Feb/Mar 2003

If Only I Could Be Like My Cells
Deepak Chopra, MD

Why Spirituality is Essential to Progressive Politics
Ana Villa-Lobos

The Spiritual Art of Peacemaking
James Twyman

Finding Answers in Community Meetings
John Darling

Reclaiming Our Courage
Paul Rogat Loeb

The Rhinoceros In Our Living Room is Slip Covered
Jeannie Azzopardi

Iraq and the Economy
Dennis Kucinich

Letter to a Warrior
Elias Amidon

Democracy in Action
Letter to Members of MoveOn

Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre, Brazil
America Vera-Zavala

American Revolt in Pennsylvania
Thom Hartmann

The Omega Point
Finn Honoré

We live in A World With Finite Resources
George Monbiot

Using Homeopathic Remedies
Doug Falkner, MD, M.Hom

The Healing Power of Touch
John Darling

A Somatic Contradiction
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

Shamanism and Psychology Join Forces
Jeanette M. Gagan, PhD

Natural Building: A New Course of Action
Coenraad Rogmans

The Movie Mystic
Stephen Simon

The Yearly Round
Richard Moeschl

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

The Healing Power of Touch

By John Darling

Psychotherapist Ilana Rubenfeld likes to get her hands into her work. Where most counselor-therapists rely on the mental-verbal channel, Rubenfeld, author of The Listening Hand, actually takes you in her hands, like we might a hurting or scared child, and uses something akin to instinct or psychic awareness (and a lot of listening) and helps you work through your stuff with the goal of healing it and changing it in the near term.

She does it with humor, common sense, instinct, and 40 years of practice, so that when you experience it, it seems like what a good mother would do for a child with a skinned knee, and helps you believe change is possible.

What she does that’s different from other psychotherapists and counselors is that she touches people—gently and with loving awareness of their needs. Focused touch is a central tool of this therapy, even though touching is now a controversial issue among some professionals.

But specific touching works. And touching is a vital adjunct to verbal therapy, which huge numbers of people have dismissed with such comments as, yeah, you talk for a couple years, spend several thousand dollars and you still have all your stuff; you just know all about it, that’s all.

“A lot of us listen to the verbal story, but there’s another story going on in the body at the same time,” said Rubenfeld. Her listening skills come from being an orchestral/choral conductor (a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music), a profession she could not practice because, in the mid-20th century, women weren’t allowed to conduct.

Ilana approaches this body-oriented psychotherapy with good humor, not forcing an agenda. She invites me to sit in a chair and tells me she won’t go anywhere I don’t want to go. If I resist, I will be respected.

“I won’t resist,” I say. We laugh. She has such a look of compassion and good humor, she might as well be bringing chicken soup to my bedside. How could I resist?

“What are you feeling in your body?” she asks, directing me to close my eyes. Such a direct, yet simple question. She’s standing off to my right side—not sitting in a chair taking notes. I’m feeling lonely, isolated, sad. With a few words she expresses understanding like mom used to say: yes, it’s ok, that’s good. So it’s just normal. I don’t have to be a psychotherapy patient with big issues to benefit here. I’m a person, hurting like a lot of people, maybe most people.

“Where are you feeling it?” Everywhere, I think. No, it’s the heart. Of course it’s the heart. And the breathing. I touch my heart with my hand. Again the murmurs of understanding. She tells me to take the role of my heart. What would your heart say to you if it had a voice?

“I’m just real tired that love has to be so difficult to find or to keep. It should be easier, much easier. I mean I want that, I deserve that, I want to give that.” She says, ok, who do you want to say that to?

Who else? Mom. It all goes back to my very young years. As children, we have no defenses, so we absorb everything, traumatic, negative or positive, like a sponge. So I repeat to Mom, I’m just real tired that love has to be so difficult to find or to keep. Ilana has one hand on my back and the other hand gently on my hand, which is still on my chest, picking up my body’s story, which tightens as I speak to Mom. Ilana doesn’t manipulate the muscles. She reads them, like Braille, and gets non-verbal information that we’re on the right track.

Ilana asks which side the “negative” mom is on. The left, I answer. So turn to the left and repeat your yearnings to her, Ilana says. From this “negative” mother, there are messages that being open, soft, and reaching for love, as I am now with Ilana, is uncom-fortable, not allowed, and tinged with the stigma of neediness. The “negative” mom wants her little boy to be strong, independent, self reliant—in the old Scots tradition she and her ancestors knew. There is shame around warmth and reaching for love.

Ilana says, ok, make a gesture or describe what you honestly want to say to her about needing love. I wave my hand in an arc towards the left and say, “I don’t want that message.” Great, Ilana says, tell her again you don’t want that message now. That message may sneak in, and anytime those negative words come up wave your hand like you just did and say “I don’t want that message.”

Now Ilana has me swivel around to the right. Over here is the “positive” mom I would have wanted, Ilana says. What is she like for me? Ok, she’s warm, smiling and takes obvious delight in touching me, watching my face and words, drinking in the goodness I am. I’m worthy of her love. Yes, Ilana says, taking the voice of the “positive” mom, you’re very worthy and I just delight in you. You’re such a good son.

She’s tracking my breathing and listening to my musculature with her hands. Your body is soft and pliant now, she tells me. And then suddenly, up pops the shame, the sense of being needy, weak and disgusting.

“Oh.” Ilana feels my tension in her hands and me to turn back to the left (the “negative” mom). Even I feel my body go tense. Now do the gesture and the words, “I don’t want that message.” This I recognize as a powerful suggestion—engaging the body and the senses to enact the thought, the understanding, and to make it real. My self-bashing chatter stops immediately.

That’s how it works. It took about an hour. It might have taken weeks, months, in “talking” therapy to peel off the layers, build the client-therapist trust and get to the bottom of things. But this was deceptively simple, direct, and made everything accessible.

“Look, you’re taller, several inches and bigger across the chest,” Ilana says, parking me in front of her mirror. “You were trying to make yourself small when you walked in here,” she says delightedly.

Ilana’s body-oriented psychotherapy is an integration of F. M. Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method, Rogerian client-centered counseling, Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Gestalt Therapy (she learned from its master, Fritz Perls, in the late sixties). Buckminster Fuller suggested that she call her process the “Rubenfeld Synergy Method.”

“The rational neocortex answers ‘why’ but the older brain—the limbic system—houses our emotional intelli-gence, intuition, and all our senses, especially touch. My contribution has been to bring the rational and intuitive together and engage them actively with intelli-gence,” explains Ilana. “Words are like black-and-white photographs. The fingers are packed with nerve endings and when you touch, in gentle and respectful ways, its like suddenly adding color. Each cell, like a hologram, carries the entire life’s history and as the verbal story goes on, the body tells its story—one that may be in harmony with the words.”

One woman, for instance, had just lost her husband and her words told a story of distress and grief. But her body communi-cated relief and freedom. Ilana gently brought her attention around to this and the work became focused on the client being ok with feeling excited about her new life. More often, it’s the other way: the words say “I’m fine” and the back is tight and burdened.

Another client was all bent over and, guided by Ilana’s touch, she gradually stood up straight—and started to cry in a small, high voice. How old do you feel, asked Ilana. About two, the woman said. Her mother punished her every time she touched her genitals. Being bent over was her way to follow those instructions.

Ilana sums it up—“The body tells the truth. Our life experiences are still in our body and mind and we carry our history in our body.”

We all need touch, it opens us, we communicate with it, yet the older we become the less we get touched. One cause, Ilana says, is that the legal system instills a lot of fear. “We forget the incredible continuum of touching that heals and nurtures the love we need.”

Ilana is presently teaching her intuitive, listening touch therapy at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, the Omega Institute in New York, and at many conferences world-wide. The Association of Humanistic Psychology honored Ilana with its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contribution to the field of humanistic psychology. The United States Association of Body Psychotherapy honored her with a Lifetime Achievement award last year.

A recent move has brought Ilana Rubenfeld from New York to Ashland, Oregon. As a benefit for Dunn House and Mediation Works, Ilana Rubenfeld will present “The Body Tells the Truth; an Evening of Healing, Humor and Heart,” with an introduction by Jean Houston, author of Mystical Dogs and The Passion for the Possible, on Wed., Feb. 26, from 7-9:30pm, at the Windmill Inn in Ashland. Advance tickets ($10) are available at Paddington Station or Soundpeace in Ashland. For info/reservations contact Jana Markulis, jmarkulis@hotmail.com, (541) 488-4203. Following this evening Ilana will conduct an intensive weekend workshop on March 1 & 2, contact Beth Heller, (541) 535-3366. You can also learn more about Ilana’s work at www.ilanarubenfeld.com.

John Darling, M.S. is an Ashland writer and counselor, reachable at jdarling@jeffnet.org

“Moving Like A Bamboo Tree”

(for head, neck & upper back)

If you’ve ever experienced a pain in your neck and a stiffness in you shoulders, you’re like billions of others around the world. This exercise will help you listen to what your neck is saying and to relax your shoulder and neck muscles, thereby allowing your head the flexibility to move and see in all directions.

1. Sit comfortably in a chair, place your feet on the floor, and move away from the
back of the chair.
2. Roll your eyes to the right and let your neck and body follow as far as you can go.
3. When you cannot move any farther, take a mental photograph of that spot.
4. Return to the starting position facing forward.
5. Move your left hand over the top of your head, covering your right ear.
6. Gently pull your head down and lean to the left. As you bend close your eyes and imagine a bamboo tree bending in the wind. Become aware of what your body—ribs, neck, spine—is doing. Return to the forward position with your left hand remaining over the top of your head.
7. Roll your eyes to the left and twist around as if you’re looking at someone behind you, then come back to the front.
8. Twist your whole body again to the left, and this time roll your eyes to the right (opposite direction). Do this a few times and come back to the front, relax your left arm and rest it on your lap.
9. Now go back to the beginning—roll your eyes to the right and let your neck and body follow as far as you can go. Did you pass the original photographed spot?
10. Now come back to the front, and notice how your back, neck and head feel.
11. Stand up slowly and walk around. What do you feel right now and has this exercise changed your posture and walking in an way?

A Rubenfeld Body Mind exercise, adapted from The Listening Hand.