Formative psychology

1. Introduction

Version followed: Stanley Keleman's late "Bodying Practice" in five steps (as he wrote it in the preface to Forming Your Aging, 2018), read together with its earlier form, the "How Exercise" (introduced in 1974, written up in Embodying Experience, 1987), as his students report it. Where the two versions differ, both are given.

Formative psychology is Stanley Keleman's (1931–2018) approach. He developed it from 1957 and taught it at the Center for Energetic Studies in Berkeley, California. Today it is taught at institutes in Solingen (Germany), Zurich and Rio de Janeiro. It grew out of the Reich–Lowen tradition. Keleman had Lowen as a teacher, and he also studied with Graf Dürckheim, Medard Boss's Daseinsanalysis school and the emotion researcher Nina Bull. He later said his concept is closer to Nina Bull's attitude theory than to Reich's "armour". Late in life he called the work education rather than psychotherapy. It is a method and a theory of human development, not a manualised therapy. [source: Wikipedia; Keleman in Shrink Rap Radio #317; Strecker 2018]

How change happens: a person is a forming process, and the body is that process: "The body is the unconscious" (Hickey 2007). Every emotional pattern is a muscular shape, such as squeezing, stiffening, bracing or collapsing. Insight and understanding where a pattern came from do not change it. Change comes from what Keleman calls voluntary muscular-cortical effort (VMCE). VMCE is not willpower but "a muscular neural effort" (Keleman 2012). With it, the person makes the pattern on purpose, then takes it apart in measured steps, so the cortex and the muscles learn graded control over a reflex. Repeating this builds new, stable forms. Keleman's co-author Seab puts the stakes as "we are either forming ourselves or being formed" (2018). [source: Keleman 2012; Hickey 2007; Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]

2. Framework

Formative psychology gives no fixed session protocol, session count or manual. Its structure has two levels: the formative process, which runs across a whole course of work, and the five-step practice, which is repeated inside sessions. [source: Adler; Keleman 2012] [uncertain: no session count or course length is given in the sources]

A. Phases of the formative process (across a course of work). These are Keleman's three-phase model of any life transition. The 1974 Summer Institute gave one week to each phase. [source: Adler; Darakchiev]

Endings. Goal: recognise and take apart a form that no longer works, through the muscular pattern by which the person holds on to it. Move on when the old pattern can be made and unmade on purpose rather than only happening to the person. [criterion: synthesis]
Middle ground ("being in the soup"). Goal: stay with a less-organised, unstable state of ups and downs without collapsing or forcing a premature new shape. Adler gives the guiding question as "How do you handle yourself in the Sea of Creation?" Move on when the person can contain this state, and new impulses and images begin to appear. [criterion: synthesis]
New form. Goal: give the new impulses a muscular shape, practise it until it is stable, and take it into daily life. [source: Adler; Darakchiev]

B. Phases of organisation (a way to assess the material). Keleman described four degrees of firmness in any form: motile and short-lived; porous and malleable; firmer, semi-rigid and repeatable; and dense and compressed. Practical use: decide how much effort is needed and how small the steps must be. Dense, long-held patterns need patient, layered work. Porous states, which Keleman also linked to late life, need help to build containment. [source: Keleman 2012; Silva 2022; Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]

C. The five-step practice (within a session). See §4.1. Each session usually works through one cycle on one pattern, sometimes several. [synthesis]

Formats [source: Adler; Strecker; Keleman interview]:

Individual sessions. The client talks about their life. The therapist watches for the involuntary gestures that come up, freezes one at a key moment, and works with it in five steps.
Small groups. Up to about 16 people, historically seated on cushions around a mattress. One person works with Keleman while the others watch and join in.
Residential and summer programmes (for example, three weeks with about 45 participants).
Family-body groups. Six weekly 4-hour sessions in 1974.
Dream workshops. These ran yearly in Berkeley and Solingen.

Between sessions, the client practises on their own regularly. Strecker reports that Keleman valued steady practice over intensity. Keleman named no fixed schedule. [source: Strecker; Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]

When to move on [synthesis, based on the sources' aims]:

From step 1 to 2 when the client can show the pattern as a stable shape rather than only describe it.
From 2 to 3 when they can feel at least two or three distinct levels of intensity.
From 3 to 4 when they can undo the pattern in steps without jumping straight to "relaxed" or collapsing.
To step 5 when a new response has turned up and can be repeated.
Out of the course when the client can run the steps on their own in real situations.

3. Guiding principles

[source for each: as tagged]

Work with how, not why. Ask "How do you do that?", not "Why?". Where a pattern came from is "interesting but unimportant" for changing it (Hickey). In practice: when the client explains, redirect to how they are doing it in the body right now. [Adler; Hickey]
The pattern is a present, embodied action. Treat a dilemma as something the client is doing now with their muscles, not as a story about the past. [Hickey]
Effort is voluntary, but not willpower. VMCE is graded muscular-cortical effort, not forcing yourself. In practice: ask for small, felt changes in pressure. Never ask the client to override a feeling. [Keleman 2012; interview]
Less is more. Use small increments, low intensity and gains the person can digest. Overdoing it is a mistake. Never push for a big release. [Strecker]
Undo in steps, never all at once. Take a pattern apart "in measured steps to prevent rapid disorganizing and loss of boundaries." In practice: "do it less", not "relax". [Keleman 2012; interview]
Slow is a quality, not a speed. Keleman's line is quoted as "doing slowly is not doing slowly": what matters is lengthening and grading the response, not moving in slow motion. In practice: coach steps of graded intensity. [Silva 2022]
The pause is where choice lives. Delaying an action already under way creates a pause in which new options appear. In practice: build waiting into every exercise. [Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]
No catharsis. Keleman rejected catharsis, rebirthing and the search for a hidden "real self". He set firm limits on emotional discharge and acting out in groups. In practice: contain and grade strong emotion rather than intensify it. [Strecker; Adler]
Work with the inherited and the voluntary together. Reflex shapes such as startle, alarm and collapse are inherited. Choice grows in conversation with them, not against them. In practice: respect the reflex and add graded variation to it. [Keleman interview; Haller et al. 2018]
The client must reinforce every intervention. "Any intervention requires that the person reinforce that intervention." In practice: follow every insight or touch with the client's own action and home practice. [Keleman interview]
Body and language go together. "You can't work with somebody bodily and not involve language." In practice: after each step, help the client put sensation, feeling and image into words. [Keleman interview]
Start from the person's own material. Begin with the client's spontaneous gestures, dreams and stories, not with set exercises or big movements such as kicking or arm-swinging. [Strecker]
Co-bodying and education. The therapist is a co-former and teacher of a skill, not someone who fixes the client. In practice: teach self-management the client can use on their own. [Strecker]
Individualise. Each person combines intensity, speed and duration in their own way. Do not impose a standard dose. [Strecker]
Repetition stabilises. New form becomes "tissue memory" only through practice, so plan home repetition. [Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]
Respect the person's constitution. Keleman used Sheldon's body types to frame differences between people. In practice: expect different bodies to form differently and do not hold one ideal shape. [Strecker]

4. Intervention inventory

Notes for every exercise below:

Positions. The sources rarely name a starting position. Unless one is stated, the client sits or stands comfortably, whichever lets them feel the pattern best. [synthesis]
Muscular contraction. All the exercises use graded voluntary contraction. Screen first, and keep effort low to moderate, for people with: cardiovascular disease or uncontrolled hypertension (avoid breath-holding at peak effort); recent injury or surgery; acute pain conditions; pregnancy; epilepsy; psychosis; severe dissociation; active suicidality; or recent trauma without stabilisation. [synthesis: Keleman's method is low-intensity and the sources name no contraindications]
Not a medical treatment. No exercise here treats physical disease.

4.1 Bodying Practice: the five steps (core method, late version)

Purpose / when. The core method, usable on any pattern: a feeling such as anxiety, insecurity or anger; a relational stance; a dream image; a decision; a life transition. Keleman calls it the evolved form of the How Exercise. [source: Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]
Steps (paraphrased from Keleman's preface; example detail [synthesis]):
1. Notice and shape. The client notices what is going on and gives the experience a muscular shape. Example: the "I'm being invaded" feeling becomes a slight bracing of the shoulders, a pulled-back chest and a tight jaw. The shape should be small and specific, not theatrical.
2. Differentiate. The client slowly increases the pressure of that shape in small steps, then decreases it in small steps. For example, 3 to 5 graded levels up, then the same levels down. [count: synthesis] They feel each level as its own state.
3. Pause and wait. The client stops all deliberate effort and waits for sensations, feelings, images and impulses to arrive, without doing anything. Allow 30 seconds to a few minutes. [duration: synthesis]
4. Practise. Repeat steps 1–3 to "stabilize and solidify tissue memory". This is done in session and at home.
5. Take the new form into the world. Agree on a specific situation where the client will use the new graded response, for example holding themselves firmly but not rigidly when a family member arrives unannounced.
Example language (illustrative):
- "Show me in your body what 'being pushed around' is. Just the shape, small."
- "Now a little more, one notch. Stop. What's different?"
- "Now one notch less, the same way you added it."
- "Stop doing anything. Just wait and let whatever comes come."
- "What did you learn about how you make this? Where will you practise it this week?"
Watch for:
- Big, dramatic movements or emotional discharge. Bring the client back to small increments.
- Jumping from "tense" straight to "relaxed". Keleman's instruction is to do it less, not to let go.
- Talking about the past instead of feeling the present.
- Breath-holding.
Signs it is working: the client can name distinct intensity levels; new sensations or feelings (warmth, pulsing, a softening, an impulse to reach) appear during the pause; and they report having a choice in the trigger situation. [Hickey's account of less panic and more ability to hold herself "firmly or gently"]

4.2 The How Exercise (earlier five-step version)

Purpose / when. The same method as 4.1, framed as five questions. Keleman introduced it at the 1974 Summer Institute and described it in Embodying Experience (1987). Use it when the client relates well to inquiry. [source: Adler; Kralev; Silva 2022]
Steps. Two reported versions, each paraphrased:
- Kralev's version:
  1. How am I doing what I am doing in this situation?
  2. How do I use myself muscularly to do it?
  3. How do I disorganise the structure I no longer need?
  4. How do I create a new model?
  5. How can I use what I now know?
- Silva's Brazilian version (Keleman 2017):
  1. Organise a muscular model of the experience.
  2. Intensify it: "how do I use my muscles to organise this action?"
  3. De-intensify by going back and forth in pressure.
  4. Receive and contain the involuntary responses.
  5. Receive the new form and apply what was learned.
- [uncertain: the two versions word steps 4 and 5 differently. In the reports, waiting and containment is step 4 in Silva's and part of creating a new model in Kralev's. Embodying Experience is not drawn on.]
Example language (illustrative): "How do you make yourself small right now? Use your muscles to show me." / "How do you undo that, a step at a time?" / "When you've stopped, how do you hold what's arriving?"
Watch for: answers that come from self-concepts ("I'm just an insecure person") rather than from direct experience. Ask "how?" again until a movement is found. [Adler]

4.3 "How do you make it?" inquiry

Purpose / when. Use it to turn a trait or label into an action the client can feel, whenever they describe themselves in fixed terms ("I'm insecure", "I get anxious"). [source: Adler]
Steps:
1. Interrupt the description.
2. Ask how the client makes the state, for example "How do you make the insecurity?" (Adler's report of Keleman's question).
3. Keep repeating "How do you…?" until the client finds a specific muscular action, such as pulling the chest in, holding the breath or narrowing the eyes.
4. Go into 4.1 with that action.
Example language: "How do you make the anxiety?" (Keleman, as quoted by Adler). Illustrative follow-ups: "And how do you do that with your breath? With your hands?"
Watch for: the client experiencing the question as an accusation ("you're doing it to yourself"). Frame it as curiosity about skill, not blame. [synthesis]

4.4 Accordion exercise (intensify, disassemble, wait, implement)

Purpose / when. The basic training of VMCE. It draws on Keleman's image of the body's "accordion-like" pulsation between arousal and containment. Use it to give the client graded control over any held pattern. [source: Strecker; Marginalian on Emotional Anatomy]
Steps (Strecker's sequence):
1. Identify what is present in the body.
2. Increase muscular tone in separate, distinct steps.
3. Take the tone apart in small steps.
4. Wait for the resonance.
5. Use what was learned.
Coaching [synthesis]: Each step up or down is a distinct "notch", held for a few breaths. Coming down should take at least as many notches as going up.
Example language (illustrative): "Think of an accordion: squeeze one fold, then another. Now open one fold at a time."
Watch for:
- Rushing.
- Getting overwhelmed at high intensity. Lower the top level.
- Numbness after letting go, which suggests collapse rather than containment. Go back to a lower-intensity shape.
- It is working when the client's answers become more differentiated and less all-or-nothing.

4.5 Freezing a spontaneous gesture and micro-movement work

Purpose / when. Use it when an involuntary gesture appears while the client is talking about their life, especially hand and arm movements at a charged moment. This is Keleman's preferred entry point, rather than set exercises. [source: Strecker]
Steps:
1. Let the client talk. Watch the hands, arms, shoulders and face.
2. At the key moment, ask them to freeze the gesture exactly as it is.
3. Draw their attention to the shape: which muscles, how much pressure.
4. Work with micro-movements in muscle and tissue tension rather than large movements: a little more tension in the fingers, a little less.
5. Notice how the small change spreads through the whole body and changes feeling and thought.
6. Name the behavioural choice the gesture carries.
Example language (illustrative): "Stop. Keep your hand just like that. What is that hand doing?" / "Tighten it one hair more. Now one hair less. What happens in your chest?"
Watch for: self-consciousness when the gesture is pointed out. Normalise it and keep the tone light. It is working when the client links the gesture to a stance in life, such as "I'm holding on" or "I'm pushing away".

4.6 Hand-in-hand graded pressure

Purpose / when. A simple, safe VMCE practice for learning "micro-acts" and the difference between control (on/off) and graded self-influence. Good as an opening exercise and as home practice. [source: Silva 2022, citing Keleman 2017]
Steps:
1. Hold the right hand with the left.
2. Vary the pressure and intensity of the outer hand, low, medium and high, going back and forth.
3. After each change, wait and notice how the inner hand, and the rest of the body, responds.
4. Talk it through. [step 4: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "Let your left hand hold your right, just enough to feel it. Now a bit firmer. Wait. What does the held hand do?"
Watch for: pressure that hurts. Keep it comfortable. It is working when the client notices subtle responses such as warmth, the hand seeming to grow or shrink, or a sense of being held.

4.7 Fist in graded steps; opening versus closing

Purpose / when. Shows that a reflex act becomes a choice when it is broken into steps, and that opening takes more organisation than closing. Use it as teaching, and with clients who hold on or cannot let go. [source: Keleman interview (Shrink Rap Radio #317); Silva 2022]
Steps:
1. Make a fist in four separate steps, pausing at each.
2. Open it in four steps.
3. Compare the experience at each step.
4. Compare how much effort closing takes with how much opening takes.
Example language (illustrative): "Close your hand a quarter of the way. Stop. Now half. What changes in your arm, your breath?"
Watch for: joint pain or arthritis. Use a softer grip. [synthesis]

4.8 Working with the startle (alarm) pattern in anxiety

Purpose / when. Use it for anxiety and panic. Keleman treats anxiety as an inherited startle shape: hands open, neck frozen, breath held, with a "readiness to act". [source: Keleman interview]
Steps:
1. Ask the client to show their anxiety as a posture.
2. Exaggerate it a little, in steps: eyes widen, shoulders lift, neck stiffens, breath catches.
3. Reduce it in the same steps ("do it less just like you did it more").
4. Pause and wait.
5. Repeat until the client can stop the pattern partway at will.
6. Practise the partial version in the anxiety-provoking situation.
Example language (illustrative): "Show me how you startle, only 20 percent. Now 30. Now back to 20, then 10."
Watch for:
- Real panic setting off. Lower the intensity, open the eyes, orient to the room. [synthesis]
- Hyperventilation. Do not encourage breath intensification. [synthesis]
- It is working when the client experiences the anxiety as something they organise, with steps they can influence.

4.9 Working with the collapse sequence in depression

Purpose / when. Use it for depressed, hopeless or helpless states. Keleman describes a series of motor states (alarm, helplessness, withdrawal, collapse) that are worked with in the same way as startle. [source: Keleman interview]
Steps:
1. Identify which state in the series the client is in now.
2. Shape it a little more, then a little less.
3. Explore the step before it in the series. For example, from collapse, organise a small bit of withdrawal or alarm, which has more form.
4. Wait.
5. Practise building a minimal containing shape: a little firmness in the spine, feet pressing lightly into the floor. [example: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "How do you make the giving-up? Let your chest sink just a little more. Now organise one small notch of holding yourself up."
Watch for:
- Deeper collapse or hopelessness. Assess suicide risk using standard practice (see §5).
- With collapsed clients, work towards building form rather than reducing tension. [synthesis]

4.10 Mapping the stress continuum (assessment)

Purpose / when. Use it to locate where a client's response to a challenge (an "insult") gets stuck. From Emotional Anatomy, as summarised secondarily. [source: Marginalian] [uncertain: book]
Steps:
1. Take a recent stressor.
2. Trace the bodily sequence step by step: the investigating response; assertion; annoyance; anger or avoidance; submission and collapse. Stages can be skipped, and severe threat can jump straight to an extreme.
3. Mark the stage where the client usually lands, and the stage where the stressor could have been resolved.
4. Use 4.1 to practise the earlier, more effective stage, such as graded assertion.
Example language (illustrative): "When your boss criticised you, what did your body do first? And then?"
Watch for: treating the stages as a fixed ladder. Keleman's account says the order varies.

4.11 Reading somatic shapes (overbound and underbound; rigid, dense, swollen, collapsed)

Purpose / when. A frame for observing structure and choosing the direction of work, from Emotional Anatomy (1985). Keleman describes the pulsatory "accordion" becoming "overbound" (over-contained) or "underbound" (under-contained) under stress, and four basic shapes (rigid, dense, swollen, collapsed), each a different direction of pulsatory force. Real people are mixtures. These are Keleman's theoretical constructs, not physiological diagnoses. [source: Marginalian; Darakchiev]
Steps [synthesis]:
1. Observe the client standing, sitting and moving.
2. Note whether patterns look over-contained or under-contained.
3. For over-contained patterns, work mainly on graded de-intensifying.
4. For under-contained patterns, work mainly on building graded firmness and containment.
[uncertain: the detailed descriptions and the typical emotional themes of each of the four shapes are in Emotional Anatomy and Patterns of Distress (1989), which are not drawn on. My recollection is that rigid and dense are overbound, and swollen and collapsed are underbound; this is unverified.]
Watch for: labelling clients. Use the shapes as working hypotheses checked against the client's experience.

4.12 Dream bodying

Purpose / when. Keleman treats a dream as a personal myth, a task the organism sets itself. Embodying the dream makes it a usable action. Use it with any dream the client brings. It was also the core of his yearly workshops. [source: Strecker; Keleman interview; Adler]
Steps:
1. The client tells the dream. Variations: told backwards, told only in part, or not told at all, working from the posture the client takes as they get ready to speak.
2. Choose an image, figure or feeling.
3. The client takes on its bodily stance, for example the anger, frustration or helplessness in the dream (Adler), or the squeezed, confined body in a "well" dream (Keleman).
4. Intensify and de-intensify in steps.
5. Wait. Adler reports pulsing excitement, then the forming of a containing shape.
6. Try a contrasting dream figure's action. Keleman's example is a figure who opens a door, used against the client's habitual stance.
7. Link the shape to a waking-life situation.
Example language (illustrative): "Before you tell it, notice how you're getting ready to tell it." / "Become the person squeezed in the well, a little. Now loosen one step."
Watch for: panic or throat tightness, as in Keleman's well-dream example. Work at lower intensity and in smaller steps. It is working when the dream image becomes a felt choice the client can practise.

4.13 Somagrams

Purpose / when. Drawings that make the bodily-emotional attitude of an event or relationship visible. Used in groups and for family-of-origin work. [source: Bogdanova; Adler]
Steps:
1. The client draws themselves, or a large picture of their family of origin, showing how each person holds their body emotionally.
2. They talk about the drawing.
3. They pick one shape from it and work with it through 4.1. [step 3: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "Draw yourself as you were in that kitchen, not what you looked like but how you held yourself."
Watch for: pressure to draw well. Reassure the client that only the shape matters.

4.14 Stretching a memory

Purpose / when. Places a memory in a formative continuum. Used in Keleman's early groups. [source: Adler] [uncertain: procedure only briefly described]
Steps [details: synthesis]:
1. The client brings up a memory and its body shape.
2. They extend it backwards: what was forming before it?
3. They extend it forwards: what form did it take afterwards, and what is it forming towards?
4. They notice the bodily changes along the way.
Example language (illustrative): "Stay with that moment. Now stretch it back: how were you organising yourself just before?"

4.15 Applying HOW to one's story

Purpose / when. Shows how the present structure was organised from earlier experience, and turns life story into something the client can work with. [source: Bogdanova; Hickey]
Steps:
1. The client tells a recurring story, such as a family conflict.
2. At each key point, ask how they are shaping themselves.
3. Compare the bodily shapes of different versions of the story (Hickey's "comparative narratives").
4. Practise forming a different response. [steps 3–4: partly synthesis]
Example language (illustrative): "When you tell me 'she always blocks the driveway', what happens in your body as you say it?"

4.16 Pausing a response already under way

Purpose / when. Keleman places choice in the pause created by delaying an action that has already started. Use it for impulsive reactions such as snapping, appeasing or fleeing. [source: Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]
Steps:
1. Re-create the start of the reaction, for example the lean forward before snapping.
2. Stop it partway and keep the slight tension.
3. Wait in the pause.
4. Notice what other options appear.
5. Practise this in real situations. [steps: synthesis based on the source's principle]
Example language (illustrative): "Start to turn away, but only halfway. Stay there. What else becomes possible?"

4.17 Family-body role-play: freeze-frame, exaggeration, mirroring

Purpose / when. Shows how members of a family or group shape one another's bodies. It comes from Keleman's 1974 Family Body groups, run with Adler. Use it in group or family work. [source: Adler]
Steps:
1. Form "families" of five or more. Each person chooses a role and they improvise a scene.
2. The facilitator stops the action suddenly (freeze-frame).
3. Each person intensifies, then softens, their stance.
4. One person exaggerates their role's bodily organisation while the others copy it (mirroring).
5. Members describe their own bodily response to another's stance, without judgment, for example "I notice I get agitated and pull back when you reach towards me" (Adler's example).
6. Discuss as a group.
Watch for: catharsis or acting out. Keleman set firm limits on both. Also watch for scapegoating. Keep feedback to first-person bodily statements. [synthesis]

4.18 Structural observation: standing and walking

Purpose / when. Shows the client's habitual organisation. Used in early groups. [source: Adler]
Steps:
1. The client stands, then walks.
2. The therapist studies their structure: how they meet the ground, posture, where they hold or collapse.
3. The client then moves. In early groups this was often lying on a mattress.
4. Take one observed pattern into 4.1. [synthesis]
Watch for: feeling scrutinised. Ask permission and share observations as tentative. [synthesis]

4.19 Enacting a constriction with a prop (reported; do not replicate as described)

What the source reports. For a constricted throat, Adler's early work with Keleman had her act out self-strangulation with a towel and then gradually do it less. [source: Adler]
Safety. Neck compression is dangerous (it risks airway, vascular and vagal injury) and is a re-traumatising image for anyone who has been choked or strangled, so do not replicate it. Safer alternative within the same method: the client shapes the throat constriction with the throat muscles alone, or represents it by squeezing a rolled towel in their hands, then de-intensifies in steps. [synthesis]

4.20 Touch to help tissue let go

What the source reports. Keleman mentions only briefly putting hands on a client to help tissue relax. He stressed that the client's own action must follow any touch. The other sources describe no systematic touch, and the method mostly uses the client's own effort. [source: Keleman interview] [uncertain: no touch protocol found]
Steps, if used [all consent steps: synthesis]:
1. Explain the purpose and the exact place (for example, a hand resting on the upper back or forearm), with no sensitive areas.
2. Ask, and offer a no-touch alternative such as self-contact (4.6).
3. Agree a stop signal.
4. Use light, still contact for a short time.
5. Check in during and after.
6. Follow with the client's own voluntary practice of the same change.
Example language (illustrative): "I could rest a hand on your shoulder blade while you let that hold go a notch. Or you can do it on your own. Which do you prefer? Say 'stop' anytime."
Note: touch needs specific training and supervision, and a check of what your licence and jurisdiction allow. Sexual or genital touch is never part of this or any technique.

4.21 Forming practice in ageing and porous states

Purpose / when. For late life or other times of softening and porosity, when boundaries ebb and flow. The aim is to build voluntary skills that support porous structures and to accept a slower pace. [source: Haller, Keleman & Seab 2018]
Steps: apply 4.1 with lower intensities and longer pauses, aiming at gentle containment rather than undoing rigidity. [adaptation: synthesis]

Not described in the sources

Wikipedia reports that Keleman claimed breathing modification and muscle work improve mood and executive function. No breathing procedure is described in the sources, so none is given. [uncertain]

5. Handling problems

The sources say little about clinical problems. Guidance below is [synthesis] unless a source is tagged.

"I don't feel anything" / can't find a shape.
- Start from a spontaneous gesture (4.5) or the hands (4.6, 4.7) rather than asking for a feeling. [source: Strecker]
- Ask "how?" instead of "what do you feel?" (4.3). [source: Adler]
- Accept very small shapes. Porous or underbound people may first need to build some firmness before there is anything to feel. [source: Haller et al. 2018; synthesis]
Explaining and analysing instead of doing.
- Keleman's line: "You'll never be able to figure it out. You need to do the movement." (Adler)
- Gently interrupt and redirect to how the client is doing it now. [source: Adler; Hickey]
Pushing too hard, or going for a big release.
- Name "less is more" and cut the size of the increments.
- Rule out catharsis: if crying or shouting escalates, slow down, lower intensity, and help the client form a containing shape (feet, spine, hands).
- Keleman set firm limits on catharsis and acting out. [source: Strecker; Adler]
Overwhelm, panic, or flooding in "the soup" (the middle ground).
- Stop increasing intensity. Take the shape down in small steps.
- Orient the client to the room. Have them push lightly into the floor or the chair.
- Make the next cycle smaller. Undoing in measured steps is meant to prevent "loss of boundaries". [source: Keleman 2012]
- Normalise the confusion of the middle ground as a phase. [source: Adler; Darakchiev]
Dissociation or collapse after letting go.
- This shows de-intensifying went too far, too fast.
- Re-establish a moderate shape, then de-intensify in tinier steps.
- For dissociation-prone clients, keep the eyes open and the steps short, and stabilise first. [synthesis]
Non-adherence to home practice.
- Shrink the practice to one or two minutes on one pattern in one daily situation.
- Link it to a real trigger (step 5).
- Point out that change depends on the client reinforcing it. [source: Keleman interview; Strecker on continuity over intensity]
Shame or feeling blamed ("so I'm doing it to myself").
- Frame patterns as inherited and learned shapes that once served the person. Practice adds choice; it does not assign fault. [source: Keleman interview on inherited shapes; synthesis]
Self-consciousness, or feeling watched (especially in groups).
- Let the client practise privately first.
- In groups, keep feedback to first-person bodily statements (4.17).
Rupture: the client feels pushed, or experiences the therapist's observations as judgment.
- Acknowledge it and slow down.
- Return choice to the client: which pattern, what intensity, and touch or no touch.
- Use the co-bodying frame: notice and talk through your own bodily response to the tension, briefly and non-defensively. [source: Strecker on co-bodying; synthesis]
Pain or medical issues during muscular work.
- Stop and lower the intensity.
- Avoid breath-holding at peak effort.
- Refer to a physician for pain, cardiovascular or neurological symptoms.
- Do not present the method as treating physical illness. [synthesis]
Suicidality or severe depression.
- Do a standard structured risk assessment and safety planning, including lethal-means counselling (safe storage or removal).
- Pause exploratory body work that deepens collapse.
- Use only containment-building practice until the client is stabilised. [synthesis]
Trauma survivors.
- Stabilise first.
- Avoid enacting assaultive shapes, such as constriction, strangling or being pinned (see 4.19).
- Work at the edge of tolerance, not beyond it.
- Get consent for every exercise. [synthesis]
Psychosis or severe dissociative disorders.
- Use only grounding, low-intensity, eyes-open practice (4.6), if anything, and only alongside psychiatric care. [synthesis]
Touch issues.
- Default to no touch. The method relies on the client's own effort.
- Use the consent steps in 4.20, within your training, supervision and legal scope. [synthesis]
Rigid, perfectionistic practice (doing the steps "correctly" rather than with feeling).
- Shift attention to waiting and receiving (step 3).
- Vary speed and duration to suit the person: Keleman wanted practice individualised. [source: Strecker]
Formative-specific confusion: being formed versus forming.
- Some clients feel worse when they first notice how much they compress or collapse.
- Present this as the endings phase and as information, not deterioration. [source: Adler on phases; synthesis]

Sources

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