Barbara Holifield, "Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm" (Routledge, 2024)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Helena Vising
Guest: Barbara Holifield
Episode: Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm (Routledge, 2024)
Date: July 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network features a deep and wide-ranging conversation between host Helena Vising and Jungian analyst and somatic psychotherapist Barbara Holifield. Discussing Holifield’s new book, Being with the Body in Depth Psychology, the dialogue navigates the origins, evolutions, and nuances of integrating somatics with depth psychology in trauma healing and personal transformation. Holifield shares candid reflections on her career, training, and philosophical foundations, offering listeners an embodied sense of what it means to work “with the body” in psychotherapy, and how experiential, relational, and collective practices open up new pathways for healing, meaning-making, and transformation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Holifield’s Motivation and Background

• Personal Roots and the Call to Integrate Body and Psyche

  • Holifield describes a pivotal moment during the early COVID-19 pandemic, sitting at her favorite spot on Mount Tamalpais, reflecting on surviving her family’s traumatic history and her responsibility to offer meaning to her life and work.
  • "I just feel like this bringing together the body and depth psychology, which has been so much my path, was what I could offer and what I was grateful for. And so that's where the book came from." (03:57)

• An Unconventional, Experiential Education

  • Her undergraduate experience was marked by the creation of self-directed courses exploring the emerging field of somatics, with wilderness as a classroom for integrating dreams and embodied practices.
  • Holifield apprenticed with a mentor integrating Ida Rolf’s and Gestalt methods, and immersed herself in authentic movement, Craniosacral work, somatics, and Jungian analysis.
  • Notably, her mentors included luminaries: Mary Whitehouse (authentic movement), Janet Adler, Joan Chodorow, Emily Conrad Daoud, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Peter Levine, Stan Grof, and Pat Ogden.
  • Integration was always key: "Even back in undergraduate school, I had realized I did want to study psychology, but it had to include the body." (09:18)

The Origins and Depth of Somatic Psychology

• Somatics as a Life Path, Not a Quick Fix

  • Vising emphasizes that true somatic therapy demands years of study and lived experience, not just quick certification.
  • Holifield agrees: "It's so important to really be clear that you don't become a somatic therapist by taking a quick little certificate course. It's like a life path. So I really appreciate you showing that ... your whole book is sort of a testament to that." (13:46)

• Necessity of Integrating Body and Psyche

  • Early somatics revealed that body-based work often uncovered trauma and psychological material that required psychotherapeutic containment, thus the necessity to integrate both.
  • "The psychic life is born in the body and sustained by the body…symbols and words do not hold a hierarchical value over the body. Instead they remain intimately intertwined." (15:14, as quoted by Vising)

• Relational Meaning and Cultural Bias Toward Words

  • Holifield underscores that meaning and self-relating emerge via early, embodied dyadic relationship, but our culture privileges words and concepts, often to the detriment of embodied experience.
  • "Because words are so privileged in our culture and the conceptual way of perceiving the world has become so privileged, the words can easily dominate…as if they are more valuable than the actual lived experience. And it's like what I feel like we're doing in this psychosomatic field is knitting those two things back together." (18:11)

The Poetics and Practice of Integration

• Poetics of Language and Experience
  • Language, when used poetically, can access and deepen felt experience, much like dreams do.
  • "Poetry gets to our felt experience in a more integrative way than other forms of conceptual language. And so, and dreams are that too... they evoke something." (22:19)
  • Therapy becomes a field of resonance, paralleling early developmental relationships and deepening the felt experience.

The Therapist’s Embodiment and Relational Depth

• Reckoning with Embodiment in Therapeutic Dyads

  • Traditional psychology often excluded the bodily presence and resonance of the therapist from its theories, missing a key element in transference and affect regulation.
  • Holifield worked to make the therapist’s lived, embodied experience central to every case vignette, not just a separate chapter.
  • "The presence of the therapist and the somatically felt experience of the presence of the therapist, the affective, somatic, affective, inter-affective experience was portrayed..." (27:16)

• Rhythm, Synchrony, and Neurobiology

  • Resonance, rhythm, and embodied synchrony are central, backed by contemporary neurobiology (mirror neurons, adaptive oscillators), providing scientific support for practices once dismissed as ‘woo-woo’.
  • "Thank God for neurobiology because... it has given us a scientific basis to talk about all this stuff, which used to be seen as pretty. Woo woo." (31:19)

Group Work, Collective Embodiment, and Deeper Layers

• Authentic Movement / Moving in Depth

  • Holifield details her current and longstanding work with group authentic movement (which she prefers to call "moving in depth"), where participants move with eyes closed in the presence of witnesses, attuning inwardly and to the collective field.
  • "Our shared intent is to be with what is, to bring consciousness to what's less than conscious. That's the shared intent. But we're all doing it completely in our own way, but together." (38:39)
  • This practice leads to emergent healing, synchrony, and sometimes spontaneous, healing touch or interaction that can rewrite deeply embedded traumas.

• Archetypal Layers and the Collective Body

  • The group experience allows individuals to contact both the collective unconscious and the conscious, archetypal layer of community, healing a fundamental paradox: we are both separate and intertwined.
  • "There is this fundamental paradox in the book: We are separate and interrelated, and there is no solution to that sort of paradox." (42:35, paraphrased by Vising)

• Dangers and Gifts of Collective Resonance

  • Holifield notes, "If it's unconscious, it can go so negatively. ... We could bond around the worst emotions possible and then feel empowered by that belonging and stay together... I think we're experiencing a lot of that these days where the negative side of that is getting played out politically." (46:20)
  • Conscious group practice allows us to "mutually influence each other for the better in healing."

Rethinking Individuation and Ubuntu

• From Individualism to Interconnection

  • Holifield challenges a common misreading of Jung’s "individuation" as narcissistic individualism. True individuation is about finding one’s authentic self in order to contribute to the collective.
  • "It's when we can actually find the gem of who we are in ourselves... that we can feel and be in our... bring all of our gifts to the collective, and be part of that amazing web of interconnection." (50:03)

• Embodied Ubuntu

  • Drawing on the African concept of "ubuntu"—I am because you are—she affirms, "There are things that I can't be fully who I am without you... I am because you are." (52:18)
  • Experiencing being witnessed, for Holifield, brought a new layer of healing and connectedness that could not be accessed alone.

The Body as Portal to the Numinous

• Embodying the Unknown and the Sacred
  • Holifield weaves together the importance of the numinous, the ineffable that arises in deep embodied, relational work.
  • “The body is both a portal to and the medium of experiencing the numinous dimensions of the soul's life... What happens between us ultimately contains something beyond our capacity to fully know.” (53:14 & 54:10, as quoted by Vising)
  • Genuine embodied experience in dyad or group offers awe and connection to something greater than the self.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Book’s Origin and Trauma Healing

• "I just feel like this bringing together the body and depth psychology, which has been so much my path, was what I could offer and what I was grateful for." – Barbara Holifield (03:57)

On True Somatic Practice

• "It's so important to be clear that you don't become a somatic therapist by taking a quick little certificate course. It's like a life path." – Helena Vising (13:46, reflecting Holifield’s career)

On Body and Psyche

• "The psychic life is born in the body and sustained by the body." – Barbara Holifield, as quoted by Vising (15:14)
• "Symbols and words do not hold a hierarchical value over the body. Instead they remain intimately intertwined." – Barbara Holifield, as quoted by Vising (15:25)

On Integration of Language and Movement

• “Poetry gets to our felt experience in a more integrative way than other forms of conceptual language. And so, and dreams are that too..." – Barbara Holifield (22:19)
• "We're very much an individual, but I don't think we're ever concrete. We can feel concrete, but this, our boundaries are so semi-permeable..." – Barbara Holifield (54:47)

On Individuation, Collective, and Ubuntu

• "It's when we can actually find the gem of who we are in ourselves. It's then that we can feel and be in our... bring all of our gifts to the collective, and be part of that amazing web of interconnection." – Barbara Holifield (50:03)
• “There are things that I can't be fully who I am without you... I am because you are.” – Barbara Holifield (52:18)

On the Body as Portal

• "The body is both a portal to and the medium of experiencing the numinous dimensions of the soul's life." – Barbara Holifield, quoted by Vising (53:14)
• "What happens between us ultimately contains something beyond our capacity to fully know." – Barbara Holifield (54:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Motivation and Book Origins: 01:56 – 04:24
• Holifield’s Training and Evolution of Somatics: 05:11 – 12:13
• Nature of True Somatic Practice: 12:13 – 15:06
• Integration of Body and Psyche: 15:06 – 19:33
• Poetics, Language, and Somatic Practice: 22:13 – 24:27
• Therapist Embodiment & Relational Depth: 26:23 – 32:08
• Group Practice, Authentic Movement: 35:05 – 42:34
• Collective, Individuation, Ubuntu: 48:22 – 53:14
• The Numinous and Inter-affectivity: 53:14 – 56:29
• Holifield’s Current Work & Future Projects: 56:49 – 58:19

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Closing

Holifield concludes by highlighting her commitment to mentoring new practitioners in embodied practices, expanding culturally, and focusing on women’s embodied oppression as a future research and writing interest. She expresses gratitude for the rich, layered conversation and mutual understanding between herself and Vising.

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For Listeners

This episode is a treasure trove for anyone interested in contemporary depth psychology, trauma healing, group process, and the ongoing project of genuinely integrating body and psyche—for individuals and cultures alike. Holifield’s humility, wisdom, and lived experience shine through, making challenging and subtle ideas vivid and accessible.

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Transcript

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[Barbara Holyfield]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Helena Vising]

Hello, this is Helena Vising, your host on the New Books Network. Today I am talking with Barbara Holyfield about her new book, Being with the Body in Depth, Development, Trauma and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm, published by Routledge. Welcome to the show, Barbara.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Thank you so much, Lena. I'm really, really just so joyed to be here. Yeah. And to be with you.

[Helena Vising]

I'm also delighted to talk with you and I really appreciate you your time. And I wanted us to start with, we have sort of a traditional question to the extent that one can know one's motivations, what motivated you to write this book?

[Barbara Holyfield]

Well, you know, it's one of those questions that actually I have a pretty distinct memory and response for though it had been in some way cooking, you know, on the back burner for many years, it had never kind of come together or formulated or there hadn't been a moment where I said, okay, now's the time, you know, like decades in the forming. And it was actually during COVID when, you know, this very early months of COVID when we didn't really know who was going to live and who was going to die. And we were all, you know, sequestered in our house and the one thing that we could do, which I completely and it's just such an important part of my life is hike. So it's up on a mountain I live by Mount Tamapayas, and I was up on the mountain at this place that I love to go. It's the confluence of three streams and there's a rock I sit there on often. And I was there and I was pondering, whoa, why am I, you know, why am I still alive, you know, when most of my family and including my siblings have passed away and, you know, if I should go on living, you know, what. What is it that I have to offer this life? And those two things come together because I really feel like I came from a very, you know, like, extraordinarily more than anyone else, but, you know, pretty packed life of trauma, developmental trauma, and my siblings were right there in it, and they didn't go in the direction I went. They didn't have the tools to work through much of that. And it really, I think, was completely part of why they died so young. And so I just feel like this bringing together the body and depth psychology, which has been so much my path was what I could offer and what I was grateful for. And so that's where the book came from.

[Helena Vising]

Thank you. It's touching and also has its heaviness, what you're sharing here. And you also write about that in the introduction of. You write about your, like you say, your path. And maybe you could also speak a bit about the really unique path you have of your training. And that, of course, weaves in with your personal life story that then connects to the making of this book because you've been part of a, I would say, a very important cohort of people.

[Barbara Holyfield]

That's a nice way to.

[Helena Vising]

So I wonder if you could speak a bit about the lineage and the, the, the, the people you've trained with.

[Barbara Holyfield]

You know, it really started in undergraduate school, which I went to right after high school. And I was very. I wasn't totally clear what I wanted to study, but it became clear quite quickly. And, you know, psychology was definitely the path I wanted to go on and for similar motivations as I had spoken of before. But it became more and more clear. It was. I had to learn about myself and not how to help others so much, but the first thing was myself. But I had the great, great, I mean, incredible good fortune to be in a very progressive undergraduate school and we would create our own courses. And one of the first courses I was involved in creating, co creating and being in was a course in which, from a psychological perspective, we were going to examine all this very new, the very new field that was arising, that was paying so much attention to the body. And at that point it didn't really have a name yet, but it was the field of somatics and somatic psychology. And in that course we sort of did a, you know, a sort of smorgasbord. We looked at everything and we did, we. We were always doing experiential work and from a kind of gestalt encounter Rogerian point of view. And then we brought in more and more, you know, experiential, bodily based stuff. So and also in that school is something that's just incredibly foundational to who I am. The main emphasis in that school was self directed learning, but also using the wilderness as your classroom. So we would go out for weeks at a time, mostly in Southwest and do these river trips and things while we would be doing experiential study of our dreams and somatically based practices and then share about that and write about it. So it was kind of for me it was like just what I needed. And from that I went on to apprentice with a man who had studied with Ida Rolf as well as Efforts Pearls and was very steeped in the Jungian world. And we were studying James Hellman's book the Dreams in the Underworld. Back in the undergraduate school I had realized I did want to study psychology, but it had to include the body. You know, at that time it just became so completely clear. And so that's quite a path because it wasn't being integrated really at that point. So that when I became, you know, was able to mentor under this man and again we did this thing where we just immersed ourselves in the work in a process based approach to hands on work. Primarily I learned how to Rolf at that time and at that point it was didn't have a name but his school ultimately became known as the Institute for Psychostructural Balancing. And I also at that time he had studied with Mary Whitehouse who was the pioneer of authentic movement. What's become to know be known as authentic movement. And that practice in the midst of all of that also was like, oh, this is my way. And did it in his unique way or maybe more how Mary actually taught it when she was teaching at ucla. You know, there's a great deal I've learned since then that you know, just, I think incredibly complements the practice from Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow and who I studied at in depth with for really long periods of time and along the way. So you know, along the way I continued to do hands on work with Rolf Institute and Cranial Sacral People A pledger institute and practicing a process oriented approach. So I was really working a lot with people who had pretty profound trauma and for whom body hands on work was really essential. But it also became clear that I would encounter stuff in the transference and countertransference that was just too clunky to deal with in that way, and it could override the depth of how we could go. So I, you know, Fairly early on, 10 years into that, decided to no longer do hands on work. And also I wanted to work with people that were completely focused on doing depth work. So, you know, along the way I went to Esalen. I studied with all the pioneers. Emily Conrad Daoud, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen a little bit Peter Levine. I did his training in the early 2000s and he was still trained, doing the basic training or was one of the early ones. And Stan Grof, Pat Ogden. I studied a little bit with Pat, yeah. And Charlotte Silvers. And all the while kind of in the background somewhere along, you know, some of those were along the way. And then at some point I was able to enter what I knew I really wanted to do, which was become a Jungian analyst. So I entered that training with all of that background, both in me, but also still evolving and, you know, kind of to integrate those into the way in which I work now took time because so much of somatic experiencing, it's really not so psychotherapeutically oriented in a distinct way. Pat Ogden's work perhaps is for sure, but not in the way I wanted to practice. So I. There was a lot of translating and bringing it into a very relational interaction. And so it's kind of been what's my work's been for the last couple of decades.

[Helena Vising]

Yeah, yeah. I love how your story here also speaks to something that I think it's so important for the topic of like somatics and healing at this time, where the importance of, I mean, understanding this history of you and those people you trained with and the things that evolved and how the field evolved and just to really understand the background of how it came about to what we today people know as like somatic practices as part of, for example, a psychotherapy experience. And I mean, in your book, you also, throughout the book you really talk about how for you and all of these people here, there's this constant engagement with a lot of very different paradigms and perspectives and different traditions, also different spiritual, indigenous perspectives. It's really this wide tapestry of bringing things together which is enriching and also, like you say, challenging. It's work. It takes a long time with the translation. And I think what I am struck by why I think it's so important to hear this background is that it's so important to see that this work is. It is not a quick fix to become a somatic therapist. It is not something you can just. People today we're seeing this wave of focus on somatics which is wonderful, amazing. And I think it's so important to really be clear that you don't become a somatic therapist by taking a quick little certificate course. It's like a life path. So I really appreciate you showing that, describing it and your whole book is sort of a testament to that.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Thanks for saying that. Yeah. I found it fascinating to really grasp that the field of somatic psychotherapy, the very early beginnings, evolved from the fact that people who were doing the hands on work or other modes of exploring somatics, you know, they did so much trauma was being uncovered, so much psychological material that the somatics without the psychological background they weren't really able to work with or contain. And that, that was the, you know, the beginnings of that field was to bring, you know, build that in.

[Helena Vising]

Yeah. And this integration here is. Yeah. So central. You, there are some, some beautiful quotes you, I picked out. You say that the psychic life is born in the body and sustained by the body. So I mean of course that's the foundation. And then you're also very clear throughout the book about how that it's not about saying that there's one approach that's better than the other. You write that symbols and words do not hold a hierarchical value over the body. Instead they remain intimately intertwined. And I think that quote really captures like you say, the way you wanted to practice that you really needed to integrate the depth psychology approach within body based, sensory. We could call it somatics. Right. So you were beginning to speak about this. I wonder if you could speak some more to this, the importance of that integration. Like they need each other.

[Barbara Holyfield]

They need each other. You know, from neurological, biological perspective. I mean it's just so utterly obvious. You can't have one without the other. And there's no psyche without the body and no body that doesn't have a psyche. There's. Then when you get more of course honed in whether it's neurological or the, you know, the, the neurobiology of this of embodiment or the sensorial, sensory, motor, biological understanding of embodiment or the, you know, then as we go more and more into depth psychology, the. It's a relation. All it's relational. So it's all those things. It's born in an individual way, you know, in one person. It's very biologically oriented, but it's relational because those words that we were just talking about that become how we communicate to each other and adult profound level how we begin to communicate to ourselves and make meaning of our experience, they arise out of the relation, the early relationships, you know, like though there may be, I mean, there is all of the affective life and neurobiological life unfolding in an infant. It only is within the dyad with the caretaker who can mirror that back and resonate with that infant about what it is they're experiencing and help them to organize it and in their whole organism, you know, psychoneurobiologically, that it starts to have meaning and that it starts to have meaning because it's formed in relationship and it helps us to relate to ourselves as well as others. And it's so easy to lose that. Well, two things. Of course, it's those relationships that disrupt that as well. They can disrupt our feeling of this, the of. Of the flow between the body and the psyche. It's in those early traumas that especially the disruptions happen. Of course, it can happen later too, but they're kind of synonymous with a disruption in the psyche symbn relationship. But because words are so privileged in our culture and the conceptual way of perceiving the world has become so privileged, the words can easily dominate. Dominate both in value, you know, as if they are more valuable and the concepts are more valuable than the actual lived experience. And it's like what I feel like we're doing in this psychosomatic field is knitting those two things back together. So good, so good, so good.

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[Helena Vising]

And I feel like it would be important to mention that you don't. It's not like your approach is just the purely only like, concretely doing non verbal work, because actually you have a very, very good, powerful, concrete descriptions of what your work looks like, both within individuals and also in group. And the reader actually can see how words and language actually play a very important role in processing what has emerged on the nonverbal movement interaffectivity layer. So I wonder if you could speak to that because it's a different way. You also call it the poetics of it. It's. It's a much more poetic form of using language and it's also very much, much more intentionally used in combination with non verbal modes of working together.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Well, I love that you brought in the poetics, you know, because I think probably poetry gets to our felt experience in a more integrative way than other forms of conceptual language. And so, and dreams are that too. I mean, dreams are, you know, wild and sort of off the charts shocking at times, but they. They're speaking in this kind of way that is not linear and it evokes something. So yeah, of course there is a space for just our le discussion we're having now. And that's who we are. That's what makes us human, is that capacity to bring to language our deepest experience and reflect on it. And the real essence of the work, I think, is to let that become integrated on all the levels that are available to us. You know, just the ongoing conversation like you and I might be having, or if it's focused on a patient, you know, that field of resonance where, you know, it's really, in a way, in service of the client, the patient, but I'm a resonant other and we're both there together, that starts to, in a way, you know, parallel and mimic so much of those early developmental relationships. There's that and then there's, you know, how language, image and understanding can deepen our felt experience. It takes it further and so it's not one without the other. And then when we bring in the creative unconscious, it's just, there's, we're so there's such a rich upspring of what we have to work with. As you know, I'm sure I'm only touching a little bit of it.

[Helena Vising]

Yes, the Poetics of Embodiment, that's the title of one of the chapters where you go into that. There's so many threats here, actually, you just touched on a bit. I wanted to make sure not to forget that part about the therapist's embodiment because there's also a chapter on that and I think it also speaks to what we're talking about, about the poetics of Embodiment. But I loved that chapter and I loved how you, you also make that clear that, you know, somatic techniques or body based techniques can be great, but if it's just purely that like body based technique that isn't really reckoning with the relational depths, then something is missing and something can kind of even go awry there. So I thought about, you know, you and people you've worked with and trained with. You were really dedicated to this really early on at an important time. And I think arguably mainstream psychology in the west, you know, in the Western context, has been very, and still is very defended against the therapist embodiment. So I wonder if you could just, if you could speak to that. And what has it been like to unfold your path and your career at a time where that, you know, maybe you and the people you're trained with were probably sometimes the quote unquote outsiders because you were reckoning with the, the reality of embodiment also as a, as the practitioner, the therapist, when there was a mainstream culture that was very disembodied, very rigid in that way, you, you, you didn't talk about the body of the therapist or analyst.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Yeah, there's so much richness to unfold here. You know, I don't want to jump too far ahead of myself, but. Yeah, just so many of the concepts about transference, countertransference completely exclude the lived body, and yet they're the basis for much of what the body, the felt interaction is of course, so much the basis for what unfolds between the, in that diet. So I'm going to say a couple of things and then stop and pause because there's so much that could be said there in the book. You know, I did write a chapter on the therapist experience, but it's actually, I tried to include it from the get go. Because it's so complex. And I really wanted to write a book in which that interaction and the presence of the therapist and the somatically felt experience of the presence of the therapist, the affective, somatic, affective, inner affective experience was portrayed because it. It often, I feel, you know, is in bits, but I. I just feel like it's so important. Important to be honest about what this work is really about. And so I really wanted to do that. So throughout the book, I think almost every case, little case study I bring in, I include the therapeutic experience, the relationship between us. So it's built all the way through. And that sense. Did that, did that. Did you feel that as you were reading? Yeah, certainly, yeah. And so then it was in that one chapter that I went a little bit more into some psychoanalytic concepts like projective identification and, you know, things like that and what the actual neurological basis of those experiences are and how they could be much, you know, they can be broadened. And so that it's perhaps not solely as in projective identification simply that something is so unconscious in the other that it's almost aggressively put into the therapist in order to, we could say, become conscious. That someone can carry it and make sense of it. That probably does happen, that aggressive projection. But often it's, you know, there's so many subtle variations. As soon as we're together, we're picking up and responding to the. This is really, I think, an important piece. The kind of rhythm, the synchrony, the we're attuning. You know, just that word has a musical quality. And it's that attuning to our. To ourselves that allows us to have the. The place from which to resonate with another. And it's when that resonance happens that is, you know, both positively and negatively that there's a deepening, you know, negatively. If it can be consciously brought to. Consciously and conscious and worked through. But it includes both. And it's that kind of. I think it really gets at the musicality of our embodied experience. Like that it, you know, like a particular feeling isn't just, oh, yeah, I feel it in my chest and it's done. It's more like living as a musical phrase throughout my body. You know, it's like goes in and moves around and depending on how I can process it, you know, we'll keep moving or get stuck. But that also becomes part of the relationship with the other is that resonant interaction. And there's so many neurologic. So that there's a sensory, motor part that's expressed and so, you know, it's, it is contagious in a certain way. It, we, we resonate and pick it up. But there's also a neurobiological part, whether it's in, you know, particularly the mirror neurons and the things like adaptive oscillators. You know, there's all these neurological configurations in the body that I think we can see portrayed really quickly in like animals, you know, like when you see a flock of pelicans flying over the shoreline and how they're moving in utter beautiful synchrony. They have the same neurological elements that we do. We can resonate and move in sync. Like when you're learning a new sport, often it's easy or a dance step, it's easier to see it and then repeat it than to sort of, you know, have a linear indication of what the steps are. So these things are wired into us. And thank God for neurobiology because in the psychoneurobiology it has given, you know, us a scientific basis to talk about all this stuff, which used to be seen as pretty. Woo woo.

[Helena Vising]

Yes.

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[Helena Vising]

what, what somatics have worked with in these different traditions and then the way that now sort of the science has caught up and are able to, to show us or give us words and examples and, and demonstrate it. And I mean your book is really a very sort of rich and thorough integration from the different paradigms. You have lots of, you know, throughout you have lots of solid uses of. And references of engaging with that scientific literature, interpersonal neurobiology. And you know, I think that what I loved about sort of the. If you could say the progression of your book is that you. You also write about the one on one work and the layers of that, especially for trauma work. And then there's something about that chapter where you bring it into the context of group work and inter. Affectivity where I feel like, I mean, all the parts are important, but there's just something about how there's this unfolding with the different formats. Because there was something in that. The group format there where it really struck me how that's where you see the importance of the depth psychology, the archetypal layers, the ecosomatic layers, beyond the individual layers. So maybe this is just my own reading, but I wonder how you thought of that and how you're kind of laying out the different formats of the work and how the different paradigms and perspectives come together and really meet each other in this integration of the way you work.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Yeah, I think depth psychology is. And all that we know about development and early dyadic development psychologically and its effect, the significance of what motivates us being affect really at its fundamental basis because it's what shapes and forms and creates bonds of attachment. It's utterly significant throughout both dyadic work and then working in a group as well as the arising of the creative unconscious. You know, in a group it comes up in a particular way. Why outlaw and dyadiquate might be more, you know, the dreams of the individual or the dreams of the therapist as well, and how they interact. But I am really very, very fascinated with this, the group work right now. The more I focus the particularly on that. So the. In the. Just to make it clear, the group work that I am doing right now is working with that practice that's typically known as authentic movement, though I prefer to call it sort of moving in depth just to not get so hung up in the polarities of what's authentic, what's not. It's about move being with what's unfolding in the moment. And we have such a multiplicity of selves. You know, I. I don't think you can really distinguish what's not authentic at times. But anyway, it's a quite a practice for those that don't know about it. I'll say the tiniest little bit about it so that this makes sense. It's a practice where in the presence of another, and we call that the witness A person or persons close their eyes in order to go inside and really access the deeply felt interoceptive layer of the body and the sensory, motor kind of responses that we have. And listen as carefully as they can for what wants to happen. To either be still or to move. And the stillness I really don't want to miss because it's absolutely as important as the movement. Some of my and other people that I've worked with most profound meditative experiences have been in this practice where we're not confined to a kind of, I'm going to call it, patriarchal notion of, you know, sitting upright and that being the only way we meditate, you know, so being with what happens in the stillness is equally as important both psychologically as well as, you know, really expansive states of being. But when we're together in that way, so first you can hear there's an attuning towards self. And that's to listen to and go with what wants to happen. It can be very expressive as well as very still. And it just moves across that spectrum. And I think you know something about that, Helena, that that practice moves across that spectrum in a very improvised from the individual place. The witness is resonating and attuning and listening for and being with, not interpreting or judging or criticizing, just seeing what unfolds and resonating. You're noticing what their experience is. And then there's a process of sharing that again. That experience of bringing it into language so that it can be reflected on and deepened in relationship is hugely important part. When we do that in a group and a group of people are moving with their eyes closed with that intention. You know, it's something that's been done for eons that humans, it seems like, is what, as far as I've learned is that that's how cultures have moved to heal in so, you know, through so many cultures is in groups, whether it's grieving or celebrating or, you know, stages of initiation or desires for the environment to bring rain. You know, it's often always in groups, in dances and. Or some other form of group work. And in this practice, our shared intent is to be with what is to bring consciousness to what's less than conscious. That's the shared intent. But we're all doing it completely in our own way, but together. And in that intent there's this resonant, inter affective, resonant field that arises that's really quite profound and. And becomes known by the witnesses and by the sharing. Mostly when people are in it and their eyes are closed. You can feel something happens. You can feel the potential for what you can do. That I could say for myself, I could never do on my own, moving by myself. But I don't know what's happening because my eyes are closed. It's very much from this felt experience and the synchrony and uncanny way that people will like it'll start moving as if it's completely choreographed. The beauty that arises, but the healing that is unintended and unknown, where what one person says starts to. Becomes in some way quite influential with what another person is working on without them ever having known that was going to unfold in that way. And then often that will include touch. You know, eyes closed. When you're in a group and it's a small space, sometimes, you know, one person may brush another person's shoulder, someone may end up in tears, and someone intently, but with their eyes closed, find that person. And, you know, sometimes there's like a touch, like a person might feel and believe and be so caught up in being, you know, utterly alone. And the sense like that, that is their world and nothing more is available to them. And then this unplanned touch of another arises and it changes everything. You know, when it's done with that attunement and whether it's very early infantile trauma, where, you know, that is includes abandonment, or later stages of just aloneness and isolation, it's really. I'd be very interested to hear what I know you have experience in the work.

[Helena Vising]

Yeah. Thank you. It's so touching to hear you describe about this work. I mean, this was what really, when I was reading the book, it was sort of giving me chills. Because, I mean, what you are speaking to here, which I also felt in the book, you make clear, is that certainly there is the concrete group there. And you describe experiences from a group of people where you had all had like a very devoted practice to this. But what you're describing here is also sort of like that the individual there is is able to use the group as sort of the archetype of the collective. And how you experience that. And you also write. What I love is that you mentioned this fundamental paradox in the book. We are separate and interrelated, and there is no solution to that sort of paradox. And I mean, you even mention how sort of Jung struggled with that, and many have struggled with it. And in the practice, you really talk about how there needs to be this sort of working experientially with that paradox. So, I mean, my experience just reading and Hearing your experience. I've had some, I've been fortunate to have some experiences with glimpses of that and in doing group work and in retreats and then I also sometimes going to certain forms of concert experiences, sometimes there could be a glimpse of that where there's a dissolution of the ego in that way. But it just strikes me in our time, the way people's lives are, the majority of people, how rare it is to have these kinds of experiences, even though, like you say, they are so foundational to being human.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Yeah. You know, I think, Mara, I hope that it's kind of catching on. You know, in our contemporary culture, more and more people are going to retreats or group experiences or workshops because they offer an experience that we don't get at in our everyday culture. At least in, in, in America, I will say, because of course I know that best, except for perhaps dancing or at concerts or of course at church, you know, these community experiences where people come together within a group, similar intention, but to bring it to consciousness by listening to each individual's experience and then how it is actually interweaving together with the group. I think is what's quite unique about that work and that it's, you know, the medium of exploration is from the get go, the body. And I love the way you say, you know, the archetypal sense of the collective. We talk about it as the collective body, but the, of course, Jung talked about that, but primarily about the unconscious collective, the collective unconscious. This is an emphasis on how can we be conscious in the collective. And the negative stuff of the unconscious collective is that we start resonating with each other unconsciously and often going to the sort of lowest common denominator because it's hard not, you know, we, I can't tell you exactly why, but it's easy to collapse into and indulge in our defenses because they're hard to get out of. And there is an affective. Some people have called it contagion, you know, because of this synchronicity. I mean we're for all in a room dancing or if music's playing, our body starts to resonate. You know, it's just happens. And we're always resonating with each other, whatever you want to call this dance that we're doing. But if it's unconscious, it can go so negatively. You know, we could bond around the worst emotions possible and then feel empowered by that belonging and stay together, whether or not we get any reflection on a kind of self enclosed system or not. And I think we're experiencing a lot of that these days where the negative side of that is getting played out politically. And so much polarization. And so I don't think that this collective, this group work is a beginning, end of what needs to happen in a group, but it is an incredible window into what's possible. You know, the way we can mutually influence each other for the better in healing particularly is. And create that inner effective field, or what some people call the inner subjective field, or, you know, in psychedelics they just call it love field these days. It's, it's really quite stunning, I suppose, as you think about it. I mean, it's what nature does, right? The whole Earth is one big selective ecosystem, you know, and lots of little microcosms, hundreds of them. And, and it works together in this extraordinary way.

[Helena Vising]

You know, this reminds me that of a one concept you also have in the book because, you know, you're. We don't want to, we're not setting up this polarized relationship between the collective and the individual because it's really all about that interconnection. Because you talk about how the concept, Jung's concept of individuation has clearly been misunderstood by many and sort of misconstrued. So in a way you actually sort of, you have a different kind of take on individuation that seems much less individualistic. And you talk about this concept of ubuntu, the African concept of ubuntu. I wonder if you could speak to that.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Yeah, it, I think it's sort of unfortunately unfortunate that Jung used the word individuation, by the way, it got so misinterpreted, you know, and could seem like utterly narcissistic. You know, it's just self centered. But similarly to this practice, it's like when we're actually true to ourselves, you know, the practice of moving in depth, it's only then that this mystery and magic of the collective starts to unfold. If we can't drop in and be there really in our. For ourself, if we're too busy, well, what's this person doing? What's up? It doesn't, it actually doesn't happen. And I often think of it a little bit like, you know, I don't think the things in nature have the problem we do with. They might. I don't think so. Like a redwood tree doesn't worry about being a crow or a beautiful deciduous tree. They just go on being a redwood. And it's in that clear dedication to who and what they are that all these other elements of nature are who they are. And that synchrony unfolds in such a beautiful way. And Jung's early intent is, you know, that it's when we can actually find the gem of who we are in ourselves. It's then that we can feel and be in our. For, you know, bring all of our gifts to the collective, you know, and be part of that amazing web of interconnection. One of the gems in the, the, the. I think it's from the Indian culture, the. That web of interconnectedness and each intersection is a little gem. So I think of that in that way about individuation and the collective in that way. You asked another question mark.

[Helena Vising]

Then there's the concept of Ubuntu.

[Barbara Holyfield]

You know, I just have to say it's why I just completely love this practice of authentic movement. You know, having grown up the way I grew up, being autonomous was super important, you know, so I learned to move through the world as self sufficiently as I could and pretty, you know, firmly thinking, you know, that I had to do that. And even early on moving, when I was moving and there was a witness, I thought, well, you know, yeah, witnesses are great, but I can do this by myself. And, and I soon learned that no something happens when I'm being witnessed that I just never happens when I'm moving by myself. And then, you know, the more I was working in a group and I had the good luck of having worked in the same group now for 32 years, that as I work in that group and we become, you know, the safety we create together is really quite profound. That there things that I can't be fully who I am without you, you know, I am because you are. And that of course happens in all these dyadic places that we've been talking about over the hour. But it became really, really clear to me and for me, myself in this practice and in that group, in those groups I am because you are. I just would never find this level of experience simply on my own. I'm just sure of it. Well, eat the car dialogue right now.

[Helena Vising]

Yes, yes. There are two really profound quotes from the end of your book that I feel really captures what you're talking about. Because by the end and the conclusion, you say the body is both a portal to and the medium of experiencing the numinous dimensions of the soul's life. And here I'm thinking of the body experience, but like you're saying, it's always experienced in relationship and inter affectivity. And then you also say that what happens between us ultimately contains something beyond our capacity to fully know. So I also hear that as like the numinous, the unknown, that which we could never fully map and define. And so I feel like what you're saying just, just captures something about the, the interactivity and how that is always going to be experiential and embodied.

[Barbara Holyfield]

Yeah, yeah, it's a really, you know, when I'm talking about these profound experiences, they're often ones that, you know, whatever, however subtle. I'm not like an extraordinary dancer or anything like that. I dances barely in my background. It's conscious movement that is. And the kind of experience I can have moving in those groups opens me to something bigger than me, bigger than us. And you know, that loans itself or brings me into a sense or an experience of unity with a much greater world that is completely enchanting. You know, awe. Awe is the best word, which I think is the basis of the word numinous. You know, it's whether it's fearful, which sometimes can be awing, you know, tremendously beyond what I, I can do myself. I need another to take it in or just astonishingly beautiful in that awe inducing way. So that's when, you know, I mean all of these times, whether it's in the dyad or in these experiences where it's me and you and more than me and you, you know, we're very much an individual, but I don't think we're ever concrete. We can feel concrete, but this, our boundaries are so semi permeable and we can move in and out of relationship with each other and with the bigger world in, in, in ways that, you know, of course sometimes we know, we know we can have empathy for animals, for instance, but you know, that the deeply resonant part of our existence I think has gotten a bit lost in concepts. Yes, yes.

[Helena Vising]

Well, Barbara, I want to be mindful of your time and as we're coming up here at the end, I want to ask you about what now that this book came into the world. So what are next projects or things you're working on and how can people find you in the world and the work you do in the world?

[Barbara Holyfield]

Well, thank you for asking. Yeah. I am teaching some, a group of people to facilitate this practice we've been talking about. So that's part of an ongoing training I'm doing, I'm doing a lot of teaching with the candidates in different Jung institutes and presentations there. I, I'm always looking for, you know, the words, you know, a way to articulate this more and more. So it's more and more understandably. So I'm doing some writing and I'm presenting. I'm really interested in bringing this to different countries and feeling the cultural influence. So that's in the works in places in Asia and Europe and hopefully South America. And I also am going to focus a little bit, you know, so of course I am female, I identify as female and as a woman. And I'm going to focus some paper on the unique experience of women and the oppression that has been so lived in the body for so many multiplicity reasons. I'm going to be writing a little bit about that too in time to come.

[Helena Vising]

Well, I look very much forward to that. I'll be looking forward to following your work. Thank you so much, Barbara. I really appreciate it talking with you.

[Barbara Holyfield]

I just so appreciate talking with you. Helena. I've spoken with other people, but you bring such a background of knowledge to it. It let the conversation go really into places that I. I'm just so happy could touch thank you so much.

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