“Through focusing words, we guide the cognition to a deeper consciousness to enter into a clear experience of one’s self. We use this self to self-relationship as the basis upon which to build all our other relationships. Functional Analysis is the meeting place between psyche and soma. The body and mind always work together in both health and in illness.”

Will Davis

What is Functional Analysis Body Psycotherapy

Recent biophysical research has revealed that primacy of the role of the connective tissue in transmitting information through the whole body and in holding and reprocessing stress.

Functional Analysis uses the principle that the connective tissue changes shape in response to physical stimuli. Every physical movement, every contact, every pressure transfers energy and changes the connective tissue status. When the tissue is touched, the mechanical vibrations produce electric waves and if the movement or touch is repeated over time, it will generate an increasingly stronger electrical emission. A therapeutic touch, calm, slow, rhythmic, attentive, in resonance with the person touched, creates new experiences e.g. it releases pain, tension and sends this information to cells and brain, restructuring and developing a restorative healing process.

Furthermore, with the touch warmth is passed, physical and human, which favours a thawing at all levels, particularly in contracted and cold character structures. The touch of the therapist stimulates this process of melting and sometimes with the release of restrained movements, emerge feelings and memories that were trapped there. It is also possible, because of the property of the connective tissue to transmit energy throughout the whole body. That tension or relaxation manifests itself in different places from where the person is touched

The treatment is called Points and Positions and it is not a massage nor a manipulation, it happens through the pressure on specific areas and points of the body. The points touched and stimulated are often found at the insertion of the muscles and occasionally in the connective tissue formed in the muscle itself. The other technique is that of positioning. With this technique, selected parts of the body are positioned and painless compressions are applied to increase the already existing contraction. From an energetic point of view, the muscle is now artificially kept in its “safe” contracted state by the therapist’s hands. A message is transmitted to the nervous system: “now the contraction is no longer necessary”.

I have emphasised the physical aspects of Functional Analysis, but the approach is much broader. Both the verbal and physical technique shifted the attention to the inward movement of the pulsations (INSTROKE) more than the outward movements (expression and discharge) to bring the client, below the defences, to his centre, to meet his essential Self.

The Functional Analysis Institute of Austalia founded by myself and Maria Sangiorgi offers Webinars and Tranining courses in Functional Analysis. 

There is more informaton and resourses about the work, on the international Functional Analysis website.

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