Emotional recovery through body work - an interview with Kasia Kaminska

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The full transcription is available here: https://www.kasiamay.com/blog/emotional-recovery-through-bodywork/

KM: Hey, it’s Kasia May. Today I am here with Kasia Kaminska to talk about emotional recovery through bodywork. Kasia is a very experienced yoga teacher who connects a lot of approaches in her work, including straightly therapeutical ones like Aleksander Lowen’s bioenergetics, Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine or Body-Mind Centering by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. We met last Sunday at a workshop dedicated to the pelvis. Kasia, working with you there was a great experience for me and I am honored to have you here. 

KK: Hello, I’m also happy to be here and to be able to talk about my work with you.

KM: I have in my head that talking therapy is still the most popular when we feel we need some help to change something in ourselves, in our lives. You are not a therapist, but the things you offer to people during workshops and classes can support them in self-growth and emotional recovery a lot. How does it work that movement and exercises can help us in healing our emotions? Do you think it is good to do something like that additionally when we are in talking therapy?  

KK: Well, answering the first question it is very important to talk about our body being able to contain emotions. Everything we experience from the very beginning of our lives, even before we were born, is contained by our bodies, and it occurs as different types of tensions in different areas. And what is very important is the work that we do in a very conscious way to release the tension. And through that tension, we are able to detect some emotions stuck in our body. Sometimes it’s pleasure, sometimes it’s pain, sometimes it’s fear. And then to do some other work. So everything we experienced is already written in our bodies, and that’s why it’s good to combine these two approaches, the verbal one and the non-verbal one - the bodywork, because it gives us the ability to first, be conscious in our mind about what we are going through, about the mechanisms that guide us, about our patterns, and then it gives the body the possibility to feel it, to experience it once again. It is very important to know that we don’t give ourselves permission to express ourselves, to react in a way that we need to react. And it is necessary for the body to react not to create this tension. And first, in our childhood, we are being forbidden by our parents to scream, to shout, to kick, to jump, so it’s not only about these hard emotions but also the good emotions - joy, some spontaneous reactions, and then also anger, and fear and all of that. So as adults also we are not really used to express that. And through that bodywork, we are able to experience that once again, so first it’s kind of come back to that time, but we are able to have a perspective of an adult person seeing ourselves what we’ve been not able to do as kids. 

KM: So how to work with our bodies to release emotions? What kind of classes, activities we can choose to reach this goal? 

The full transcription is available here: https://www.kasiamay.com/blog/emotional-recovery-through-bodywork/

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