Some Process Work history, theory and practice

beginning with the Dreambody and including the Quantum Mind and Healing

By Arny Mindell

For most of us, and for many therapists, the body appears as a central topic only when there are severe symptoms. After completing my Jungian studies and becoming a training analyst in the 1970’s, I realized that if dreams were meaningful, the same must be true for all dreamlike experiences. So I proceeded to see how the dreaming mind appears not only in our nighttime dreams, but all day long in every little thing we notice in and around ourselves. I was amazed to discover the dreaming process in our everyday minds and in all our body experiences. Whatever we experience is somehow found in our dreams. Based upon these observations, I developed what is today called, “process oriented psychology”, a non-pathological approach to everything we experience from body symptoms to dance processes, relationship issues to large group situations. The core of my ideas about process came from physics and Taoism. This core allowed me to use my background in applied physics, Jungian psychology and the “Tao that can not be said.” I found new approaches to altered states of consciousness including psychotic and comatose states. Spiritual experiences appeared in an entirely new light for me.

Follow and Unfold What you Notice

In any case, after studying many alternative and ancient medical practices, and not knowing where to turn to integrate dream and body experiences, I went back to my interests in science and decided to simply observe. I took seriously every detail of what people did and said. I watched and listened, questioned and explored what they meant and felt when they spoke about dreams, body experiences, relationships and world issues. The results renewed my belief in the human spirit, in the Tao.

Dreambody

The basic observational approach led to my first discovery. Dreams appear not only at night, but also during the day in the form of symptoms. The way our body symptoms feel to us, the way we experience them is mirrored in our nighttime dreams. If you have a stabbing pain, this stabbing sensation often feels better when you are “more to the point” in your everyday behavior. The bottom line was an insight; body symptoms are part of the dreaming process. The body is dreaming. I called the phenomenon of dreams reflecting body feelings, the “Dreambody” and wrote a series of books about that reflection phenomenon.

The Body’s Mysteries and Psychology

I was awestruck by the incredible experiences “locked in the bodies” of my clients. I was not only touched by the pain and fear around symptoms, but also by the dream-like experiences of things as insignificant as tiny itches. I began working with people near death. Suddenly their body experiences revealed perennial wisdom waiting to be told.

I very much respect the allopathic approach to the body, but that is only one aspect of body experience. Another level of the body links to our very sense of time and space, to life itself. Following apparently meaningless pathological symptoms and even bizarre, almost incomprehensible mysteries of comatose states lead me to new ways of understanding psychological growth. The body itself was a trustworthy guide in helping us dream and understand “reality”.

Dreambody in the world

By developing new ways of working with the body and dreams, my process oriented approach allowed me to track and follow, appreciate and discover that dreams not only occur in the body, they also occur during all kinds of movement experiences including signals and “double signals” in relationship. (A double signal is a body movement sending out a “double message”. You may be saying one thing, while your body is saying another.) Normally, we are as unconscious of these double signals as we are of the significance of our body symptoms and dreams. Awareness of such signals clarifies and deepens our relationships. Eventually, learning to “process” the dreambody in relationships led me to tracking the dreaming process of large groups in action. New approaches to conflict and international events appeared along with the creation of process oriented training programs and schools etc.

The Dreambody’s “Pre-Signals”

As the century turned forward, I turned back to physics. I wanted to know more about where dreams and body experience came from. What is life? Who are we? Where did our universe come from? To explore the dreaming body, our physical experience and our relationship to the universe, I went back to the quantum realm of physics and of our body. I explored and tracked body experience in the form of the tiniest, first beginnings of symptoms. Looking into these nano-like events enabled me to understand that much of quantum mechanics was a projection of our most sentient and subtle psychology. Once again, tracking people’s processes and exploring the mathematical patterns behind quantum mechanics helped me discover new psychological techniques for understanding who we are.

Quantum Mind

I discovered that our mind’s essence is a “quantum mind”. Suddenly, I could reconnect my practice with my past education, and with other scientists. My everyday therapy practice became wider and focused not only upon everyday difficulties, but also upon the tiniest perceptions we normally don’t pay attention to. I became interested in “pre-signal” work, in the things we can barely feel and hardly talk about. This subtle dreambody work is described in my quantum mind books. For example, the “Quantum Mind and Healing” takes bodywork and therapy into the area between theoretical physics, alternative medicine, and shamanism.

Practice in a nutshell

It’s almost impossible to describe a mind and body practice briefly because there are literally hundreds of different process-oriented approaches to any one problem. But let me try. Think about one of your own symptoms right now, or a symptom you would like to understand better that you had in the past. What did that symptom feel like? If you follow your dreams, your answer to the previous question about your symptom will probably be personified as a figure in one of your recent dreams. For example, if your symptom feels like a pressure, then people who pressure you will probably appear in your dreams. This is an example of the dreambody phenomena. However the dreambody appears in your movements as well. Many of your spontaneous movements and double signals will also manifest that personified figure or body symptom energy. Going further you might ask what that symptom energy was like before it became so intense? For example, that pressured feeling might have simply been an impulse to create something. Staying longer with that impulse might be the origin of the kind of creativity you have only dreamed of until now.

In any case, learning to find the essence or the subtlest, almost pre-signal experience of your symptom energy will show you that the dreaming process in your body is meaningful. But even more than that is another discovery. In the essence of your experiences lies the quantum mind of symptoms; perhaps the deepest psychological and spiritual aspect of who you are. I don’t have space to go further here. See my books for more.