Characteristics

The heart of Core Energetics is the core (heart, innermost). It stands for the quintessence of the inner, for the purpose of life and for transcendence. The Core is our Higher Self. In the core there is no duality, no good or evil. Here every person ‘instinctively’ feels the truth. Warmth of heart, confidence, forgiveness, realization of one’s purpose of being one and not separated are at home here. It is receptive, it is love.

The Lower Self is represented as a layer around the Core and shows characteristics that are designed to protect the receptive Higher Self: anger, hatred, panic, terror, selfishness and destruction. People use these when their physical existence is threatened (e.g. a crying baby when it is hungry). Our energy body uses these means to defend itself against attacks, just as the body defends itself against viruses and bacteria. Core injuries often occur in childhood. Defending the Lower Self is forbidden during this time as it could undermine adult authority. As a result, the child is often rejected, judged, and punished by the outside world. The direct negative protective qualities are suppressed by the child and are expressed in a distorted way. A mask emerges, a social self. Although the mask helps with survival in everyday life, it prevents access to the true feelings of the lower self and, more profoundly, access to the core.

Enabling this access again is the task of Core Energetic body work. It tracks down injuries and works on self-healing in a mental, emotional, physical, energetic and spiritual level.

On a physical level an injury can be perceived as muscle tension, pain, distorted posture, shallow breathing. Core Energetics enables the impairment to be localized and recognized through various physical exercises / movement. The physical processes, in turn, release feelings of pain, anger, sadness, shame and love. When love is able to triumph over anger, pain and sadness again, the energy flow is intact. People experience the eternal connection with themselves, others and the cosmos. Love is the tangible sign of the healed unhindered flow of energy from the inside to the outside and from the outside to the inside. Core Energetics defines love not simply as a feeling that comes and goes without the influence of the individual, but as the conscious will of the heart to open itself to life with all its fullness of creativity and vulnerability.

Core Energetics is an energy and consciousness-oriented form of body work. It continues the psychoanalytic approaches of Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen (Bioenergetics) and expands them to include spiritual aspects.

The focus is on interrelationship between body, mind and soul. Its process explores the connections between muscular tension, vegetative disorders, distorted insights, emotional congestion and the psychological conflicts underlying them. The goal is to find solutions at the individual level, to open-up perspectives and to promote autonomy and personal responsibility.

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