Final and complete healing will come from within, from the soul
itself, which by His beneficence rediates harmony throughout the
personality when allowed to do so.
Dr. Edward Bach

I received my Ph.D. in Medical Science (Psychiatry and Neurophysiology) at Medical school, not in the field of Psychology.   Most clinical psychologists in Japan do post-graduate work in the department of psychology. Let me talk about why I studied Psychiatry and Neuropshysiology in Medical school, in spite of the fact that my career goal was to be a clinical psychologist..

Do you know Sigmund Freud? He is one of the most famous psychiatrists and psychoanalysts in recent history. This summer, I went to Austria for a psychology workshop. After the workshop, I was vert happy to be able to visit the Freud Museum!

Although he is known as psychoanalyst, the other hand he is the first doctor who showed the deep relationship between body and mind and illustrated this in detail through one of his case histories.

The case was "O. Anna". One day, a young pretty woman came to Freud's clinic because of a disturbance in her swallowing. She could not drink water from a glass. She went around to every doctor but every medical examination of her throat was normal. Doctors could do nothing. She was suffering and was at a loss.

Freud guessed that she has some psychological problems because there was nothing obviously wrong with her body. He treated her with free association (psychoanalysis).

The fact was : she had hated her father because of his rudeness. Of course, she had not been aware of her own negative feelings because she was an educated woman who had assumed a shy personality. One day, she saw her father allowing his dog to drink water with a glass, which was used by their family for human consumption. She was shocked by this behaviour, but because of her modesy could not tell him anything. After a time, she could not drink water from any type of drinking glass.

She could not recognize her anger and hate on her inside. After therapy of psychoanalysis, she accepted her bad feeling. As a result, she also completely recovered her normal ability to swallow.

The interesting story tells us a close relationship between body and mind. In this case, Freud treated her mind to cure her body. In some cases, the opposite is true: you can treat the body to cure the mind.

Let me outline another example of how body-mind integration is used in therapy.
My hobby is horse-back riding. I am particularly fond of one horse whose name is Almando, a 7- year-old male.

However he was known for his stubbornness, nervousness, and distrust of instructors and members of the Horse Club. He did not like to be touched and kicked anybody who tried to brush him or saddle him. People all agreed he was too difficult to handle.

Often, I had a chance to ride him, and later realized that he had never kicked me. I thought the chemistry between us was very good. I decided to work this with horse regularly. After a couple of weeks, instructors and members were amazed, because he dramatically changed. He is very calm and people feel very easy to control him.

They had no clue. They often asked me what I had done for him and they watched us with curiousity, standing and looking at us whenever I was preparing, brushing or saddling him before riding him. The key to the problem is very simple. This is because I understood his "character". In addition, F/O (frontal and occipital) holding, which I showed you last week, and body massage ( with Chinese meridian) for him.

He is very smart and proud of himself. He wants people to appreciate his ability and authority and hates to be given orders by anyone else. People tried to use force to rule him. This had given the animal a lot of internal stress, and brought on behaviour that was aggressive and stubborn.

I think that I gradually could release his stress with F/O holding and body massage day by day. I suppose that he was getting to become calm for everyone. Occipital Lobe in your brain is an area to have a visual image and Frontal Lobe is to create your own idea and thought. F/O holding is very effective to integrate creative thought with visual image which you saw with stress and makes you to think over your issue with new idea.
So I would like to believe that you could apply this skill to any creature who has a brain, this means for not only a human being but animal. That's why I am eager to study both western medicine and oriental medicine.
Thank you for letting me share this story with you!