"I worked on a psychiatrist in his late forties who had had seven years of analysis. I noticed that there was a lot of tension around his diaphragm that made his stomach stick out even as he was lying on his back. As I worked around his diaphragm, I told him that this is where we hold when we feel anxious. This is the way the body represses anxiety. He said he had been anxious all his life. As I kept working, his breathing changed and his facial expression became that of a seven year old. 

I asked him what happened when he was seven.

He gave a deep sob and began to talk. His father, whom he loved dearly, had died at that age. he was the eldest of three children. Before he died, his father had told him, "You will have to help your mother now. You are the man in the family." He recalled the fear that swept through him, and he recalled thinking, "How can I? I'm so little".

That was the essence of the experience. I did not work any further at that time, as I felt that the contact with one deep experience is all I want out of one session. The ramifications of it work on in the person afterward. After he got up and was dressed he told me he had worked the seven years of his analysis on that incident, but he had never experienced what it had actually felt like. And the relief to him was indescribable. But he was also interested to notice that his stomach didn't protrude any more, as the diaphragm had started its normal swinging function".

Marion Rosen - quoted with permission from Elaine Mayland's book 
'Rosen Method - An approach to Wholeness and Well-Being Through the Body'

Case Study 2 >