UNERGI
The contributions to human health and well-being that flow through Gestalt Therapy, the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method® are anchored through Unergi, not in the human body alone, but in the vast all-encompassing body of Nature and the creative spark residing in the core of every human being.
I came to these discoveries while enhancing my own healing process. As I acknowledged the alienated aspects of my being, I knew that I had to immerse myself with the tremendous forces of Nature. Nature resonates with us and heals us on the most subtle energetic levels. In Unergi, we communicate with this life force and recognize the intelligence that is inherent in our bodies and nature's evolution. Recalling painful events of the past, we learn to gently redirect our emotions, body energies and beliefs. We realign our energies with the Earth Mother herself.
When we cut ourselves off from Nature on physical, mental, emotional or spiritual levels, we will destroy ourselves and Nature's resources. Yet if we allow Nature's creativity to assist us in healing our core, we simultaneously become actively involved in planetary healing. Nature and creativity are our allies, and Unergi returns these allies to us.
One of the most sublime ways a human being rediscovers his or her roots in Nature is to articulate it through artistic expression. We need to recognize where our true passions lie and how to express our innermost truth in artful ways that not only benefit us individually, but also benefit the larger community.
The Unergi community is a microcosm of such authentic unusual explorations that resonate with this "common ground". My own and other Unergi teachers' intention is to contribute to the healing of the Earth by honoring and amplifying the Unergi students' natural creative wisdom while we accompany them on their Self-Healing Journey.
THE COMPONENTS OF UNERGI
Integration
Unergi, as a modality, is only possible because of the work of holistic health pioneers who have come before. Much of the form of Unergi grows out of Rubenfeld Synergy Method® (RSM), which itself is based primarily on three other modalities: Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method®, and Gestalt therapy. All these approaches inform Unergi, and yet it is different. Some discussion of each will help the reader to locate Unergi in the broader landscape of the holistic health care movement.
Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique is a re-education method for learning about moving, thinking, perceiving, while reexamining the huge range of choices available to us as we respond to the stimulus of life. This method was created by Frederick Matthias Alexander, an Australian actor in the early 1900's, as part of his desire to regain the use of his voice. Alexander discovered that the way he held his neck and head was impinging on his vocal cords, so much so that he suffered from chronic voice loss. By experimenting with simple and subtle movements, he discovered that habitual tensing of neck muscles result in inevitable tensing of the whole body. The head/neck spine relationship is intrinsically the "primary control" center, which can either offer support and balance to the body, or interfere dramatically with our muscular-skeletal system.
The Alexander teacher uses touch with the intention of amplifying the freeing response that always underlies mental, emotional or physical stressors. With awareness, these stressors can then be transformed and redirected into movement. This awakens the student's kinesthetic sense and allows her to access her organic design for harmonious balance.
The UNERGI therapist uses the Alexander technique sensing her own body map to inform her quality of touch, passing on that sensibility to the client and stimulating core-support.
The Feldenkrais Method®
The Feldenkrais Method® is also a "re-education" technique. Developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli physicist and structural engineer in the 1960's and 70's, this method seeks to introduce the client to a greater awareness of how he or she moves, behaves and interacts. Like Alexander, Feldenkrais developed this system in response to an injury he sustained, for which conventional medicine had little to offer. After years of extensive study on topics ranging from neurophysiology to anthropology, Feldenkrais discovered that it is possible to treat many conditions by working with the body to create more awareness about how we move. The Feldenkrais Method® is composed of two branches: Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration®.
Awareness Through Movement®
This practice aims to re-educate people about their own movement through delicate, exploratory sequences of motion designed to increase kinesthetic awareness. Awareness through movement® sequences (verbally directed in person or on CD) are characterized by slow, subtle, small and gentle movements.
Functional Integration
This refers to the hands-on practice of a Feldenkrais® practitioner who uses noninvasive touch and movement to guide the client to a more complete awareness of her habitual movement patterns, and simultaneously offers new options for motion. Touch in Feldenkrais® is used for communication only, not manipulation, massage, or correction. The purpose of both Awareness through Movement® and Functional Integration® is to re-educate the nervous system to use our musculature optimally, as organically intended before our thoughts and emotions led us to habitually use our muscles in a non-supportive way.
The UNERGI therapist uses specific psychophysical movement sequences to stimulate neuro-muscular memory. With these especially designed Unergi Core Support Movements the client discovers new body-mind connections, allowing the possibility for making different physical and emotional choices. Body and mind are given the opportunity to heal together and reclaim ease of movement, sensing, thinking and responding.
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy is based on two main ideas. First, that the experiential present moment is the most important focus in which to access a person's past. And second, that each individual is enmeshed in a matrix of relationships and it is only through an understanding of these relationships that we can come to know ourselves. "Gestalt" is the German word for "the whole". Gestalt therapy has three major sources: psychoanalysis, philosophy, and Gestalt psychology. Gestalt therapy is based on the work of two psychotherapists from Germany, Fritz Perls, M.D. and Laura Perls, Ph.D. who escaped from Germany before WWII, first to South Africa and then to the U.S. From the outset, Gestalt therapy had a strong emphasis on body awareness and the Perls' first book (Ego, Hunger, and Aggression 1947) contained exercises designed to support people in experiencing their bodies as well as promoting cognitive insight. Gestalt therapy is thus ideally suited as a verbal partner to somatic modalities.
UNERGI Sessions and Training
In UNERGI we listen to the dialogue of the many aspects of self and how the body expresses these disparate parts through ease, dis--ease, and disease. This process encourages the client to feel and sense his or her physical and emotional responses, clarifying issues and bringing them into the present.
The UNERGI Body Psychotherapist then invites these voices of the body to speak their truths and be heard. This honors all that the client has been, is now, and is in the process of becoming.
The Healing Forces of Nature as our eyes easily slide down a blade grass or sense the attunement with a tree...our bodies respond as cells, muscles, bones and blood slurp up the exquisiteness of remembering the many soft moveable shapes of cloudness; remembering rockness, hard and composed, compressed, layered, shaped by centuries; remembering wren-ness, blue, flitting, dancing with windy feathers; remembering dragonfly, eyes in all directions, seeing in the round, up, down, sideways. No matter how distorted our perception has become, we remember that we are this Nature in all it's creative expressions held in an eternal balance.
Our Colorful Espressions with brush on paper, hands on clay, dance, poetry or sound reveal what has been hidden. What emerges from these activities often surprises the student or client. An example of this might be a simple line contrasting a huge black shape which partially covers a small figure reaching for a sunflower. We begin to dialogue with these shapes using Gestalt therapy. The pictorial images encourage us to identify the emotional energy stored in the psyche and body. As we give them a voice, listen to them, dance or sound them, the healing process is initiated.
 We open our receptive field and create the intention of UNERGI, which is for us to meet in a unified field of energy that includes all of life.
The client is encouraged to feel the range of all his/her emotions leading to empathy and compassion for ourself and everyone in life’s journey.
We learn to appreciate our fine mind and intuition beyond our intellect. We use our body as a tool to expand awareness and find a delicate balance between what is, was, and always has been.
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