Recently I’ve found myself thinking about words, language, speech etc. I like words. I like the feel of them. As  a nurse, counsellor and lecturer, words have been my stock in trade. Certainly as a counsellor I use words to try and shape what it is my patients bring to the session. I will often use words to try and interpret the feelings in a session. “I think you’re trying to say ….” Or “I wonder if what you’re grappling with is …”  If done well, an interpretation can give  a name to something that was only previously experienced as a feeling. An emotion. Something “without form and void.” waiting for a word (Logos?) to give shape and meaning. This is not always a pleasant process. To discover something that one has kept hidden can be discomforting. The only justification for naming something is that this moves it from the unconscious and unknown to the conscious and known. (This was Freud’s view of psychoanalysis .To make conscious the unconscious.) If something is consciously known, it can be thought about and, hopefully, understood.

We reach places, sometimes, where words aren’t enough. Our bodies tell us their thoughts .We are sad and need a hug. We are tired and need rest. I have spent my professional career |believing” in words and their power. s a therapist I work with my feelings but give them back to my patients in words. I have spent many long years in personal therapy. Again all to do with words.

Various friends are involved in the “alternative” therapy scene Reiki, Alexander technique, Sacro-Cranial work etc. I’ve always quietly humoured these friends and “allowed” them their quirky views about body and spirit-particularly body. So it is with some amusement I find myself seeking out a body therapist. So far I’m pleased and surprised at how much information he gleans from my body about my soul. (I wasn’t really aware of those links. I still think it’s more to do with magic than “real” therapy!)

I began by talking about the value of words. i still hold to that view. But I’m learning that my body also wants to have its say and play its part in shaping the  sometimes formless void of my experience.