches itself to what we experienced, even if it was not pleasurable.

Later, as adults, this will surface in our sexuality. In many people, the life force has become intertwined with earlier experiences of hurt, rejection, fear or conflict. As a result, sexuality often becomes linked with old emotional patterns that seek reenactment until they are understood and healed.

What we find is that the original conflict—as well as the resolution—shows up in our sexual fantasies, which often accompany sexual pleasure and release.

So we can approach our personal healing work by looking through the lens of our sexual fantasies. This is an effective way to uncover our deepest wounds. It is also very sensitive and sacred work.

Our bodies remember what our minds have forgotten. They faithfully carry the places where life became frozen, as well as the blueprint for restoring that flow. When we learn to listen with compassion instead of judgment, the body becomes not an obstacle to spirituality but one of its greatest teachers.

___

Learn more in:

Spilling the Script: A Concise Guide to Self-Knowing

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