Bioenergetic analysis is a form of analytic psychotherapy which combines work with the body and with the mind to promote health and enhance one's pleasure in living.
The bioenergetic therapist assists clients to see how early childhood experiences have affected their adult perceptions of themselves and their way of relating with others. Clients are guided to an understanding of how traumatic early life experiences have affected their ability to be fully alive in the world.
Early life traumas are understood to impact the client as an adult on both the level of the personality (psyche) and on the level of the body (soma). The bioenergetic therapist thus treats the client as a psycho-somatic unity. The psychological defenses such as rationalization and denial that a client uses to manage emotional pain are also anchored in the body where they appear as unique muscular patterns which inhibit self-awareness.
The therapist starts with each client's current problems and with an assessment of his/her vitality in the context of present relationships. Gradually, through body work, analysis, and the experience of a safe, healthy, supportive connection with the therapist, the client discovers a greater capacity for joy, integrity and an ability to relate to self and others in more satisfying ways.
““When you have no words for your feelings, for what happened to you, for what is missing in you, we listen to the inner resonance - of your inchoate secrets - as it lives in your body. We help you to sense and amplify this inner resonance until its movement comes close enough to the surface of your being to enter your consciousness.
But we also listen carefully to your words and are touched by them when they come from a depth of your being that no one can put a hand on. We invite you to surrender to the spirit of your body and the body of your spirit - and in so doing, to embrace your true self.””