The One-Body Error in Psychology and Somatics: How to Overcome It?

Abstract: What we have attempted to do in this paper is to describe the limiting one-body error in Western somatic, psychological, as well as body psychotherapeutic approaches, the reasons for the genesis and persistence of this gross oversight, and how it limits the scope and effectiveness of all therapy modalities. As a correction, we offer a complete four-level model of the body based on Western and Eastern psychologies, with corroborating philosophical, scientific, and empirical evidence, for improving outcomes and treatment times in all therapy modalities. We have pointed out the possible range of benefits (from the personal to the spiritual) from the use of this expanded four-level model of the body in all somatic, energy, psychotherapy, and spiritual modalities. We have also provided some easy methods for therapists in all modalities to start incorporating all four bodies in their treatments.

What is the one-body error in Western somatic psychology approaches?

Somatic psychology, body psychotherapy, and somatic approaches in the West err in assuming that we have only one body: The one that gets conceived in a womb and laid to rest in a tomb. The West often refers to this body as the physical body. The East calls it the individual gross body.

What are the causes of this error?

The one-body error is a consequence of science

a) acknowledging as reality only things that can be measured despite the obvious that our ability as a species to measure our body and the world is quite limited,

b) trying to attribute the cause of all our experiences (including our awareness) to the measurable levels of the physical body,

and c) reflexively dismissing the study of our subjective experiences of ourselves and the world as a valid and complementary method for determining reality that cannot be perceived by the five senses or measured.

Western psychology has followed the lead of science in this narrow and limited definition of the body. It also attributes all our experiences (cognition, emotion, behavior, and even awareness) to this body alone.

In the West, the examination of phenomena through subjective experience has been reflexively dismissed by science as prone to subjective bias, challenging to measure or quantify, and therefore unscientific.

Western phenomenologists, arguing for the legitimacy of the study of subjective experiences as a valid and complementary method for generating knowledge about one’s self and the world, are still subject to the one-body error in the following manner. They focus only on the experience, taking the experiencer as given. They are not interested in the awareness or how the experiencer and the experience arise in it, or the structures that underlie them, believing that they are all in the way of grasping the essence of things that can only be had by focusing exclusively on the experience (Husserl, 1931). Therefore, they are not interested in the findings of Eastern phenomenologists who, by investigating the nature of the experiencer, have discovered the nature of our awareness, sense of self, experience, and the multiple bodies that underline them. Because we all have a strong innate tendency to identify with the physical body and its experiences, Western phenomenologists, without being aware of this inherent bias we have to the experiences of our physical body, also implicitly commit the one-body error. We can only overcome this error with a subjective or phenomenological inquiry into the nature of the experiencer (the subject of the experience).

To be fair, science’s skepticism of subjective methods for establishing reality is not without a foundation. After all, it was not such a long time ago that scientists who contradicted the then-prevailing views that the sun moved around the Earth and the Earth was flat were at risk of being put to death. However, blind opposition among scientists to subjective methods for generating knowledge, despite findings from subjective phenomenological inquiries being increasingly corroborated by neuroscience and quantum physics, has severely constrained our understanding of ourselves and the world.

What are the consequences of this error?

In addition to assuming that we have only one body, the physical body, science has made things worse by assuming that a) all of our experiences, including our awareness, are a product of this body alone and worse, b) that we can understand all of our experiences as causes and effects by studying the measurable levels of this body alone. For example, brain processes are usually studied only at the level of neurons, neurotransmitters, or blood flows. This is reductionism to observable or measurable levels of the physical body that, once it takes hold, can blind us to the deeper reality of who we are and unconsciously focus our awareness only on the measurable levels of our body for determining causal explanations for all our experiences.

We know how the exclusive attribution of all psychological processes to the brain has resulted in the neglect of the body in psychology and has compromised its effectiveness for a long time. Fortunately, recent neuroscientific findings have established that all of our experiences are determined not just by the brain but also by the body and the environment (Winkielman et al., 2015; Beilock, 2017), not only during traumatic experiences (van der Kolk, 2015) but in every moment of our lives, are beginning to challenge the myopic reductionism to the brain and urging an openness to include at least the body in treatment.

The next challenge for somatic psychology is including the unmeasurable levels of the physical body and the other bodies, individual and collective, that bear on all our experiences. Fortunately, scientific challenges to the three erroneous assumptions behind the one-body error have come from modern quantum physics and neuroscience findings to break down the resistance against them.

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Challenges from quantum physics and neuroscience to the three assumptions behind the one-body error

The physical body consists of bones, organs, muscles, fascia, ligaments, tendons, nerves, and various fluids. We can measure and perceive these structures through the five senses (exteroception) and the inner sense (interoception). These larger (grosser) structures break down successively into cells, molecules, and atoms. The atoms break down into the subatomic particles of protons, electrons, and neutrons. They, in turn, break down into even smaller (subtler) subatomic particles called quarks, of which about 120 have been identified and broadly classified as bosons and fermions.

Quantum physics has long established that our physical body exists at the quantum level (at the levels of subatomic particles) that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to perceive through the five senses or to measure through even the most sophisticated instruments at the disposal of our species. The study of matter at the subatomic level is incredibly challenging. We have built what are called super-conducing super-colliders, miles and miles of subterraneous tunnels in which the bigger subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons, are smashed at high speeds against each other or against concrete barriers, at high levels of energy and speeds close to the speed of light to create the conditions that prevailed around the big bang after when matter existed only at subatomic levels for some time. The resulting subatomic particles they break down into for a millionth of a second are registered through sensors and analyzed through computers.

We have learned from Quantum physics that we are severely limited in our ability to measure quantum phenomena. The verification of some of its theories of the nature of matter at the subatomic level is made extraordinarily difficult by the enormity of the investments (billions), the size of the laboratories (even larger than Earth), and the time (more than a hundred years) needed, pointing to the limits of science based on measurement.

Erwin Shroedinger, one of the founders of quantum physics, wrote as far back as 1944 that we cannot fully explain even basic biological processes through science based only on measurable levels of organisms. It follows that we cannot fully account for psychological processes by science based only on measurable levels of the physical body, such as cells, atoms, neurons, neurotransmitters, and blood flows. Shroedinger, aware of the limitations of the scientific method and of the knowledge that the East has accumulated through the ages and the alternative methods it used for generating such knowledge, called for “a wholesale blood transfusion” of such knowledge from the East to the West to arrive at a more complete picture of reality (Schroedinger, 2012). He is not alone (Bohm, 2002; Rosenblum & Kuttner, 2011).

Therefore, some quantum physicists are exploring whether quantum phenomena can be studied and their theories verified through phenomenological investigations of intra-subjective experiences of those with refined awareness cultivated through long-term meditation. The exploration of awareness as a possible tool for inquiring about unmeasurable levels of reality also follows from quantum physicists’ understanding of the superordinate role of awareness in our experience, that it is awareness that collapses potential possibilities at the quantum level into the specific realities of ourselves and the world. Eastern phenomenologists started to use awareness as the ultimate tool for generating knowledge thousands of years ago.

What do the terms’ gross’ and ‘subtle’ mean?

In the East, gross meant something big or large enough to be observed through the five senses. Subtle meant something is too small or fine for such observation. We can extend these terms to modern science and say that something is gross when it is observable or at least measurable through sophisticated instruments. We can apply the term subtle to things that are too small or fine to observe or measure with sophisticated instruments. By this definition, kidneys, neurons, molecules, and atoms are at the gross level. Subatomic particles, especially quarks that kidneys and neurons can be reduced to, are at the subtle level.

When the evidence for the subtle or quantum level of reality could no longer be ignored, classical physicists tried to minimize the importance of its findings by claiming that changes at the quantum level were too small to make a difference at the gross level of reality that classical physics dealt with. It turned out to be wrong. I am sure you have heard of the butterfly effect, which is based on findings that small changes at the quantum level can bring about substantial effects at the gross and measurable levels of matter. A butterfly flapping its wings in San Francisco can bring about an earthquake in Hong Kong, a metaphor used to drive home the point.

Another way classical physicists tried to ‘belittle’ the importance of quantum reality is by claiming that changes at the gross level did not affect the reality at the quantum level all that much. Again, it turned out that they were wrong. It turns out that when we move the gross structures, such as muscles in our bodies, the quantum levels of our muscles are affected by such movement. This is the basis for practices such as Chi Gong and Tai Chi. The overcoming of these objections by classical physicists established the importance of taking both levels of reality seriously to arrive at a more complete picture of the reality of ourselves and the world.

We see evidence of the changing paradigm to take the quantum reality into account even in psychology these days.

Cognitive neuroscientists, having failed to explain the function of awareness at the neuronal level, are now theorizing that it is perhaps a process that originates at the quantum level of neurons, with no way to verify such hypotheses through measurement (Atmanspacher, 2024).

Affective neuroscientists, upon observing that emotion at times appears to originate in the brain, at times in the body, and at times in the brain and the body at the same time at the molecular level, have hypothesized that perhaps emotional impulses originate from deeper levels of the body or the environment surrounding the body (Pert, 1999).

What is the Eastern understanding of the body?

The four-level model of the body in Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) is a simplification of a more complex understanding of the body in the East, to help people learn the basics of a more comprehensive model of the body as quickly as possible, in just twelve days of training.

Through phenomenological investigations going back at least four thousand years, Eastern phenomenologists have long established that our body consists of four levels: Two at the individual level and two at the collective level. They invite others to verify their findings by investigating their outer experiences of the world and inner experiences of their bodies phenomenologically, using their awareness as the primary tool in their investigations.

They are the individual gross body, the individual subtle body, the changing collective body of the universe and its paradoxical basis, and the unchanging collective body of pure awareness. Each of these four levels contributes to all of our experiences and their regulation. Therefore, these levels are crucial for our clients’ profound transformation. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to the individual gross body as the gross body and the individual subtle body as the subtle body. In addition, we might refer to the individual gross body as the physical body and the individual subtle body as the energy body, commonly used in the West.

Let us now examine what we know about the four bodies, their nature, the unique resources they offer, how they relate to each other in a hierarchy, and how they contribute to generating and regulating all our experiences. Let us also learn how to work with each body to improve treatment times and diverse outcomes (physical, energetic, cognitive, emotional, behavioral, relational, and spiritual) in all therapy modalities and body psychotherapy approaches that suffer from the one-body error. We will also see how science, while it cannot establish the additional levels of the body through the scientific method based on measurement, has accumulated hard corroborative evidence consistent with Eastern findings of the different bodies.

The individual gross body

Again, the individual gross body is the same as the physical body that develops in the womb and is cremated or buried in a tomb. It is called ‘gross’ because it also exists as things we can observe through the five senses or measure through sophisticated instruments. Gross or ‘big enough’ things such as organs, muscles, skin, neurons, other cells, molecules, atoms, and even some subatomic particles such as protons are examples of the gross level of our physical body.

We know from quantum physics that much of this body exists as things we cannot perceive or measure. In the East, those levels of the individual gross body that we cannot perceive through the five senses or measure even through sophisticated instruments we say belong to the ‘subtle’ level of the individual gross body. Subatomic particles and structures that give rise to them, such as strings, are examples of things that belong to the subtle level of the individual gross body. We saw earlier how some cognitive and affective neuroscientists are hypothesizing that awareness, cognition, and emotion might originate at the ‘subtle’ or ‘quantum’ level of the physical body because of their failure to fully explain these phenomena through five sense perception or measurements by sophisticated instruments such as magnetic resonance images (MRIs) and electroencephalographs (EEGs).

Recent findings in cognitive and affective neurosciences have established that cognition (Fincher-Kiefer, 2019; Johnson, 2017), emotion (Barrett, 2017; Damasio & Carvalho, 2013; Maise, 2011;), and behavior (Beilock, 2017) depend not only on the brain but also on the body and the environment, not only during traumatic experiences but also in every moment in our lives. Please see the 2022 book by Selvam, The Practice of Embodying Emotions: A Method for Improving Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Outcomes, for a comprehensive account of the findings on the crucial role the body plays in cognition, emotion, and behavior. These findings provide a strong scientific basis for the prediction that any therapy modality that includes any method for working with the physical body (body awareness, touch, movement, breath, yoga, etc.) will see faster outcomes and shorter treatment times than modalities that do not. Consequently, there has been an explosion of interest in somatic methods across psychotherapy modalities. At the same time, out of habit and for several reasons why psychology lost the body, much of psychology remains disembodied as usual.

We saw earlier that changes at the quantum (subtle) level can bring about changes at the non-quantum (gross) level and vice versa. We also know that, at times, one cannot make changes in one level from another level. The analogy involving the brain and the body can clarify this. The brain regulates the body. Therefore, we can bring about changes in the body by working with the physiology of the brain. Most psychiatric medications work this way. The bodywork approach of craniosacral therapy and the method of transcranial magnetic stimulation also work this way. But, at times, you have to work directly with the body to bring about changes in the body when working with the body through the brain is insufficient to bring about the change in the body. One has to use heart medication to regulate the heart or work on the muscles in the legs through bodywork or yoga to ease the constriction from long-term facial shortening.

This is also true in reverse. You can make changes in the brain by working with the body. However, sometimes, you have to work directly with the brain to make changes there. One can regulate the brain by regulating the heart through breathing techniques. However, at times, it is not enough. Then, you have to use psychiatric medication or physically work with the brain with touch to regulate the brain. It is, therefore, good to know how to work with both levels.

According to the East, causality in the physical body flows from the subtle level to the gross level. There are many methods that involve awareness, movement, breath, touch, sound, and other tools, such as needles as in acupuncture, to work with the subtle level of the individual gross body. Awareness techniques for working directly with the subtle level of the gross body can involve tracking the body in wave or energy forms as opposed to tracking body sensations that would be working at the gross level. Techniques for working with the subtle level from the gross level of the physical body can involve movement, as in Chi Gong and Tai Chi, breathing, Pranayama, or sound.

There are many somatic modalities for working with the body in the context of other therapy modalities. All of them offer therapy modalities that do not work with the body opportunities for improving outcomes and treatment times with their clients. Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) is based primarily on the research paradigm of embodied emotions, which states that the brain cannot process a situation well when emotions are not embodied (Niedenthal, 2007). ISP, therefore, accesses and expands the conscious experience of emotional experiences in the individual gross body to create a greater capacity for emotional experiences. This gives the brain the optimal time to process the situation cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally to improve outcomes and treatment times in all therapy modalities, including all somatic psychology approaches. ISP also offers further opportunities for improving outcomes and treatment times because it avoids the usual one-body error of other somatic modalities. They usually work only with the gross level of the individual gross body.

The individual subtle body

Eastern phenomenologists discovered that the individual also has another body. It is called the individual subtle body, which exists only at the subtle or quantum level, as opposed to the individual gross body, which exists at both gross and subtle levels of matter, as defined earlier. An individual’s body is described in India as consisting of two bodies: the individual gross body and the individual subtle body. The individual subtle body is also called the subtle body in the East or the energy body in the West.

What else have they found about the individual subtle body? It is the source of all physiological and psychological processes in the individual gross body. When we die, our subtle body separates from our gross body permanently. From the evidence of out-of-body experiences during near-death experiences (Moody, 2015), traumatic experiences (Evertz, 2023), spiritual practices (Atwood & Atwood, 2024), memories of life between lives (Newton, 2015), and other spontaneous and induced events, the ability of our awareness to perceive the individual subtle body and its causal role in all physiological and psychological dynamics in the gross body are verified.

The subtle body that exists only at the subtle or quantum level is hard to perceive and differentiate when attached to a gross body. This is because awareness is habitually identified with processes of the gross body. Eastern phenomenologists, their awareness not constrained by the limiting assumptions that there is only the physical body and all of our experiences, including awareness, are functions of it, have mapped the anatomy of the subtle body as consisting of structures such as chakras, meridians, layers, elements, and energies.

The subtle body is also commonly referred to as the individual’s energy body among Western energy workers. The use of ‘gross’ and “subtle to differentiate the two individual bodies in the East as opposed to calling them ‘physical’ and ‘energy’ bodies in the West has to do with the following scientific fact: Matter can be perceived either as particles (materials) or waves (energies). The gross body and the subtle body can be thought of as different levels of matter or different frequencies of energy. The two bodies have to be made of the same substance, matter, or energy for them to affect each other. To call one physical (material) and the other energetic can cause needless confusion and misunderstanding that they are made up of different substances.

Relationship between the individual gross and subtle bodies

The subtle body, because it is the source of all experiences in the gross body, has greater resources for the regulation of the gross body. However, what happens in our gross body does affect the subtle body. When life experiences become tough, defenses in our subtle body can also form to protect us from unbearable experiences, just like they can form in our gross body as constriction patterns, for example. The defenses in the subtle body can take the form of a lack of balance among the layers of elements that make up the subtle body. They can take the form of uneven distribution of the elements of the subtle body in the gross body. These defenses can also take the form of compromises in the connection between the individual subtle body and its source, the changing collective body of the universe. Some energy workers work more with the subtle body, some work more with the connection between the gross and subtle bodies, and some with the connection between the individual and the collective bodies.

Our subtle body carries over the conditioning from having lived many lives. These patterns in our subtle bodies from past lives have a bearing on our psychological and physiological characteristics in our current lives, according to the considerable research on reincarnation that has been carried out at the University of Virginia in the United States (Stevenson, 2001). The research, involving three thousand children from all over the world who spontaneously remembered their immediate prior lives, also indicates that remembering past lives is not necessarily beneficial in that it can make their current lives complicated; and that most children who remember their past lives had an early or traumatic death suggesting that such unusual deaths might have led to breakdown in memory mechanisms in our subtle bodies that prevent most of us from remembering our past lives.

That experiences from our past lives also influence our present lives, they can be the source of difficulties in our current lives, and working with them can be very transformative at times is the basis of past life regression therapy. There are some incredible stories of remembering and healing past life traumas in past life regression therapy, usually done under hypnosis.

The duration of the gross body is limited to one life. The life of the subtle body spans many lives. The individual subtle body is often called ‘the soul’ in religions. Our subtle body permanently separates from our gross body when we die.

The gross body is the container that a subtle body seeks to serve its purpose, work through issues from past lives, and develop itself further by acquiring or developing new abilities.

The identification of awareness with the gross body and its processes is innate in all of us. It provides a tight alchemical container in which the subtle body or the soul is transformed for the better. The tendency towards skepticism of all other levels of our body, individual and collective, is also innate for this reason, unless we start to investigate who we are and what our body is beyond our innate identification with our gross body. Our awareness has the capacity to engage in such inquiry.

There are many models of the subtle body out there and many ways of working with it. There are simple models, and there are complex models. There are many schools of energy that teach their students to see or sense the subtle body before they work with it. Some schools do not require students to see or feel it to work on it. For example, acupuncturists do not need to see or sense the meridians to work with the subtle body and its connection to the gross body or the changing collective body of the universe. They just need a map of the energy anatomy of the subtle body superimposed on the map of the gross body. They do, however, use pulse reading of the energies of the subtle body for diagnosis. As with everything else in life, the more we work with it, with a simpler or more complex model, our ability to become aware of our subtle body and its dynamics increases.

The simple model of the individual subtle body in ISP consists of seven layers of elements or energies from seven chakras and is based primarily on the basics of Polarity Therapy, developed by an Austrian-born American, Dr. Randolph Stone, based on Western Osteopathy and Eastern understanding of the subtle body from India as well as China (Sills, 2001).

The five lower layers are the ether element from the throat chakra, the air element from the heart chakra, the fire element from the naval chakra, the water element from the sacral chakra, and the earth element from the root chakra. The two higher elements are the common or spirit element from the third eye chakra and the indefinable element from the crown chakra. The two higher chakras connect the individual subtle body to the energies (elements) of the collective bodies. Each element, starting with the common or spirit element of the third eye chakra, is derived from the element of the chakra above. For example, the common or spirit element from the third eye chakra is derived from the indefinable element from the crown chakra, and the ether element from the throat chakra is derived from the common element from the third eye chakra, and so on.

Working with the individual subtle body

When we work with the gross body, it will affect the gross body. And when we work with the subtle body, it will impact the gross body. We saw that this is also true when working with the brain and the body in the gross body. However, we cannot always guarantee that working at one level will be sufficient to bring about change at that level or another level. That is why we need to know how to work with each body to make a change in that body or another related body. Regarding the hierarchy of regulation, the subtle body is superior as it has the resources gathered through many lives and is more immediately connected to the collective body with even more significant resources. It can also form patterns of dysregulation and defenses when experiences get complicated in the gross body when gross body defenses or resources are not sufficient to cope with them.

Because we acquire a gross body in every life to help transform our subtle body, the work in ISP focuses on accessing and working with experiences, especially emotions, in the gross body. However, we work with the layers of the subtle body whenever it might be expedient to undo the defenses in our gross or subtle bodies against emotions and to access, expand, and regulate them in our gross bodies to improve outcomes in all therapies.

Let us now look at some examples of what is possible when we work with the layers of the individual subtle body and the benefits that can accrue. These are just a few examples of what is possible when we include the individual subtle body in our work.

The layer of the ether element through the throat chakra, when mobilized and distributed in the gross body, can expand and regulate the gross body, including the brain, and facilitate experiences such as spaciousness, calmness, stillness, balance, and harmony, which are the basic qualities or resources of the ether element. It is of particular use when the gross body is extremely shut down and low in energy, as in depression, or extremely dysregulated and high in energy, as in mania, and working with the brain or the body in the individual gross body is of no or limited use. The ether strategy has been used successfully in managing post-traumatic stress in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine. And in working efficiently with what is called the global high-intensity activation of the central nervous system (GHIA) in Somatic Experiencing® (SE). You can access the three free war trauma courses here to learn more about how to work with the ether element through the joints of the arms and legs and at the throat chakra.
The layer of the air element through the heart chakra, because it is responsible for the movement of the entire subtle body, when mobilized and balanced in its distribution in the gross body, is a quick way to undo the defenses against emotional experiences in the gross and subtle bodies to expand and regulate them in the gross body. A typical pattern of defense against emotions in the subtle body is a heavy concentration of energy and emotion towards the head and chest areas, making the emotional experiences more unbearable than when the energy and emotion are more evenly distributed in the gross body. We can mobilize and balance the air element by working with the air element zones of the chest, the abdominal organs of the large intestine and the kidneys, the lower legs, and the heart chakra. If the experiences become overwhelming when we work with the subtle body, we can move down to the level of the brain or the body at the gross body level to access and embody the emotions in the gross body.
The layer of the fire element through the naval chakra, with its basic qualities or resources of intensity and clarity, mobilized and distributed through the navel chakra and the fire element zones of the head, the respiratory diaphragm, and the thighs, can support in accessing and regulating intense emotions such as passion, power, and anger, mobilizing the fight response in Somatic Experiencing (SE) to bring someone out of collapse, and to provide psychological, physiological, and energetic strength to face unbearable experiences. One ISP practitioner recently wrote that she was surprised how much the fire element helped her client to face and process her lifelong suffering of the fear of dying from early trauma.
The layer of the versatile water element through the sacral chakra, that can be mobilized and distributed through the sacral chakra and the water element zones of the chest, pelvic, and foot areas, with its basic qualities of flow, flexibility, and receptivity as well as its ability to dissolve rigidities in both subtle and gross bodies, can be used to resolve rigid patterns in thought, emotion, and behavior to make stuck processes in any modality flow again, as well as help clients access the contents of the personal and collective unconscious through its quality of receptivity.

The changing collective body of the universe

Eastern phenomenologists found long ago that there is no boundary between any two bodies in the universe. Quantum physics has now established that there is no boundary between all the bodies in the universe at some level of quantum reality. That is, even at the level of the changing collective body of the universe, the universe is nondual at the quantum level. What does this mean for our gross and subtle bodies? It means that our bodies do not end at the boundaries of our gross and subtle bodies. Whether we look at our gross bodies or subtle bodies, they do not have a boundary with the rest of the changing body of the universe, even though it appears that they are separate from each other and the rest of the changing universe. So, our definition of our body depends on the level at which we look at it.

Neuroscience now provides evidence of how our illusions of separate individual gross and subtle bodies and their separation from the rest of the universe come about.

One, at the level of the individual gross body, the brain creates a boundary at the gross level through the nervous system and what it can sense. Even though there is no separation between an individual gross body and the environment at the quantum level, the construction of the sense of the body by the nervous system, based on sensations from the superficial level of the gross body that the nervous system can reach, makes it appear as though our body ends at the boundary of our skin where our nervous system ends.

Two, because our five senses are also limited in being able to perceive the lack of boundaries between our bodies and those of others at the quantum level, and because our gross bodies appear to be separate and move independently of each other to our eyes, the illusion that we have separate bodies and that they are separate from the environment in which they find themselves is maintained.

It is as though the waves in an ocean have constructed a separate sense of themselves from other waves and the rest of the ocean by sensing themselves on a superficial level, not only on the inside but also on the outside.

One might ask at this point how then we have a distinct sense of self attached to our separate bodies. Neuroscience also has an answer to this question (Damasio, 2000). When we ask ourselves ‘Who am I?’ and look for a sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’ in the body, we would find it to be nothing more than a body experience. The sense of self attached to the body is nothing more than a body experience. It is just another body experience, an abstraction of all the body experiences we happen to be having at the moment, like a distant hum of traffic from a freeway that seems to be singular and steady at a distance when, in fact, it is an abstraction of all the disparate noises on the highway at close range. It is nothing more than an object of experience that, by combining itself with awareness, deludes itself into thinking that it is a separate individual with the agency to act independently and generate its own experience.

Similar mechanisms must account for the sense of a separate body with a sense of self in the individual subtle body that people report in out-of-body experiences, as in the case of a woman who is on fire calmly observing her gross body being consumed by flames from another body with a sense of self nearby, her subtle body (Evertz, 2023).

Therefore, the sense of separation of the individual gross or subtle body from the rest of the changing universe is an illusion. What about the apparent sense of agency or free will on the part of either body? That there are no genuinely individual entities in the universe should answer the question of whether we have free will or agency. There is no individual agency or free will because there are no individuals to begin with.

Independent of the above line of reasoning, neuroscience has, by and large, established that, just like the appearance of a separate body and a separate sense of self, the appearance of free will is also nothing more than neurological fiction (Sapolsky, 2024). It turns out that even neurological changes that precede the conscious setting of an intention to do something happen ahead of the conscious setting of an intention!

The relationship between the individual gross or subtle body and the changing body of the universe

All bodies in the universe are interconnected at some level of quantum reality without any boundaries. Each body in the universe, no matter how small or large or separate they might appear, depends entirely on the rest of the universe. The bodies, no matter how small or large or separate they might seem, do not have any agency or free will to act on their own. They are like waves in an ocean. Like waves in an ocean that move with the whole ocean even though it might appear otherwise locally, all the bodies in the universe move with the entirety of the universe even though it might appear otherwise locally. All of this might sound mystical or spiritual. However, all of this is hard science now, as incredible as it might seem to most of us.

How does this really matter for a client who is sitting in front of you to treat their anxiety? In any case, the innate tendency to identify with our gross body, its sense of separation and agency, is for a purpose, after all: to transform our subtle body or our soul.

It turns out that the knowledge that we have multiple bodies or multiple levels to our bodies is of practical therapeutic value.

How knowledge of our multiple bodies and how to work with them can be of much therapeutic benefit

When Karl Jung extended the classical Freudian model of psychoanalysis to include a collective layer to a person’s unconscious, the model of analytical psychology was born. In Jungian psychology now, psyche or intelligence and matter are inseparable. The psyche or intelligence of the world and the material of the world are one and the same, called the Self, a concept that Jung acknowledges borrowing from Indian thought. The individual with their ego is part of the Self and inseparable from it. As to the events that unfold at the individual level, Jung said that they were more due to the will of the whole, the Self, and less due to the ego’s will at the individual level. Jung even wondered whether the ego had any free will at all, a question that modern neuroscience has answered in the negative. Jungian psychology is predicated on the assumption that in dealing with problems of individuals in consulting rooms, we can improve our understanding of our clients and their problems, and find additional resources to help them heal by adding the collective conscious and unconscious to our model of the psyche.

The collective unconscious is the realm of archetypes that play a critical role in forming the psyche. The archetypes also play a crucial role in an individual’s healing by providing additional resources, especially when the individual is at a loss as to how to face life’s challenges. A Jungian analyst, Verena Kast, once said rather lyrically that when the personal mother is absent in an orphanage, the archetypal mother rocks the child to comfort it. The Archetypal Psychology of James Hillman and others that owe their origin to Jungian Psychology is based on the idea that including and working with the archetypes of the unconscious can make every therapeutic modality more effective in understanding and helping their clients.

Almost all therapy modalities are predicated on the belief that bringing more self-knowledge to their clients, making their unconscious more conscious, is essential for their healing. Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, Virgina Satir’s Systemic Transformation Therapy, Sidra and Hal Stone’s Voice Dialogue based on Jungian Psychology, and Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) are examples of therapeutic approaches that help their clients differentiate their psyche into multiple parts. When we are suffering from narrowly identifying ourselves in a particular role, for instance, as a father who is failing, remembering that we are also other things, such as a man who has been of much service to the world, can be helpful as a resource in regulating and processing the suffering involved in the father role by making it more manageable to be with, provided we do not use it to avoid the suffering altogether. Similarly, knowing that our body consists of multiple levels or that we have many bodies can be of much therapeutic benefit in all therapy modalities, provided that we do not use our knowledge of other bodies, especially the higher bodies, to avoid the processing of suffering in the most immediate body we have, the individual gross body, in which we have incarnated to have specific life experiences to grow our soul or our subtle body.

Let me give you a specific example from my own process. The other night, I could not sleep because of a crisis in our immediate family, a failed suicide attempt of a 17-year-old who is dear to us, and because of the father’s resistance to providing psychotherapy support to the boy as well as other members of the family to prevent another attempt of which there is high risk because of multiple co-morbidities and a dysfunctional family environment. I was suffering. I was so stressed. I was helpless in despair. I could do nothing about it, at least not until the morning after. I expanded my suffering that would not let me sleep to as much of my gross body. It helped some to regulate it, but sleep was still far away. I engaged the knowledge that I have a subtle body by becoming aware of my suffering in a wave form in my body. I still focused on my suffering, but it felt much more tolerable than when I was fully identified with my gross body alone. At some point, I broadened my awareness to include more of the environment with the knowledge that I have a changing collective body that extends beyond my skin to the boundaries of the universe. I became calmer, and the suffering in my gross body decreased. Finally, I tried to use the knowledge that I also have an unchanging collective body of pure awareness as the basis of my changing collective body of the universe by trying to bring into my awareness its known essential qualities of stillness and peace at the core of my suffering. I did not know when I fell asleep. But when I woke up in the morning, I was no longer helpless or in despair and knew what further steps I could take to help the family in crisis.

When I flipped my smartphone on, I found that the father, who did not believe in therapy, had finally contacted the therapist I had recommended for the family more than a week ago! Such synchronicities, like a mother who, after working with me on her fear of dying from a near drowning accident in her childhood, being told on her return home by her young daughter who had a phobia around boats that she went on a fun boat ride with the father, no longer surprise me. I am delighted to rediscover again and again how connected we all are through the collective bodies, changing and unchanging, that we share. And how valuable it can be to remember that we have collective bodies as often as possible and turn to them especially when we cannot resolve things at the individual level to access the resources of our collective bodies to heal ourselves and the world.

Different ways of working with or staying connected with our changing collective body of the universe

There are many ways in which we work to connect the individual to our changing collective body of the universe and its resources in different therapy and healing modalities. Let us look at some of them before exploring how we can easily do that through the higher chakras of the third eye and the crown.

Social psychology models connect the individual to the collective by connecting and improving the relationship between the individual and the human collective. In a way, when we work with an individual in the context of couples work, family therapy, and group therapy, we are engaged in connecting an individual to the collective through the social groups they are members of. On a more abstract level, Jungian Psychology, Archetypal Psychology, and transpersonal psychologies connect the individual to the collective through their imaginal work with the archetypes. Religion-based and spirituality-based psychotherapies connect the individual to the collective through symbolism, ritual, and prayer. In case you are atheistic or agnostic, prayer is an evidence-based modality for healing, even in treating cancer (Dossey, 1995). There is evidence that cancer patients for whom others pray without their knowledge have higher rates of remission than those who are not prayed for. Jung offers the understanding that different Gods in different religions are symbols of either specific archetypal energies in our collective body or a symbol of the whole with which we try to connect the individual for the resolution of individual problems. American Indian traditions use the four directions as archetypal entities in their rituals to access collective resources for healing.

Energy modalities connect the resources of the collective to the individual in a more embodied manner. Reiki is a popular and simple healing method for connecting the individual energy to the collective energy through the therapist’s body. Biodynamic Cranio-Sacral Osteopathy or Therapy, Thought Field Therapy (TFT) and its more popular version Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) that have gathered enough evidence to qualify for approval of the American Psychological Association (APA) for continuing education for psychologists, are also examples of work that facilitate healing through connecting the individual to the collective energy of the universe.

Chakra psychology models, with or without the elements or the meridians, offer yet another embodied way to work with the disruptions in the connection between the individual subtle body and the collective body at various levels of the collective, from the lower archetypal levels whose energies are symbolized by the lower chakras to the highest archetypal level of the Self or God whose energies are symbolized by the higher chakras.

There are two ways in which we work to connect the individual to the resources of the changing collective body of the universe.

Through the third eye chakra and the crown chakra, charge the sixth and seventh layers of the individual subtle body with energies that are the most basic creative energies of the changing universe, to maximize the availability of the materials and knowledge that are most relevant for their life purpose, their healing, and the healing all those they serve.
Through nondual meditations that use awareness to sink into the truth of their multi-body existence by reflecting on statements such as “The world is in me”, “I am all that I see”, “There is only the world”, “I am the world” and so on.

The unchanging collective body of pure awareness

The fourth level of our body (or the fourth body we have) is called the unchanging collective body of pure awareness. It is an infinite and unchanging body of pure awareness that is the paradoxical basis of the changing universe of a multiplicity of subjects and objects. It is a paradoxical basis because, even though it is the basis of the changing universe, it does not undergo any change whatsoever. The changing universe is likened to a mirage in a desert. Like all the storms in a mirage cannot wet even one grain of sand in the desert, the unchanging collective body of the universe remains unaffected by the changing universe even though the changing universe cannot exist without it. It is, therefore, immanent and transcendent. Independent in existence (it cannot be reduced to or depend on something else), pure awareness, limitless, indivisible, complete, blissful (because it is without limits), and nondual (there can be only one such thing) are some words used to describe this ultimate basis of the universe. Because there is no boundary between any two things in the changing collective body of the universe, the changing collective body of the universe is one level of our body. Because the changing collective body of the universe cannot exist without its basis, the unchanging collective body of pure awareness, the unchanging collective body of pure awareness is another and final level of our body. The unchanging body of pure awareness is the body everything in the universe ultimately is. This is who we all are ultimately in the changing collective body of the universe.

The West has had difficulty accepting the possibility of the unchanging collective body of pure awareness for an additional reason. In addition to the assumptions that allowed as reality only what can be perceived through the five senses or measured, that all causes of all experiences can be arrived at by studying this limited level of reality, and that any study of the body and the world of levels that are beyond the scientific method through the exploration of subjective experiences is invalid, the West has had to contend with a philosophical limitation as well.

The philosophical limitation is the assumption that subjects and objects cannot exist without each other. This assumption is from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher whose philosophy is the foundation of Western science. The Swiss psychologist Karl Jung was influenced by Eastern thought and was well aware of the finding of Eastern phenomenologists of the unchanging collective body of pure awareness as the basis of the universe. His model extends all the way to include the changing collective body of the universe as the Self. His understanding of the Self, equivalent to the changing collective body of the universe in ISP, is that it is the totality from which no body in the universe is separate. And it is the ultimate governing principle of all things in the universe. Even Jung could not imagine the possibility of a self-aware subject, a subject that is capable of being aware of itself without turning itself into an object, something that anyone can immediately apprehend by turning one’s awareness on one’s witness consciousness through which we know everything, including the sense of self that neuroscience has found to be an object of consciousness, a mere product of body experience.

That such an easily verifiable possibility, the possibility of the existence of a self-aware subject without an object, eluded even the towering mind of Karl Jung speaks to the extent to which basic assumptions about reality can severely blind us to even the obvious reality right in front of our noses. This is what is called confirmation bias. Not aware of the erroneous assumptions that limited their inquiry, Karl Jung, like many others before and after him, started to attack the Eastern claim of the unchanging collective body of pure awareness non-factually, emotionally, and even offensively, with statements such as the East has no critical philosophy or logic to speak of, its mind assumes as reality what it fantasizes, and so on. It is such unfounded and rather offensive criticisms by Jung, whom I admire a lot, that became the motivation for my dissertation for my PhD in Clinical Psychology titled Advaita Vedanta and Jungian Psychology: Explorations Towards Further Reconciliation in East-West Dialogues on the Psyche (Selvam, 2008) which is freely available to read or download on Researchgate.

Evidence for the unchanging collective body of pure awareness

It turns out that there is philosophical evidence in the theories of monic idealism (it is all one mind) and monic materialism (it is all one substance) for the ultimate basis of the universe. Whatever it is, it has to be one thing only, for the following reason. If mind and matter are two different things, we can logically show that they cannot affect each other. Therefore, there is no real body-mind problem in the East, as in the West. Plato, the Greek philosopher’s view that we are a being and a non-being at the same time, supported the possibility of the co-existence of a changing collective body of the universe and an unchanging collective body of the universe at the same time.

Because science’s capacity to measure our bodies and the world is limited, it cannot establish the levels of reality beyond its reach. Awareness can do that because it is superordinate to everything and is the basis of this universe. However, what phenomenologists arrive at through their refined awareness of the deeper levels of reality has to be consistent with and not contradict the findings of science. Neuroscientists and quantum physicists at the cutting edge of their fields continue to increasingly corroborate the components of the four-level body presented here, including the finding of Eastern phenomenologists that the unchanging collective body of pure awareness is the ultimate basis of the universe.

We saw earlier how quantum physics has corroborated that, even at the level of the changing collective body of the universe, the universe might ultimately be nondual, a unity or a singularity without boundaries, at some level of the quantum world. We also saw how modern neuroscience, with its revolutionary discoveries of the neurological mechanisms that create the convincing ‘neurological’ fictions of our everyday experiences of separate and limited bodies, sense of self, and free will, corroborates the nondual nature of the changing collective body of the universe.

As for awareness, neuroscience is on the verge of giving up its claim that it is an experience of the brain. David Chalmers, a cognitive scientist who is at the cutting edge of consciousness research, has conceded that awareness could not be a function of the brain and has offered instead that awareness appears to be pan-psychic, a common entity across individuals, corroborating the superordinate status of awareness and the possibility of its singularity in the concept of the unchanging collective body of the universe as pure awareness.

Quantum physicists have also corroborated the possibility of the unchanging collective body of pure awareness being the irreducible basis of the universe. Erwin Shroedinger, one of the founders of the field of quantum physics, laid out the corroborating scientific evidence and his reasoning in his book My View of the World (Schroedinger,1961). He has not been alone in this understanding of the ultimate reality of our existence. Amit Goswami, in his book The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material Universe, offers a theoretical analysis of how the assumption that the basis of the world is an unchanging body of pure awareness removes all the major contradictions in quantum physics (Goswami, 1995). Another quantum physicist, David Bohm, in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, offers further corroborating evidence with the theory that the world has an explicate order (akin to the changing collective body of the universe) and an implicate order (akin to the unchanging collective body of pure awareness) (Bohm, 2002). Many other scientists have offered corroborating scientific evidence and reasoning since.

There is adequate empirical evidence for it in the experiences of people from different walks of life, from various countries, from multiple religions, from different times in our history, and in diverse life contexts (religious, spiritual, traumatic, falling in love, and just spontaneous). Please see Selvam (2008) for one compilation of this evidence.

The organization Science and Nonduality (SAND) hosts conferences regularly where scientists and phenomenologists come together to discuss the science and experience of nonduality.

Ultimately, all levels of the body have to be personally verifiable. Advaita Vedanta texts, based on The Indian Upanishads, offer this more complete knowledge of the world arrived at by phenomenologists with refined awareness around four thousand years ago. They also provide a methodology for personally verifying it through self-inquiry with awareness as the tool.

The questions that often arise are a) to what extent the knowledge of one’s unchanging collective body of pure awareness is of practical therapeutic value, b) what are the different ways in which the resources of this collective body can be mobilized in different therapy settings, and c) what are the different benefits that can accrue to an individual when the different practices are implemented.

Methods of utilizing the unchanging collective body of pure awareness

Just remembering that we are also the unchanging collective body of pure awareness and of its qualities of stillness, peace, completeness, limitlessness, bliss, and its ability to be undisturbed in every experience can be of immediate help in alleviating and regulating our suffering to a manageable level.

According to Buddha, there are three sources of suffering. One is physical. This is a matter of constitution and conditioning. The second is our psychological reaction to it, which can help or worsen the physical pain. This is also a matter of conditioning. Somatic approaches, including medicine, work with the first, and psychological approaches work with the second, the psychological source of suffering. However, the third and most important reason for suffering is the overidentification of one’s awareness with our gross body when we are incarnate in a gross body and with our subtle body when we are not. This overidentification with our gross and subtle bodies, in turn, worsens the physical and psychological conditions of suffering. The increasing suffering, in turn, increases our identification with the individual bodies and decreases our identification with our changing and unchanging collective bodies. We end up feeling all the more isolated and disconnected from the resources of our collective bodies. How can we identify more with the undisturbed, unchanging collective body of pure awareness in the midst of suffering or in the grip of a great but misguided passion that is compelling us to commit to a marriage to a person we hardly know but are infatuated with?

A straightforward technique is to have the client say, “My body is suffering. I am not.” “My body is terrified of dying. I am not.” “My body wants to commit to a marriage with the person I have had only two dates with. I do not”, and so on. If it works, no one can say that a method will work all the time for everybody, the usual changes one can observe are as follows: The individual gross body will get less stressed and more regulated, with a reduction in the level of suffering to a more manageable level that one can even continue to process the unpleasant emotion through, without the body shutting down or getting further dysregulated.

We know from research that mindfulness is therapeutic. There are three types of mindfulness. One is where our awareness is identified with the sense of self in the body to create a subject, observer, or ego. We are aware that we are having experiences such as thoughts, feelings, body sensations, movements, memories, and so on. The second type of mindfulness is that we are aware that we are observing ourselves engaging in different kinds of experiences, such as acts of thinking, feeling, sensing, remembering, moving, and so on. In both instances, the focus of our awareness tends to be not so much on the subject or the observer as it is on the experiences themselves, the objects of our observation.

The third type of mindfulness is when our awareness is focused more on the subject or the observer itself, especially on the sense of self that, when fused with our awareness, becomes the ego or the observer or the subject. This higher form of mindfulness, where we focus on the subject, can lead to the separation of our awareness from the sense of self. We saw earlier from neuroscientific evidence that the sense of self is nothing more than a product of body experience, an object of experience, that arises with every experience as its shadow. The sense of self appears to be, in combination with awareness, the observer, the ego, or the subject of action or experience with agency and free will when it has neither. When we focus our awareness on the sense of self, awareness separates from the sense of self it habitually identifies with. When we move up the ladder of mindfulness by focusing our awareness on our sense of self, we can come closer and closer to grasping or apprehending the reality of our changing and unchanging collective bodies. We become increasingly capable of adopting their points of view and accessing their resources.

Working with the two higher chakras at the third eye and the crown and charging the two higher layers of the subtle body whose energies embody the deepest levels of resources of matter and intelligence that govern the universe, the possibility of personally discovering and grounding our awareness in and as the unchanging collective body of pure awareness increases. So does the possibility of using the resources of the collective bodies for healing of the individual bodies.

There are many simple practices we can do quickly to anchor ourselves at the level of the unchanging collective body of pure awareness, which in India is called The Brahman, meaning ‘a very big thing’ in Sanskrit. These practices can yield various benefits, from the mundane to the spiritual. One set of practices revolves around training one’s awareness to the presence of essential qualities of the unchanging body of pure awareness in all experiences of the world and of oneself: Permanence. Unlimitedness. Completeness, Pure awareness, and Bliss. Another set of practices involves meditating on statements such as “Everything is in my awareness”, “My awareness is everywhere”, “My awareness that is everywhere is unperturbed by every experience of my body and the world”, and “The world, as well as my body, are in unchanging pure awareness”, and so on. A third set of practices involves separating our permanent awareness from the ever-changing sense of self, which is a temporary product of body experience, with statements such as “Who is aware of the world?”, “Who is aware of my body”, “Who am I?”, and so on, and then locating and separating ‘the sense of I’ or ‘the sense of self’ or ‘the sense of me’ or what Ramana Maharishi called ‘I thought’ as another body experience. One can also meditate on the third eye or the crown chakras or charge the upper two layers of the individual subtle body as a preparation for these practices.

The range of possible benefits from including the level of the unchanging collective body of pure awareness in healing modalities

As we have seen, the benefits of taking the unchanging collective body of pure awareness into account in therapy can help reduce and regulate suffering to a manageable level. When the suffering at the individual level is so overwhelming that it shuts the individual bodies and their processes down or dysregulates the individual bodies to the point of dissociation or other intense psychophysiological (psychosomatic) symptoms, regulating the suffering to a manageable level by taking the unchanging collective body of pure awareness into account can help us to continue to process the suffering to completion and transformation. The unchanging collective body of the universe of pure awareness, because it has the innate ability to contain the entirety of the changing collective body of the universe without being perturbed by it, is a natural container and resource for healing at any level of the body, from the level of individual gross and subtle bodies all the way to the level of the changing collective body of the universe.

The most significant benefit in including the unchanging collective body of pure awareness in self-inquiry is the possibility of enlightenment, the enduring awareness, grasp, and realization that, ultimately, one’s true identity is none other than the nondual, unchanging, and unperturbed collective body of pure awareness that is the basis of the changing collective body of the universe and all bodies therein. It is believed that such realization is the true end of suffering and the cessation of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, in Buddhism and Hinduism. The soul or the individual subtle body strives to improve itself from one life to the next till it is liberated in enlightenment. For most if not all clients, the goals of therapy are modest: a reduction in anxiety here and an improvement in a relationship there. So, the real reason for including all levels of the body is not for enlightenment but for a more efficient resolution of such frequent problems encountered in most if not all modes of therapy.

In conclusion

In our discussion, we have undoubtedly oversimplified the differences between the East and the West. As always, some exceptions prove the rule. In psychological approaches that do not adequately address the body, Jungian Psychology, for example, and in body psychotherapy approaches such as Reichian Therapy and Biosynthesis, there have been efforts to expand our understanding of who we are by including more levels of the psyche and more levels of the body, beyond the strict and narrow.

Some might say that we are confounding the psychological with the spiritual. To them, we say that the division is arbitrary and is a carryover from misguided conflict and split between religion and science in the West that has impoverished both psychological and spiritual approaches going back to the Age of Enlightenment in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Some might say that people can misuse the higher levels of the psyche or body to ‘dissociate,’ escape, ‘prematurely transcend,’ or ‘spiritually bypass’ the work we have come here to do in this life. To them, we say that misuse is possible on every level with every method. Seeking one type of bodywork or another or taking medication to avoid facing the suffering necessary for more profound and long-lasting healing and transformation is, after all, a plague of our times, contributing to as much as 25% of the symptoms that people go to medical doctors being psychophysiological (formerly psychosomatic). What safeguards us against such misguided misuse is ultimately our ability to discriminate what is important, what is valuable, and what would work for the client given their aptitudes and resources, given the problems they are facing, and the goals they are seeking from therapy.

In Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP), the focus is on the here and now, in the most immediate body we have incarnated into in this life, the individual gross body of the East or the physical body of the West, and on the suffering clients are facing in their lives in the form of symptoms such as anxiety and depression, and personal as well as professional relational difficulties. We try to help them resolve their symptoms through the practice of embodying emotions, expanding and regulating the conscious experience of emotional experiences to as much of the body and for as long as possible, based on recent evidence that the ability of the brain to process a situation is compromised when the experiences of the relevant emotions are blocked in any part of the body. We work with other levels of the body, the quantum level of the physical body, the individual subtle body, the changing collective body of the universe, and the unchanging collective body of pure awareness, only to undo the defenses against emotions on those levels or in the individual gross body or to access the resources of those other levels of our body that can be of help in accessing and embodying emotions in the individual gross or physical body. ISP is a complementary approach for improving diverse outcomes (physical, energy, cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual) in all healing modalities (somatic, energy, psychological, and spiritual).

Even though how the practice of embodying emotions can bring about a greater capacity for a range of emotional experiences has a modern neuroscientific basis, the importance of building a greater capacity for opposites in emotional experiences, especially for unpleasant experiences, for personal and spiritual growth has a rich tradition. It is there in the importance placed on the concept of building affect tolerance for healing and building resilience in psychoanalysis (Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood, 1995). It is there as the capacity to tolerate opposites in Western Alchemy; and in Jungian psychology for developing a healthy ego and the ego-self axis (Jung, 1960). The capacity to tolerate opposites is also very much emphasized as an essential qualification on the path of enlightenment in Hinduism and Buddhism and as forbearance in other world religions (Saraswathi, 2002). To the extent to which healing modalities do not adhere to this fundamental truth and try to avoid the necessary suffering involved in their healing approaches and techniques, and choose to emphasize soothing over growth as a standard strategy, to that extent they are of disservice to the souls who walk into their consulting rooms. And to that extent, they will not be fulfilled as therapists and are more likely to suffer burnout.

Explore the Capstone Training

If you are interested in overcoming the one-body error and becoming a more effective therapist doing deeper transformational work with your clients, explore the ISP Professional Training, a 12-day Capstone Training in three 4-day modules.

About Raja Selvam, PhD

Dr. Raja Selvam, a licensed clinical psychologist from the United States, is the developer of Integral Somatic Psychology™ (ISP™) and the author of the bestselling book The practice of embodying emotions: A method for improving cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes in 13 languages. He has helped over 2,000 therapists in 20 countries graduate from his ISP Professional Training.

Dr. Selvam is also a senior trainer in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) professional trauma training program. He has taught in over two dozen countries on six continents for nearly thirty years. His work is inspired by Jungian and archetypal psychologies, Kleinian and intersubjective schools of psychoanalysis, Reichan and Neo-Reichian body psychotherapy approaches such as Bioenergetics, Bodynamic Somatic Developmental Psychology from Denmark, and Somatic Experiencing® (SE™), affective neuroscience, quantum physics, yoga, Polarity Therapy, and Advaita Vedanta (a spiritual psychology from India). Read more about Dr. Raja Selvam

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