I’ve been thinking a lot about reintegration lately, and how the work that we (therapist and client) do together is all about that.
Reintegration more so than integration, because as life happens parts of us change, or are pulled apart, and what we seek is to reintegrate back into a new whole.
On a macro level there are our three main components: body, mind, and spirit. In an ideal world these will form a unified whole. Yet rarely is this the case: stress, trauma, worry, anxiety, loss – these all work against our desire to be whole.
Trauma and illness lead to changes in our actual physical body, changes in function, and changes in risk tolerance and perception. Suddenly the image we have (or had?) of our body, mind, and/or spirit no longer matches reality.
Stress can literally pull us in hundreds of different directions at the same time, pulling us apart.
Worry and anxiety separate us from the present moment, and we are set adrift in time.
Loss can shake our world like nothing else, and often life is such that there is no time to even properly come to terms with that, to mourn, and adjust to this new normal.
The good news is this: Every time we’re touched, it creates a new input into our nervous system, recalibrating the understanding we have of our physical body. And assuming this happens in a safe environment, touch grounds us and makes us feel taken care of, which helps settle the mind and spirit. This allows us to feel and process things we might not otherwise be able to, and to experience a respite from our day to day stressors. Every touch helps us construct a new mindmap of our body, mind, and spirit as they are at that given time, reintegrating and recentering our being.
Few things have the power to collapse time and space into a blissful state of feeling whole, reintegrating mind, body, and spirit; what we do on the table, well, that’s one of them. And to paraphrase the words of one of my clients: we all deserve this.
If it’s been a while since you’ve reintegrated, maybe this is a good time to do so. It also makes for an exceedingly lovely gift (though perhaps I’m biased…)