Body Symbology

When a client comes to my table, there are a number of methods for understanding what is happening in the body, and discerning what I can do for her/him. I generally start with the physical body and anatomy, watching and listening to what the client tells me. Another method is body symbology.

The essential premise of body symbology is that what happens in the physical body is metaphorically interrelated with events occurring in the mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. By understanding these interrelationships, we can untangle the knots of pain, dysfunction, tension, and stress.

Often the symbology is revealed through language. When someone has unexplained neck pain, I might ask, “What in your life right now is a pain in the neck?” Neck pain is often tied to jaw pain. You might be surprised how often jaw pain and tension accompany holding back on saying what needs to be said. Foot pain might indicate taking steps, initiating change, or not taking steps that one needs to. Hands are often related to taking, grasping, reaching out, holding on. The back is support, whether given or received (or not). Sciatica is backing out on your feelings.

I learned a lot of the body symbology I use from Rosalyn Bruyere. She teaches that feet relate to parents or authoritarian relationships, knees to siblings or egalitarian relationships. Thus ankles symbolize a transition from authoritarian to egalitarian relationships. A woman once related an absurd dream to me, in which her ankle had turned into a clock. I asked her if she was in relationships that were changing, as when a child grows up and into a more equal relationship to the parent, or the role reversal that takes place when an adult child takes on the care of an aging parent. Those shifts might be making her more aware of the passage of time, and her own mortality. She replied that that was exactly what was happening in her life at that time.

Rosalyn stresses that the symbols are not universal. Some people have individual associations, and there are also numerous other systems of symbology, such as Louise Hay wrote of. Rosalyn says that lungs suggest issues regarding freedom or feelings of being trapped. Other people associate lungs with grief. When a symbol is named, sometimes there’s a strong feeling, that an important truth is illuminated. If that doesn’t happen, it may not be the right symbol for the condition. It doesn’t matter; often I prefer to give people information, even if it might not be right, so that they can choose for themselves whether they wish to use it, or throw it out the window.

Have you used body symbology? What did you learn from it?