Book Review:
The Spirituality of the Body by Alexander Lowen, M.D.
by Will Jones, LPC
Alexander Lowen is the founder of bioenergetic therapy and the author of twelve books relating to that subject. He defines bioenergetics as, "a therapeutic technique to help a person get back together with his body and to help him enjoy, to the fullest degree possible, the life of the body." In this his latest book he attempts to define the spiritual aspects of the body and how they relate to our health. To Lowen, health is a feeling of aliveness and pleasure in the body that leads to joyfulness. In such a state we feel a connectedness with all living creatures and the world. This kind of health is manifested by a gracefulness of the body.
According to Dr. Lowen, a part of our cultural heritage is the belief that the mind is superior to the body. This leads to the intellectualization of spirituality and the reduction of the body to a machine. Such a division of mind and body is not natural, and leads to a fall from grace. Lowen feels grace unites spirit and matter because grace is the divine spirit acting within the body. He believes we are born into a state of grace from which we fall as we are forced to conform to external expectations that are most often delivered by our parents.
The body reacts to this fall from grace with chronic muscular tension because its natural impulses are unconsciously blocked. To restore this grace we must undergo analysis and discover how it was lost; but such analysis must be accompanied by confrontation on a bodily level. Bioenergetics does that. It "uses the power of the mind to understand the tensions that bind the body . . . , while it mobilizes the body's energy to eliminate these tensions."
Throughout the book are exercises that are suggested as ways to help us be more aware of our bodily feelings. The author says, "Feelings are the life of the body just as thinking is the life of the mind." These exercises may seem both strange and/or enlightening. Lowen persists in his belief that if we do them consistently, they will help us get in touch with some of our feelings. In his own therapy with Wilhelm Reich, whom he generously credits in all of his books, Lowen reports that he screamed out loudly without being conscious of what the scream was about. Something touched an unconscious memory as he underwent a similar type of therapy on which he based bioenergetics.
One cannot help but be impressed by the thoroughness of this author's work and his conviction. He is obviously a skilled analyst, a knowledgeable medical doctor, and a pioneer in this new therapy. He includes chapters on sexuality, the structural dynamics of the body, and grounding, which he calls the connection to reality. One can also see similarities to other theories like gestalt. However, Lowen's contribution is unique.
Lowen is grounded in his faith and it's impact on illness. He says that tension is inherent in the human, and it is a tension between the knowing mind and the instinctual body, between control and faith. Lowen believes: "When someone establishes a connection with the universal, which is the same as feeling the love of God, his energy becomes so heightened that it floods his body, radiating outward in a state of joyous excitation . . . And since this excitation or energy is the source of life, it can sometimes overcome the destructive effects of illness." Faith allows us to be open to the healing process.
We might all agree with Lowen that the Western World has grown increasingly secularized, that religion has been reduced to a set of beliefs and is a mental process only. Thus the body falls into the category of the secular, the profane, and the material. For Lowen it is this split between mind and body which is at the root of man's emotional distress . . . ". . . In my view, it is the mind, with its emphasis on knowledge and reason, that is secular and the body that is sacred."
Reprinted with permission from PPImprints, the Journal of The Professional Pastoral-Counseling Institute, Inc. To be notified when PPImprints is published, please register.
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