Moved by Moving.

Sometimes when I make my way back upstairs from a nighttime morsel or relief it’s pitch black. I notice I can negotiate the winding stairs surprisingly easily. I seem to rely on a muscular memory as well as my thinking brain. My conscious brain orchestrates the general intention but the accuracy of my making the steps and handholds seems to come from body memory. I regularly remember guitar tunes in the same way. My brain can’t remember them but my fingers do. When dancing in strange shapes my body informs me of emotions connected with them. These instances remind me of the systemic nature of my functioning, that I am an integrated whole not a brainy automaton. There seems a frequently overlooked hinterland of connectivity between brain, muscle, emotions and will. I’ve just noticed an upcoming lecture where I trained, on domestic violence, how otherwise ‘nice’ people can become violent within domestic intimacy. Violence is muscle guided by emotion against the suggestions from brain and will. We may call it animalistic but it’s not, it’s uniquely humanistic. It made me wonder if this hinterland of connectivity is lost in such cases leading to a sort of systemic imbalance. If so it’s unlikely talking therapies will be much good. The brain and will may gain a little power but on the dark stairway to another event the systemic memory will react as before. How then can therapy strengthen this hinterland of connectivity in the light of our systemic nature? I remember one time in a practice session I got out of the ‘talking’ chair and how just walking around the room made the experience more affecting. So should it be in the form of some whole body experience, Psychodrama, dance, clowning or enacting the movements of perpetrator and victim?  Maybe talking is good but moving is better.