The idea that all sicknesses stems from unresolved issues of the psyche is not a new approach to healing but it is not the conventional method we use in the West.Lynn Hunt spent three years training in this approach and has been practising body psychotherapy in Bermuda for two years.

She stressed that a large component of her training involved personal healing. “I never take anyone anywhere I have not been,” she said.

She said her approach to treating patients is more holistic than going to a general practitioner. “Body psychotherapy involves tracing the cause of any suffering through physical and emotional symptoms back to its roots deep within our psyche,” she said.

In this type of treatment, Mrs. Hunt reads a person’s body movements, posture and more subtle aspects. “It’s when you say one thing but your body says another,” she said.

Born from the old adage ‘actions speak louder than words’, Mrs. Hunt has to be fully involved with her clients when she meets with them.

“It’s not always the way a person holds themselves. It’s observing how people speak, how they react to questions you ask,” she said.

In fact Mrs. Hunt pointed out that difficulty in responding and not responding to questions may also reveal the root problem of a patient. For example, people who have problems with their throat may have been disempowered when they were young and forbidden to say what they wanted to say.

“I treat a lot of women where I see this,” she said. Mrs. Hunt stressed that unlike psychologists and psychotherapists, most of her clients come to her seeking a cure for a physical ailment. “I may see a cancer patient or someone with diabetes and my work involves looking at the root cause that brought them to the stage where the disease is manifest,” she said.

Mrs. Hunt works with the client to uncover the root cause to resolve that issue and, in that way, start the process of healing.

“The natural flow of energy moves towards perfect health and vitality,” she said. “When we experience difficulties in our lives and the experience becomes too painful to accept, we freeze the unresolved energy into blockages in our energy field. This then depletes our vitality which can lead to ill health and suffering.”

As an example, she said that many people who have had a traumatic experience carry that emotional hurt energetically and the body reacts in the form of an illness. This is true even in cases where the person may seem on the surface to be fully recovered and fine.

“We carry emotional pain and hurt in energy fields around the heart,” she said. And she explained that blockages in the energy field caused as a result can cause many ailments from which people suffer.

Mrs. Hunt’s training included a lot of work on ‘grounding’ — a process that enables her to be detached from the pain and physical ailments of her clients. This process is also widely used by massage therapists and others who deliver hands on treatments to people suffering. Through ‘grounding’ themselves, therapists are able to direct the energy block or blocks of a client straight through themselves and into the ground. In much the same way that grounding wire works in electrical cords. Without this feature, therapists risk absorbing the negative energies of their patients in their own bodies.

Mrs. Hunt explained that the grounding work is an important aspect of her healing technique because she often uses role-playing in the therapy. “I may have to take on the role of the mother where the patient can channel their feelings to their mother through me,” she said. These feelings may be strong, angry, hurtful and full of resentment but because Mrs. Hunt is grounded she remains personally unaffected in the session.

A genuinely loving and caring individual, her clients feel supported in their treatments but she stressed that she aims to help bring them to their “new reality” so they can function independently as quickly as possible.

The therapy format differs from patient to patient as Mrs. Hunt is trained in a host of techniques and determines the most appropriate on an individual-case basis.

She likened body psychotherapy to peeling an onion. “You are working to find what’s under the layers,” she said.

“It’s hard to tell how many sessions a person needs. If a person has an intense problem and needs support, I may see them every week,” she said. “I see my clients to integration and that will come at different times depending on the case. Lots of people have been doing so many other therapies and nothing has worked and then someone may come right on the edge just ready and there is an emotional release,” she added.

“I try to get people to the point where they have the tools to integrate into their life, the new reality.”

Hunting the source of illness