From the EFMHA Archives
Connecting Body Language with Feelings
By Barbara Kathleen Rector
At Sierra Tucson’s Integrated Riding Resource Program
(STIRRUP), we have been using lungeing techniques to elicit
self-developed awareness in the patients’ use of body
language. We focus on the function of these techniques,
which are taught by horseman and author John Lyons, in the
development of helpful, healthier interpersonal
communication skills. The importance of congruent messages
that are consciously aligned with the mind, body and spirit
of inner feelings is practiced. Instant feedback is provided
by the horse’s response as the free lunge work progresses.
The significance of nonverbal influence and its powerful
role in contributing to the quality of communication within
relationships is demonstrated to the patient through his own
work effort. The patient produces his own insight.
Many of these emotionally disturbed young people are
unconscious of their habitual modes of expression. They are
bewildered by the instant consequences experienced from
their environment (culture, families, school). They have
learned through their dysfunctional survival behavior to do
one thing, say another and ignore entirely what they really
feel inside.
The significance of sending messages that match inside
feelings with outward body posture is readily apparent as
the patient works first to be focused and aware of “feeling
fully present in his own body.” (This phrase is used to
describe the survival skill of disassociation, a defense
mechanism used to explain the process where a portion of the
mind travels elsewhere while the body continues to function
on autopilot.) The patient is taught the basic rules of
personal body space and its importance in influencing the
horse’s movement within the parameters defined by the 60
foot lunge pen. The few simple principles used to achieve
walk, trot, canter, transitions, reverse of direction and
halt—with only the body and voice—are demonstrated first and
then practiced. During this demonstration, the horse is
entirely free.
Fears in the patient surface easily as he thinks about being
alone in a confined space with a large, spirited animal.
Fear is acknowledged. It is defined. It is talked about as
the adolescent takes control and approaches the horse, which
is not on a lead line. The instructor encourages the
acknowledgement of feelings as the patient strokes the horse
and establishes, with touch and voice, links to the horse’s
consciousness and his own.
The patient acknowledges fear, consciously breathing into
and moving through it as an energy experience in process.
When the patient and horse visibly relax, the halter is
removed. Depending on the individual feelings about being
alone in the pen, the therapist may remain behind the
patient in the center of the ring to assist in moving the
horse to the rail.
The patient is instructed to use the focused mind, “seeing”
with the mind’s eye, the horse on the rail at a trot. He
uses distinguishable tonal differences in his voice to
signal gait changes. The lunge whip or wand may be used as
an extension of the patient’s hand. The practice of moving
in from hand to hand behind the body, raising and lowering
it to influence the horse’s forward impulsion is crafted and
polished. As the patient involves himself in this work, he
begins to demonstrate the harmony and grace of a sensitive
dance partner.
The more precise the patient communicates the message, the
quicker the horse’s reactions. Patients who observe from the
rail become involved in their own process as they watch the
unfolding dynamics of the communication
between peer patient and therapy
horse. When all in the group have had an opportunity to
practice, they sit on hay bales in a circle and process
feelings that emerged during the session.
One young girl’s with a history of sexual abuse by an older
make in her immediate family remarked, “I was totally
convinced that I was saying ‘Go forward, move out, got at a
trot’ I experienced the reality of my body’s message. It was
saying, ‘No! I don’t want to do this. I’m afraid’. I’m still
feeling the mismatch. I’m not behaving as I really feel. I
never do in my family. It’s just not safe.”
This patient accessed her own insight. A change in her
previously unconscious response pattern is now possible. She
has felt the connection of her habitual thoughts, which were
to stuff her real feelings, with her body’s movements. In
subsequent sessions, this girl practiced telling the horse
aloud about her feelings of fear and uncertainty. She also
expressed her dislike of appearing awkward at performing
this new activity in front of her peers. Eventually she
accessed the feelings of shame that were lying beneath the
fear, of not being good enough to master this new skill.
During the lunge pen work, this same patient expressed
feeling incapable of forming an intimate, nurturing
relationship. Later, while processing her feelings, she
connected her situation in the lunge pen to her feelings
about her boyfriend and their efforts to be in a
relationship.
