hi um I'm so happy uh to be with you even though I'm not with you in person um it's been a long time uh but you are all in my heart and uh I'm so happy to have this opportunity to talk about body reading with you um I'm not sure how long uh this will go I've been given a half an hour if I go over just feel free to uh stop uh the PowerPoint wherever you are and um as I told M I'm happy to uh continue to do something in the future with you
so um hopefully this will just be a wedding of your appetite so um yeah it's very special time that you're uh remembering John who was my mentor and uh teacher and many of yours so I'm happy to be included in this uh ceremony I'm just gonna uh take a minute to find my to put this on screen share and uh find the PowerPoint and uh sh share it with you so go to screen share and here it is and share so I'm going to talk with you uh today about cortic body readings uh many of
you know something about this so uh hopefully it will be more of a refresher uh than anything else um I started out by just asking a question so maybe you can uh sit quietly where you are take a deep breath exhale and think about what is it you'd like to learn about body reading maybe it's something uh that you've had questions about or unsure about um so what is it you would like to know or learn or understand in more depth and then just think about how can this this form of analysis help you work
with a client and finally I want to just mention the word shame because a lot of people have a difficulty with their body and and shame something they don't like they feel they'll be judged for or they judge themselves so can we do a body reading without opening up a whole uh windfall of Shame and how do you deal with shame if it does appear in your in um discussing the idea of a reading with your client so um I want to remind you uh that that each body is like a snow flake no two
bodies are alike and in addition every part of us communicate so your eyebrows as well as your clothing as well as the kind of deodorant you're wearing so every aspect of you has some form of message and um in our bodies communicates about our life experiences our past past and our present and i' like to think that we can even see something of the future and it's stored in our cells and in our muscles Willam Reich who is the grandfather of core energetics of John barakus is the father he described a body reading uh as
the Frozen history of the person meaning that our body gets frozen due to um different wounds that occur in our life and we get kind of Frozen in a certain shape or form our muscles and our bones uh and we can read this uh to help know what happened in the past um for that person so for therapists and core practitioners body reading is a source of diagnosis from which you then create a treatment plan in fact if you don't do it it's hard to have a valid treatment plan because you're just uh it's a
lot of guess work so we want to move from a body reading immediately into interventions that are appropriate for for the particular client we're dealing with and as I said before no two people are alike that's what keeps me fascinated is I always have to be thinking how do I work with this particular person so on a spiritual level the body reflects the higher self the lower self and The Mask you can find all of that in the body and on a psychological level it indicates uh behaviors and on a physical level it provides information
about illness and health so there's so much in the body it speaks to us on every level so a body reading should never sound like a textbook when you do a body reading you shouldn't sound like a therapist with a diagnosis because then a person's just going to feel labeled and like a specimen that's not what a body reading is a body reading tells the person a story it's a generous compassionate sharing with the person of their story if it's accurate it will help people become more conscious of areas they need to work with for
personal development and growth now you can't just do one body reading because if our work is good and I I believe it is bodies change they begin to unfreeze and they gain flexibility and movement and motion and and energy and vitality so the bodies change so we need to come back and do it um several more times in the life of a of an individual therapy because that's one method we have of a assessment to know if our person's [Music] changing um and also as we work in therapy you may already know this I'm sure
you do there's layers of a personality so you work with one layer and then the next thing pops up well the same thing happens in the body you may be working with somebody's rigidity and then all of a sudden there's schizoid pops up so you need to uh be aware of of the changes and come back to the body over time to do another reading a body reading helps you understand more about wounds or trauma that are unconscious so the person really doesn't know it's it's hidden from them and uh it will help you and
the client collaborate to know this is the direction we need to go into this is something that you've repressed you've suppressed it in your body but here it is you know here's your lower self right here even though you tell me you're never angry so we need to get at this um so th those are important points but the most important point at this this bottom one that you have to before you begin a reading you have to talk to your client it really is an educational process I'm going to do a reading and this
is why and I can you know so you you explain to them the rationale which is the body's energy gets frozen in certain ways and when I see where it's frozen I can help you better I have an idea of the wound what's behind uh the problem you've come in here with so we can get to it immediately and you're in this process for a much shorter period of time um but you also so you explain the rationale for the reading but you also must this is an absolute must process the person's feelings like you're
I'm going to ask you to wear a a two-piece bathing suit if it's a woman or a one piece if it's a male or shorts and a Haler or a t-shirt and this is a way people don't normally come into therapy and I'm going to ask you to take off your jewelry and your headbands and anything that take distracts us from looking at the body how do you feel about me seeing you like this how is it going to be feel to have me not just observing your mind but here I am now I'm going
to be observing your body so it's really important to talk about this uh usually we try to do a body reading in the first uh four to six to eight sessions after of course you go through this explanation with the client but if the person has a lot of anxiety about it Shame about their body feels dread about it you know I don't like to have anyone look at me some clients might say then you need to let it go and you may not do a body reading with that person or it may be um
6 months in after you develop a report so um this is just in a little more depth um you explain to the client um what a reading is and how it will help the therapy so you might say to them when things happen in your life like when you were punished as a child it affected your energy and it got blocked in certain muscles or sometimes it even leaked out of your body when it shouldn't have this I will be able to read by looking at your body uh when I look at your at the
energy in your body I I see the stressors in your life and I can help you begin to uh deal with them we can choose the most appropriate interventions on the basis of a body reading so that your therapy will move forward at a good pace and you can tell the client that's you know you're not going to be telling them everything they don't know about themselves some things they will already know um and some things may surprise them and you also can say you know uh there's a lot of evidence clinical evidence people have
been doing body readings for at least a hundred years and coming out with uh similar results but if you don't agree with something then I'm going to respect your opinion because it's your body and you know your history much better than I do so give the person the right to say I don't agree with you that's really important and as I said before you definitely need to spend time I don't care if it's one session or three or six sessions processing feelings prior to reading um so uh you tell them that they're going to be
wearing uh not their street clothes but either a bathing suit or shorts and a Haler or workout clothing um and you ask them about how they're going to feel about having you look at their body they're going to be exposed in a new way uh if they're uncomfortable as I said before put off the reading till you know each other better and some people will never be ready um sometimes with someone who is really wants the reading but is terrified I will do it with street clothes and I will just explain that it's probably not
going to be accurate because there are certain things when I look at the body indentations changes in skin color places where hair grows that I won't be able to see because of their clothing but at least it will give them a general idea so basically the client comes first and you agree and support them with whatever they need um and always give them a chance to back out even in the middle of the reading if they said no that's enough then you say okay that's fine no problem so that's very important to do that um
let's see where we are here okay so um when you start uh to do the reading you don't want to give too much information because it's overwhelming you know I don't know if any of you have had a body reading you probably have but it if you hear Too Much you You' only it just you know you'd go to sleep for a week so you're going to pick out the things that are important or the things that you think a person can deal with uh and that's why I mean we're going to do more than
one reading over time with a person so that certain things can be left out um and you share them when it's most appropriate the things you want to share are kind of the things that are going to lead into the beginning of the work so if you see uhh for example if you see someone's uh a caved in area in the chest which would represent uh not having enough uh love or nurturing early on that might be where you want to start to which is kind kind of a a s sign of orality so you
might want to start up by building up more energy in the body because it's leaking out so you want to bring the start the reading where you can really start the work uh be honest in your reading but say everything very tactfully you don't want to make things worse for anybody and you also want to tell them positive things you know if you think about the character types every character type has something positive the the psychopath has courage uh the masochist is a hard worker and um and has a big heart and the and the
oral is very intelligent and the schizoids very spiritual so you want to bring out these things when you see those characteristics of those defenses in the body you need to mention the positive now since a body reading requires the person to get undressed uh you know they're going to be changing clothes in your in your office or where whatever space that you work with them so uh they should have privacy no matter how well you know each other uh and they say oh it's fine you can stay here if they're unch undressing and changing in
your office you leave walk out the door and say I'll be back and you know five minutes or so or three minutes um if you have a separate bathroom or separate room they can change in then they leave and come back in as soon as they come back or you come back and you're standing uh with each other again you want to ask how does this feel you know check out make sure that you're really comfortable with this and and you we have the green light to go ahead um so when they're ready make eye
contact and and ask them if they feel safe with you I generally start with the meditation and hold the client's hands uh during that meditation I'm asking for guidance uh for my higher power and um my connection with higher Spirits because I feel it's a very I see a body reading as a very spiritual connection with the person and uh with the universe so for me I'm feeling their energy my energy is meeting uh the person's energy there's a Oneness between us and I'm asking for guidance and help uh then when we drop hands and
the meditation ends I step away so I have a very good kind of long range view of the body of the whole person and I just wait to see what strikes me you know and it will be something that either I find very attractive about the person or something that might repel me about the person's body but something will just go buzz and that's kind of where I start um so I can't tell you exactly where to start I think you just have to get the feel it and jump in uh and we may all
be different in in how we start a reading uh but you know mainly we start with a sense of compassion for this person gratitude that we have these gifts and can do this and uh just the joy of of uh experiencing another person on this level so academically and intellectually a body reading integrates certain kinds of information that you study in core energetics uh and this is information that's come to us through uh Reich maybe even through Freud originally it comes to us through um pacus and through loan uh so what we're going to integrate
in our reading is everything you can possibly know and learn about the the five major character types and all their subtypes everything you know about the chakras the you know we have um well we have 12 chakras so everything you know you know from your higher energy to the throat chakra whether it receives or whether you can speak your truth all of that comes into the body reading um we integrate the seven segments of the body uh so uh that comes from Reich uh so you have to knowledge of each segment and you we integrate
um our knowledge about posture what it means and then we integrate nuances things we know about skin uh color and how changes in skin color changes in the heat whether the skin is cold or hot where hair grows so uh and how hair grows um secondary sexual characteristics so all of that comes into the reading um so in your four years of training uh a lot of that material was studied so it's a it's a question of bringing it all together a body reading brings almost everything you ever learn together but because you're telling a
story you're not using labels you're trying not to use words like oral masochistic skido you're using words like uh lack of nurturing or uh abandonment or smothering you know you were smothered you didn't have enough Freedom of Choice those are the stories you're telling uh you're telling the person's unique beautiful wonderful story so again I'm repeating myself sorry about that uh you're telling a story no labels like schizoid masochist depressive post-traumatic stress disorder so here's an example it looks like you felt very alone the first year of your life perhaps you were neglected your mother
may have had other children or suffered a death in her family she just wasn't there for you in the way you needed so that's one story another story is uh you loved your father very much but but he seemed to reject you uh maybe it was something simple like he stopped putting you to bed at night or holding you on his lap but you felt a lot of pain around that and actually got pretty angry about it and uh but you decided in your unconscious mind that you would never totally love anyone again because you
were never going to experience that kind of rejection again so those are the kinds of stories we tell uh that help people see their and understand their wounds and then we they lead us right into our interventions um so the body communicates uh quite a bit of information um and we have meanings for example with posture the spine tells us about the re person's relationship with their father that's particularly true of men but sometimes for women also secondary sexual characteristics where the curves are in the body if there are no curves where the hair grows
uh you know what happened at puberty when those things uh generally come into existence then we look at something that Reich love loved to talk about body armor so is this person armored so that they don't get hurt uh you know so are their muscles really tense and tight so nothing can get to them they won't have to feel emotions we look at the harmony does the body parts fit together does the head look like it belongs with the rest of the body uh sometimes you'll find a person who's uh you know has very short
legs and a very long chest so that may say something to you about not wanting to grow up or uh there are different kind of splits in the body and they all have meaning uh nuances blinks face muscles body hairs skin color they all they can indicate energy blocks so we look for blocks because we in our interventions we want to release those blocks so that the energy flows in a figure eight throughout the body so this is how energy should flow when it's blocked it's like my fist it doesn't move um and then uh
in the next slide we'll talk for a minute I'll talk for a minute about the chakras because they're very important in a body reading as well so each chakra has a meaning uh the top of your head is uh spirituality uh your third eye is kind of your psychic qualities your ability to have Clairvoyance or know what's going to happen um your throat is about Communications but you know can you speak your truth are you're willing to really say what you mean and what you think but the throat is also has another meaning it's about
reception can I receive love because food comes in through the mouth and down uh and down into your body the heart chakra is about love healing and it's about love for your partner love for your family love for God all kinds of Love uh if you go down lower uh to the uh to the solar plexus um here it says power and but I think about this the big yellow chakra as sorry your Life Path um you know where am I going do I know where I'm going am I really totally passionate and interested in
my life is my life meaningful so all of that shows in that particular chakra um and then down uh under that in the pelvis in Orange is your sexuality and the front chakra is sexual feelings uh how am I capable of sexually having emotions actually feeling um getting aroused the back is about sexual activity sometimes they work together and sometimes they don't and then finally the root chakra that that uh bright red chakra is about Safety and Security how safe do I feel on the planet but it's also for us about grounding can my energy
get down to the Earth am I grounded am I in reality so these chakras are very very important to your readings as well as everything else um so again I uh just said a few more things about them the spirituality generally there's white light if you put your hand if you can all do this right now if you put your hand uh right above your head the front of your head for about about two or three inches see if there's energy coming up if you feel the energy moving into your hand so is that chakra
alive you know you can also spin your chakras if you feel they're not as um perky as you would like them to be um the front chakras are receptive meaning uh they uh I can't say that they take it energy but they're they're feeling centers the back chakras are about doing things making things happen so for example here I might be psychic but if I want to share my vision or make put my vision into reality I need the chakra in the back of my head so they work together they're they're teams um so the
throat is about speaking your truth and receiving love but the back of it is about being organized can I you know can I balance my checkbook uh do I know um you know what's on my calendar for tomorrow um the heart chakra we said was about love but the back of it in the back in the middle of your uh between your two shoulders it's about will that's your main will Center can you make make things happen or are you passive do you have a big call back there um the back of the U of
the solar plexus chakra is about healing and health do I take care of my body am I burn out to I seeing so many clients that I have a my skin looks green in that area um so sexual feelings in the front sexual activity in the back so these these chakras again you don't want to leave them out of your reading you can use a pendulum if you would like uh to see if the pendulum circles you can use your hand uh or you can just look at the skin whether it's vital and alive or
seems flaccid and dull and that will help you get some idea of what's going on in the chakras also if there's a muscular block where a chakra is then you know the energy isn't going to be flowing very well so um I think I've gotten uh the main points across that I want to in terms of um just how you go about doing a body reading and the amount of respect and compassion you bring to your clients and uh that you owe always educate and teach them what it is before you would even attempt one
uh they can be repeated over time people generally do love them because they want to know about themselves and body readings have a very strong healthy uh history so even though we don't have a lot of Empirical research we have an awful lot of clinical research um showing their proof and they seem to um at least everything I learned from John was there was no problem in moving across cultures you know I've as you know I've taught in many different countries and with people from all kinds of ethnic and racial groups and pretty much the
body reading has uh been um applicable to most people so I think that's kind of interesting that um we haven't had to change the body readings that these things pick up on certain things um that are true in some ways culturally so I'm just going to uh point out a few things here um as we begin to wrap up [Music] um you know the character structures but uh you might look at certain things like tattoos so here's two picture different pictures of tattoos um where the person has it placed on their body and you might
even ask them if it has particular meaning to them um what's interesting in this particular person is it all kind of comes in around the heart um you know everything's kind of pointing toward this space right here in this heart and he does look like um he's had some heartache in his life if I look at other things so um you know that might be an interesting discussion for you with your client uh and again here's this person's kind of tattoo and he has a far an upper displaced energy a lot of energy in his
upper body and in his head large head um so you know what meaning does that tattoo have for him does it speak of power strength you know these are things that could be added to the body reading uh I put this uh picture in uh because um you know sometimes we forget we see so many people who are mixed structures meaning they have like my body or your body might have three or four structures you know I can see an oral wrist but I can see a rigid um shape in a certain way and I
can see where I'm holding uh body weight as kind of a masochistic P so I I can see even some psychopathy in me so I can see point out four or five things some people will only have one or two and so for example this person's body um is pretty limited so in terms of the hated child which is schizoid energy so when you see people whose ribs stick out like this they can even be sometimes thinner than she is and look like they just came out of a concentration camp um that would be a
sign of schizoid you see the the large gap between her legs the energy probably doesn't even get to the ground it just dissipates um you see her her head and neck slanted that's also a sign of energy fragmenting so um you know so you know you could say that to this person um that um it would be very hard to feel um welcome on the planet to feel wanted even know why am I here do I really belong here so that might be the story that you start out with in that case [Music] um so
you're going to be looking when you think about oral skitso you're going to be looking at the the collar bones whether they stick out you're going to be that would be an oral sign you're going to be looking at the the neck whether it's off to one side that would be a schizoid sign but you're not going to use words like or or schizoid you're going to use not not feeling welcome or having a strong connection with spirituality or um feeling needy but being accepted for your intelligence um so again this person's body uh you
know she has a lot of weight um and um it's almost like a prot protected around herself and what is the wounding here um has she what kind of trauma has she said had so you know I would say this is an oral schizoid body but in the reading I would talk about I wouldn't talk about that I would talk about trauma that things had to be hard early on that U something may have really felt very cruel or very [Music] terrifying um these are just two examples of undernourishment in the chest not getting enough
um early um protection and here even the the the top kind of caving in as she's sitting in the chair you know it has that kind of feature that I want to protect my heart my shoulders are going to come in to protect my heart and similar with this guy with the the head sticking out uh in front of the body a very kind of needy kind of thing feed me I haven't been fed take care of me I'm olded so when you um when you work with that dimension of uh neediness or deprivation or
feeling owed that person may actually um want to be carried through life you know they'll have a hard time keeping a job for example someone else has to take care of them so a lot of the work is building the energy up in the body so and building a better stronger container and helping them stand on their own two feet like you can do it you can do it yourself you don't need my help so we may support that person at the beginning have their back but eventually to graduate from therapy they need to be
able to stand on their own two feet and not need us to support them and here would be someone uh with the officite thing an overcharge you can see that in the back um and the shorter neck although it does come forward so this is where you're get get a combination of of a little bit of orality but mainly you're dealing with someone who was smothered overprotected and didn't have a right to say no or Define life the way he wanted to at least not as a child and here's this is from a magazine but
this guy almost has no neck so again um you know he he was smothered controlled although he's also has a lot of power in his body so probably a mix of masochism and psychopy so you talk about being smothered but also wanting it his way I have to have it my way this is as one of my clients pointed out this is the same person but um Mama's Boy versus gimr so when a man has a lot of uh body fat some of it might be soft and mushy some of it might be um you
know firm uh but that shows that there was a you know a lot of attention from the mom so his body kind of built up Mom gave him a lot of stuff too much stuff he might really resent her um and here so when remember I said if you there's a sometimes we deal with layers so let's say you were working with this person um underneath all that could be this uh this uh very kind of armored a lot of rigidity here and lots of armor you know you're not going to hurt me you're not
going to get to my heart so I don't think you'll meet anything that this extreme in your clients but you will find layers in every person including yourself uh you know when you when you do reading an upper displacement thinner legs come all the way up here it's in his back my way or the highway you know this person was seduced and betrayed as a child doesn't have much trust has to do it all himself um and you can see the same thing here in uh women you know who have again very broad shoulders with
a lot of weight across the will this is the whe Center that I was talking about before and um you know so upper displacement uh this is a female dimension of psychopathy rarely seen in men but often seen in females where we uh the so it would be um the the weight is more in the pelvis with a smaller kind of oral or masochistic chest and it's still somebody who wants it her way this person can be very charming and very manipulative at the same time to make sure she gets it her way so uh
watch out and then um here's three men example of uh again a male structure with uh will centers the the S curve in the back and a lot of rigidity in other words this but the story The Core energetic story for this person is uh loved his mommy or respected her had a infatuation and then um felt rejected at some time and then decided I'm never going to give you my heart totally again or my heart and pelvis together you can have my heart or my pelvis but you can't have both so you may know
of people who have this kind of heart pelvis splits or you may have it yourself um that's not unusual and here we can see uh again some of that in a woman with again with a very nice curves a lot of Harmony in the body that speaks of rigidity but there's probably a cut at the waist because on some level she felt uh L daddy or and or Mommy and then felt rejected so she um you know is very beautiful successful uh but doesn't give her heart and pelvis her total Oneness to another person um
this person I just has their sloping shoulders because John always said that has to do with spite so that's just I threw that in and this person has a very rigid straight back so it's not rigid the way we think about rigid it's rigid in terms of inflexible and you may see that in people where they don't have a lot of uh flexibility even in their thinking again this is a person with a lot of energy uh through the Torso which has to do with a lot of uh mommy intrusiveness into his life and I
point this out different ways that body hair plays a role in this gentleman it's right here across the heart so that would be worth weaving into your story uh these people interesting uh they both have their legs apart so that the energy which would come down from the panum into the floor dissipate so I would say this couple they they appear in a lot of magazines when they sell kitchens but that I think I don't know if they're husband and wife or what but they are some somewhat ungrounded if they hold their legs like this
uh too much um so that's basically what I can share with you today I don't know uh how much time I took and I don't know if you're still with me but um this is just an area that's so interesting and so helpful to people and they really love it and uh so I'm happy that I had the opportunity to to share with you today and um I just want to say uh thank you for inviting me to be with you and I hope uh if I continue here on the planet for a bit longer
that I can be with you in person sometime or that I'll see you at our next um International Conference um and if I do come up say hello and give me a big hug hopefully we won't be having co co so I can enjoy those big hugs um yeah so um yeah so thanks for being with me and I hope you got something out of this and goodbye and I'm gonna uh end this if I can find where to end it here so that may take me a minute I'll put on my glasses to end
it but
