Episode 23 Discover the Rubenfeld Synergy Method, Interview Joan Brooks

[CHRIS McDONALD]

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Welcome to the Holistic Counseling Podcast, where you discover diverse wellness modalities, advice on growing your integrative practice, and grow confidence in being your unique self. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. I'm so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast. I'm your host. Chris MacDonald today's guest is going to share the importance of touching counseling sessions through the Rubenfeld Synergy Method. Joan Brooks knew at the end of a day-long workshop with Ilana Rubenfeld in 1997, that not only would this be the work she would do for the rest of her life. She also knew in her bones that she would one day teach this work to others. She has devoted her life to helping others heal from the wounds and trauma of life. Today in her private practice, she primarily helps women who have experienced sexual trauma heal so they can step into their full power and take a rightful place in the world. Welcome to the podcast, Joan.

[JOAN BROOKS]

Oh, thank you, Chris.

[CHRIS]

So glad you're here. Can you share more about yourself and your work?

[JOAN]

I think what I'll say, Chris is that, of course, right now, I'm getting close to seeing clients in person again, but I haven't seen clients in person.

[CHRIS]

Oh, you've gone all online.

[JOAN]

I've gotten all online. So when I am in person, the way that I work, my client is usually fully clothed lying on a massage table, although they could be sitting or standing or walking and I'm using respectful, listening, gentle touch. I'm physically making contact with my clients to help them increase their awareness of what's happening in their bodies and deeply steeped in my belief system is that our emotions, our memories, our traumas are stored in our bodies, not just our minds, but also in our bodies and so is our innate healing wisdom. So part of what I do working with clients is teaching them how to listen to the wisdom of their bodies and the way I put it, Chris, is that the body knows what is ready to be revealed. So it's not about going in there, diving in there and getting the worst of it, or pulling off that band-aid. The body knows what is ready to be revealed. The body knows what is ready to be healed. And the body knows how to heal it.

[CHRIS]

I love that.

[JOAN]

I don't have to have the answers. I don't have the answers.

[CHRIS]

We don't always have the answers either, even for those of us who are mental health therapists.

[JOAN]

But what I know is my client's body has the answers. And I trust that far beyond the mind, I trust the body because the body's not capable of lying. The only thing capable of lying is actually the neocortex in our brains. The body herself is not capable of lying.

[CHRIS]

That's interesting, but it's really, so it's really trusting the process and trusting that their body is going to heal and knows how to heal itself.

[JOAN]

Yes, and trusting again, that whatever is revealed in the session. And I have an arc, we have an arc that we're working on the session. It's not just have one experience in the another, but within each session, it's, where's the body leading us? Where's the body saying, okay, go here now. Don't go there now.

[CHRIS]

So you're following.

[JOAN]

Yes. And it's a dance between following and leading and following and leading and following and leading. I'm not just a hundred percent following because I may make a leap and check it out with the client. Does this make sense to you? Does this feel right to you? And I'll check it out with the body because the client can say, "Oh yes, that's right, that's good," but the body may be giving me a different message. So Chris, when I'm physically touching my clients, I'm listening to the body, not just the words of the client, but I'm also listening to the body, through my hands, through my ears and through my vision, through my gut, through all of me.

[CHRIS]

That's why I wondered if intuition play as a part of this.

[JOAN]

There is an aspect to intuition. And the way I experience it in myself is that my body processes a lot faster than my mind. So my body will make a connection that I'll say, oh, what about this? And if I were to go back, I would be able to see, oh, I saw this or I heard that, or I remembered something, but my body has made those connections faster than I could do with my mind. That's how I experience my intuition through sensations in my body, images that I might have, words that I might literally hear.

[CHRIS]

Okay. So it is a whole holistic perspective, isn't it? This whole healing modality.

[JOAN]

Yes. Ilana Rubenfeld created this back in the late sixties. And her tagline, and it's still our tagline is that dynamic integration, a dynamic method for the integration of body, mind, emotions, and spirit, like recognizing that those are intertwined, interconnected, and when you touch one, you're literally touching all of those. And when you're healing one, you're actually healing and integrating all of those.

[CHRIS]

Wow. That's pretty powerful. Really cool. If a therapist wants to introduce touch into their practice what are the three steps? I know you mentioned that in your free giveaway that you have online.

[JOAN]

Yes. So in the giveaway I have in that I'm happy to offer to our listeners is called Activate Your Clients Inner Healing Wisdom. It's the three steps to integrate touch into your online sessions. And the first one is to describe and show your clients. And I'm talking about online sessions. I created this when we were no longer seeing our clients in person during the pandemic, and it can still be done even if you're not touching your client in an in-person session. You can invite them to make contact with themselves. So the first step is really about education. So educating them about what do I mean by touch. And I describe in this gift, in this guide, the soft, full contact where the person making contact with themselves, and right now you can't see it, but I have my hand on my heart. So my hand is making full contact, my fingers, the palm of my hand, the heel of my hand, but it's very soft.

I'm not applying any pressure. So then to help the client then to be able to listen to the body and to start with physical sensations that's usually the easiest thing for people to be able when they first make contact with their body is to listen to, or be aware of the physical sensations. Like right now, my heart's beating pretty fast. It's actually thudding. I can feel it and I can hear it thudding. And then often with clients, and you can do this with your clients in person asking them, and I'm going to do this with our audience in a little bit. So I won't do it all right now because I'm going to invite our clients to do this for real, but then asking them, is there a message your heart wants to give yours? Is there a message you want to give to your heart? So that's when the dialogue, that's the dialogue between the client and the body part, or it could be between two body parts because often our bodies are at war. So even the left side will have a different experience or message than the right side.

[CHRIS]

So that's one of the questions you ask. Is there a message you want your heart to hear or that your heart wants to say to you?

[JOAN]

Yes. Yes. So there's the listening and then there's actually the dialogue. And let's say for example, that my client was experiencing a lot of grief. I might ask my client, where in your body do you experience that grief? She may say her heart, she may say her solar plexus, wherever it is. I invite her to make that full, soft contact there so that we can be with the grief. And then again, I might invite her to give the grief of voice. What does the grief want her to know. So then we're actually allowing the grief expression.

[CHRIS]

So it's really giving space for those emotions through the body and the thought?

[JOAN]

Yes, and really acknowledging that the grief is there for a reason and that there's intelligence in that emotion. Whatever the emotion is, there's intelligence in that emotion.

[CHRIS]

So intelligence is that they can give you some kind of wisdom.

[JOAN]

Yes. It's integral. So there's an integrity to that emotion. I've had clients in the past, and I'm sure you've experienced this, Chris that I've said, oh, if I start crying, I won't be able to stop. So what I'll often, what I usually say is I want you to know, I've never had a client who couldn't stop crying and I've had hundreds of clients and not once have they not been able to stop crying. And that's sometimes because people believe that's the feeling, that's the lived experience in the body. If I start crying, I won't be able to stop. So that I often say that and then I'll say, give that crying a voice. What does the crying want you to know? So that crying is being heard and it may be sadness. It may be grief. Sometimes for women it's actually anger.

[CHRIS]

Interesting. So it may not be what it's coming out as initially.

[JOAN]

It may not be what we think of, what we assign to when someone's crying. And I've experienced this with clients. And I imagine you have. If a client's crying, I'll say, "Oh, are you feeling sad?" But that's my interpretation. I'll ask my clients ---

[CHRIS]

True, that's your perception.

[JOAN]

That's my perception. What are the tears? Tell me about the tears. And I think, especially for women, because women have been, it's okay for us to be sad, but it's not okay for us to be angry.

[CHRIS]

So a lot of people just push that down.

[JOAN]

Exactly. Yes.

[CHRIS]

I can see that, but I like that though because that's what I do too. Like tell me more. What is coming up for you is something that we use instead of kind of being, not jumping into what the emotion is. Because we don't always know.

[JOAN]

Exactly. That's right. And even going that extra step of having the emotion be expressed to cry, but also to speak. If you gave your sadness a voice, it's named in some way, if you give your sadness a voice, what does it say? If you give your grief, if you give your anger, if you give your disappointment, if you give your resentment, if you give your regret, if you give your fear a voice, what does it want to say? What does it have to say in this moment?

[CHRIS]

I can see how that could be really therapeutic to really connect with that voice.

[JOAN]

Yes. Especially since we've located in the body. So it's not just the mind saying, and they're all interconnected, so it's not like, oh, it's either the mind or the body, of course. But it's not just the mind saying, "Well, I was sad because my husband left. It's like, I was sad because I felt abandoned. You know, he left without telling me whatever the deeper emotion, the deeper meaning of that emotion is will often get expressed in this."

[CHRIS]

Okay. To what the true feeling is. So can you give some more examples of like how you would use this? Something like anxieties is very common in practices and therapy. How would you use touch with anxiety?

[JOAN]

So I'm going to talk about, I'm trained to use touch with my clients. So I'm going to talk about how you can introduce touch, that your clients are making the contact. So for example, if I had a client sitting across from me or online. Right now, I'm still working exclusively online although I'm inching towards seeing clients in person. But if I were sitting across from a client or online, I would ask them where in their body they feel the anxiety. It's really fairly simple, Chris. It's really fairly simple. So for example, a client sitting across from me and she's talking about feeling anxious about talking to her boss about something, and I would ask her, where in your body do you feel that anxiety? Can you describe it to me? What does it feel like in your body? Like right now, what I'm feeling, I'm not feeling necessarily anxiety, but I'm feeling some nervousness and what I'm feeling is tightness and a little bit of fluttering around my solar plexus. So I would ask my client to describe that. What are the physical sensations? And then ask her if she would be willing to put her hand or hands there. I would have already, or at this point I would talk to her about a full, soft contact, not pressure. We're not needing it. It's not massage. We're not trying to fix it. What we're doing is listening.

[CHRIS]

So it's a very gentle kind of touch?

[JOAN]

It's very gentle. And what I say to my clients and what I do when I'm working with clients, I will say to my client, are you willing to place your hand there? And as much as you can put your full presence in your hand, put your awareness, your attention in your hand and have your awareness and attention on this place in your body.

[CHRIS]

So that really directs them to that spot.

[JOAN]

It directs them to that spot. What I'm doing is I'm wanting them to focus on starting with the physical sensations. When you bring your client to the physical sensations, they are in the here and now. First, she might've been in the past thinking about other confrontations she's had with her boss and she may have been in the future anticipating she was going to have those same confrontations with her boss. And yet when I bring her to that physical contact and first of the physical sensations, then that brings her into the here and now.

[CHRIS]

And that's the important thing is getting her back to the here and now with the sensations.

[JOAN]

Getting her back to the here and now, and then to really listen to the anxiety. So starting with physical sensations is there. And I'll often ask is there an image because metaphors, some people operate more in metaphors. So is there an image or a sound or even a smell? Then that often will link to some kind of a dialogue. And there's something else I'll do Chris. And of course this depends on the client, the session, but I will, so let's just, I'm going to make this up. Let's say that the client says my boss never listens to me. That's what the anxiety is saying. My boss never listens to me, he doesn't understand what I'm trying to say to him, he talks over me and I'll ask her, what's it like to hear that? What's it like to hear your anxiety speaking this? But I also want to have her find an ally in herself. So is there a part of you that knows how to be, to stay grounded or to be present? Or is there a part of you that can be with this anxiety even as you're talking to your boss?

[CHRIS]

Is that like finding a strength and side too?

[JOAN]

Yes. That's some way people think of it as finding a strength. I think of it as finding a resource or resilience that or sometimes an ally, because sometimes and, you said nothing's too, woo-hoo, sometimes it's like ---

[CHRIS]

I said for the Holistic Counseling Podcast we can talk about all this here.

[JOAN]

Yes. Sometimes I'll ask, is there a spirit guide or a deity or a being that you want to have in the room with you?

[CHRIS]

So as an ally?

[JOAN]

As an ally.

[CHRIS]

Because it makes me even think like some people with ancestors or some other connection with someone that's crossed over. That's fascinating, so to think about that, integrating another part of themselves that can help them.

[JOAN]

Yes. Because people with anxiety often feel unresourced. They often feel like, oh, I'm in this alone. There's no one, there's nothing here to help me. So finding the resource within them and or again, some ally that they can have with them. I remember a client, interestingly enough, it was about, she was going to have a very difficult conversation with her boss and she had high anxiety. It was difficult for her to find a resource in herself. But what helped her was to have this image of her father who had passed, just as you said, her father who had passed and he was standing there with his hand on her right shoulder. And that was the image that she kept the whole time she was talking to her boss. And it helped her to be more grounded and centered so that she wasn't so activated around him.

[CHRIS]

Yes. That's so powerful. This is all really fascinating to me, this whole method. It's like almost bringing regular therapy, if we were to use this, it's like bringing it up another level.

[JOAN]

Yes, because it's enlisting the innate healing wisdom that is already in our clients. It's already there. We're tapping into it. And because we're using touch, rather we're doing the touch or the client's doing the touch, we're accessing the unconscious and the subconscious, which lives in the body. So we have a greater access to that.

[CHRIS]

So how would you, because I know you said with online that you just have the client touch their area that they might feel a sensation, but if you're in person, can you just share how you do that? How do use that?

[JOAN]

So again, in person, usually my clients are fully clothed. They're lying on a massage table and I'm already rubbing my hands. So I'm grounded and centered in my pelvis and I make the first touch. It's called actually first touch or first contact and is at the back of the head and neck. So I'm lightly touching with my fingertips and it's really a hello. And I'll say that to my clients. Is it okay if I say hello at the back of your head and neck? And I'm literally saying hello, because when you physically make contact, there's a whole different exchange of energy and communication that happens, that doesn't happen when you're not making contact. There's an energetic exchange and a communication and allies are talking to each other, but when you make physical contact, it goes, it's like you said, it like up levels the whole thing.

So when I'm making contact at the back of the head and neck, I'm literally saying hello to the body, hello, to the site, to all of her. And then there's a sequence, it's called this classic sequence that I often follow, but I don't have to. There's not a protocol that says, oh, you do this and then you do that and then you have to do the next thing, but there is a sequence that makes sense. So the sequence is then to go to the feet and say hello at the feet, by making soft contact on the tops of the feet. And again, it's another way for me to get to know the client and for the client to get to know me and for the client to start coming into and being aware of her body. And then there's other places at the hips, at the shoulders, at the primary places where I make contact with the idea of, I'm listening the whole time, but with the idea of listening with the idea of bringing the client's awareness there and what are they aware of there?

For instance, I might have one hand under and one hand on top of the hip, or I might have two hands under a shoulder and Chris it's, so it's a viable form of communication and I'm touching with intention. So my intention is always to listen, but I may have other intentions. I may have the intention of offering support. I may have the intention of receiving. So I had a client Sally, who was telling me, I had both of my hands, I was standing at her head. I had both of my hands under her back, under her shoulder blades and she was telling me the story of betrayal, this deep betrayal that had happened when she was a teenager. She was in her forties.

She'd been through talk therapy and she'd done a lot of work around this and the anguish and the pain and the hurt and the betrayal just poured out of her. She sobbed. She was talking, but mostly she was crying and I stood rooted as centered and grounded in my pelvis and I received her. I didn't try, I never, I didn't say a word. I received her anguish, her pain that was still alive in her body, decades later. When that had come to a close and I had removed my hands and I asked her what she was aware of she said, "I know you understood me, even though you never said anything."

[CHRIS]

Wow. That's something.

[JOAN]

Yes. Because I communicated that with my touch and with my presence.

[CHRIS]

So with both?

[JOAN]

With both.

[CHRIS]

Okay. That's just so powerful. I don't know if there's another word, but it just like keeps coming to mind. And it's got to be for you as the practitioner too, to witness this and to see the healing face-to-face and I guess in your experience. So can you share some of the benefits that you've seen from using this method?

[JOAN]

Yes, I will. And I want to say I'm feeling actually quite moved right now. Rubenfeld felt synergy is so profound, so effective and sacred. I call it soul [S O U L] work. And I'm just moved and touched by the power of this work as I'm describing this to you. So I'll talk about a client that I had, Susan, you'll find all my clients as Susan or Sally. I had Susan, when she came to me, she had high anxiety, and this is the one I had referenced earlier that was going to have a conversation with her boss. She had high anxiety, she couldn't drive, her husband had to take her everywhere and she couldn't look at me. She could glance briefly and then look down. And as we worked together, she wrote something about this not too long ago and I'm trying to remember what she said, first she said that I had created the safest place that she had ever done any of this kind of work.

So that was really important for her because she had a keen sense of something safe or not safe. She had a very keen sense of that. So that was important to her. I'm trying to think of a, more of a truncated way of saying this. I'll tell you how I'll put it. She came home to herself. She moved out of her body, her mother who had really taken her over. So she moved her out of her body. She could differentiate between herself and her mother, which she wasn't able to do when she first came to see me. So she came more fully, more fully home into her body, more fully aware of her own value, of her own worth, of her own magnificence. And I probably have seen her maybe three years and she just casually mentioned that she had driven somewhere. I said, "Oh, I didn't know you were driving." She said, "Yes, I've been driving for a year."

Because we weren't training the anxiety. It wasn't like, oh, she has an anxiety disorder. Let's treat the anxiety disorder. We were working with and being with, and helping to release and helping to heal the things that were underneath the anxiety, as well as some resilience practices and as well as having allies in her life, like her dad with his hand on her shoulder, the time that she had to have a difficult conversation with her boss.

[CHRIS]

Oh, that sounded like that really touched you, huh, emotionally?

[JOAN]

Yes. And to witness her journey, she could never be angry. And I remember maybe in the three and a half year mark, she got really angry at me about something and I just sat back and I said, I am so glad to see you're angry. I am so glad that you could tell me how angry you are with me because a year before that she wouldn't have been able to do it.

[CHRIS]

And that's growth right there, isn't it?

[JOAN]

And that's growth right there.

[CHRIS]

Wow. I love that. So powerful. So can you share, I know you talked a little bit before I press record about the ethics of touch. Can you just touch on that a little bit? Because as therapists, a lot of times we're taught not to touch and you know that this is not part of therapy. So I'd love to hear your perspective on the ethics of that.

[JOAN]

Yes. I wish I had read my paper before getting on with you. I didn't. So I wrote a paper in grad school called the ethics of touch. And basically what I said is that words can do damage and yet as therapists we're taught, as counselors therapists, we're taught to use words in a way that's not harmful, in a way that's helpful rather than harmful. So the same is true of touch and the benefits of touch are so tremendous when our listeners, if they request my free gift, Activate Your Client's Inner Healing and Wisdom in time, they'll get an infograph on the benefits of touch. I did a Venn diagram on the benefits of touch. And one is that it builds and maintains and enhances the therapeutic alliance. Because I'm communicating, even if I don't know my intention specifically, I'm communicating my intention and my presence through touch, through my touch. So that helps to build and maintain and enhance the therapeutic alliance. The other part is that it's more effective in the client's outcomes. It enhances the client outcomes. And I think one of the most important things is Chris, is that the client is a full participant in the session. They're a full participant, one because we're calling on the body.

[CHRIS]

Because you are not doing something to them.

[JOAN]

I'm not doing something to them. I'm listening, I'm helping them listen, we're listening to that innate healing wisdom that is already there and the most effective way to contact and activate that healing, the innate healing is through touch.

[CHRIS]

Well, thanks for sharing that. I think that's really helpful.

[JOAN]

And when it's done with training, touch needs to be done with training and consciousness. It's when it's prohibited that it becomes slippery. It's when you can't talk about it, when it has to stay in the shadow. Then what happens to things that go into the shadow. They become more primal. So when it's out in the light and there's training and there's consciousness and there's mentoring and there's supervision ---

[CHRIS]

That's the difference.

[JOAN]

That's the difference. If you can't even talk about set and help my client's hand, if you can't even talk about that to your supervisor.

[CHRIS]

I think that's an important clarification.

[JOAN]

Yes. You and I were talking earlier about the length of the training program. That's why the training program is three years long. It's because we're teaching you how to touch and how to use your full self, how to come forward and use your full self in sessions.

[CHRIS]

And you're training too, as you have one geared towards mental health professionals, right?

[JOAN]

Yes. Well, it's the same training. It's how does this benefit? And when we have mental health professionals, then we look at what strengths are you already bringing? So someone who's a party worker brings in certain strengths and someone who's a mental health practitioner brings in certain strengths. So we look at what strengths are you bringing and what are some of the things that you're going to need to relearn?

[CHRIS]

That's great. And you said that starts in the fall, your next training?

[JOAN]

It starts in the fall, yes.

[CHRIS]

And what's the best way for listeners to find you to learn more about you and your program?

[JOAN]

I think the best way for listeners to find me is for people to go to yourbodyisyourbestfriend.com, no capitalizations, no other punctuation and request my free gift. And then they'll be on my email list. They'll get the gift, they'll get the benefits, they'll be on my email list. I think that's the best way for people to contact me.

[CHRIS]

Okay. And we'll put that in the show notes so that'll be on the website too. That way they can access that easily. But I want to thank you Joan, for coming on today. I feel like I could just listen all day to your stories.

[JOAN]

Well, thank you so much, Chris. I'm delighted to be here and I look forward to hearing how the people who are listening to us, even if they just incorporated one little thing in their sessions, I would love to hear about that.

[CHRIS]

Excellent. And now they can contact you through that website.

[JOAN]

That's right.

[CHRIS]

Excellent. And I want to thank my listeners for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, please remember to subscribe, rate, and review. This is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love. Until next time, take care.

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