I Feel, Therefore I Am

On the Body, Trauma, and Anthroposophy. A Travelogue.

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I’m driving through the Harz Mountains in Germany. The first snow of winter to the left and right, thick fog in front. I look for the rear fog light in my Fiat Panda. The white air before me doesn’t worry me; I actually feel rather safe. I relax and think of the words of a friend and trauma therapist speaking about powerlessness: “As adults, we can endure it. Somehow, it’s even good to know that you can’t do anything in some situations. I can’t do anything right now. That also takes the pressure off.” Driving through the Oberharz at 60 km/h [~ 40 mph] and being happy that white is such a friendly color—that feels good.

I’m on my way to see Dennis Danner, a trauma therapist at the GAP Center¹ in Marburg, where we previously met. He works with the idea of “body and being.” He lives in Goslar with his partner, a eurythmy therapist.

We haven’t seen each other for six years, but he gives me a warm welcome. When we first met, I came to him for discussions about therapy, and much of what I know about trauma I learned from him. The trauma therapy approach that he and his colleagues at GAP have developed is one of consistent self-affirmation: the acceptance and appreciation of our physical reactions to outer and inner influences under all circumstances. This benevolent attention to ourselves is deeply humane and offers continual relief. Trauma therapy reveals the connections between traumatic events and their direct effects on the autonomic nervous system by making these visible. Trauma does not only manifest psychologically; it also resides in the body.

I want to learn from Dennis Danner why our body is so important for our being and for healing. Why we are increasingly losing our connection to it and how does this affect us? I want to talk to him about the “body” in anthroposophy and where trauma therapy and anthroposophy can collaborate and cross-fertilize each other.

However, my journey to Goslar actually began earlier: in June 2024, in Weimar. I had just moved to the city of Goethe, and I met Gilda Bartel. We talked a lot about anthroposophy and I often read Das Goetheanum [the Goetheanum Weekly, German edition]. Anthroposophy has crossed my path often in life, and I appreciate much of what it offers. Now, I want to know more, but I find it difficult to find my way in. Often, I can’t understand what’s written, even though the topic interests me. The metaphoric, poetic formulations elude my grasp. I ask myself, “Where is the body that brings the spirit in the written words down to Earth, down into my body and my heart, down to the point where I feel resonance and experience? Yes, this has something to do with me.” I’m familiar with an experience people call “disembodiment,” and I want to understand it better. Apparently, a feeling of not being fully embodied is a widespread phenomenon. An anthroposophical art therapist in Weimar confirmed this for me and asked: “Or do you know someone who is well embodied?”

Why is this so, and what does it mean for us human beings?

Disembodiment

I begin to immerse myself in this field of questions and experience that a great deal of information about it is already available, stored within me—in my own body and soul. But Western history is excessively hostile towards the body. Taboos on sensory pleasures, misogyny, war mania, colonialism, destruction of nature, and corrosive economic logic have all caused human beings—women, in particular—severe suffering. It’s a psychological suffering, of the soul, but it’s also imprinted in the body. And it remains there, until we dare to look at it. In the twenty-first century, digitalization is causing disembodiment to an unprecedented degree. “Social media,” says US trauma therapist Shefali Tsabary, “is the epidemic of disembodiment, disconnectedness, and dissociation.” Our entire lifestyle is degenerative, unnatural, and promotes “disembodiment.” Instead of an inner focus on connection, community, nature, and movement, we’re constantly focused on the outside—education, career, appearance, and status.² This has devastating consequences for our lives and how safe we feel. Our way of producing knowledge also produces disembodied minds. There’s an untenable claim to objectivity and exclusion of other forms of knowledge. In her remarkable book Sensuous Knowledge, the Finnish-Nigerian journalist Minna Salami calls this kind of knowledge production “Europatriarchal knowledge.” She refers to a “hierarchy-fixated construct of knowledge” that focuses on rational and disembodied thinking and has thus created an incomplete, “fragmented knowledge system” that “is unable to deal with the real issues confronting humanity because it neglects the experienced side of reality.”³

The experienced side contains a sensory approach to the world that trusts perception. Salami calls this “sensuous knowledge”—a poetic, erotic, creative, and deeply feminine understanding. The experienced reality includes feelings and their expression, which is deeply human. The suppression of feelings, says Salami, always leads to violence—physical or psychological, directed against others or against oneself. To not feel because it’s forbidden or too painful means losing touch with myself and my surroundings. For example, we destroy nature because we no longer feel it, and we no longer feel responsible for it.

To reclaim our bodies, which give us our human form and each human their individual, very own home, we need a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying alienation.

Body and Trauma

Back in Goslar, Dennis Danner poured a cup of tea and said: “Trauma always forms in the body. We react to overwhelming powerlessness with resistance and turning away from the world. This is human and, actually, quite intelligent. It ensures our survival. The problem is that we don’t understand these protective mechanisms; they become pathologies and are rejected.” The alienation from ourselves and our bodies occurs in two stages: first, the traumatic event triggers a blockage in the flow of life and causes us to freeze; then, we reject this defense mechanism and later experience it as an obstacle. This is the disturbing part. “What the body does on its own, always makes sense—especially in stress and shock situations,” Dennis emphasizes. “But, instead of responding to our defense mechanisms with love and respect, we shun our body for its intelligent behavior. As a result, we reinforce the blockade that prevents us from naturally shaping our lives and healthy relationships. We get stuck in the protective mechanism that we so desperately want to get rid of.” And we condemn ourselves for it.

A vicious circle. How to get free of it? “Our body needs appreciation for its reactions.” Dennis shares out of his many years of practical experience: “This is the only way to create space within us and release the blockages. This appreciation is a feeling and kind of posture. We could call it a feminine aspect, an aspect of the heart. Appreciating the body—just as we appreciate other human beings. Then, something starts to move.”

I consider what this requires? Vulnerability. Wonder.

In a lecture by Peter Selg in Weimar, I learned that, at heart, anthroposophy is wonder. Only through wonder, can the spirit unfold the new, he says.⁴ So then, how can a sense of wonder return to human beings?

In Goslar, Dennis Danner and I wonder together at the intelligence of our bodies. I can connect with my body’s beingness, and it’s fascinating. It’s really astounding what the body can do. “You know,” says Dennis, ”the more embodied I am, the more I can actually perceive the spiritual dimension of my being. Because only then is there space for it within me.” I think of the description of the body as the temple of our soul. The temple as a sacred space, beyond the profane, wherein we experience our wholeness, our divine source. My body, a sanctuary. A place where God may dwell. Reverence arises within me. Without a body, there’s no wholeness.

But also, without a body, there are no limits. The spirit knows no limits. The body does. And only with limitations can I sense myself. Contact requires boundaries between each and every individual. Only then can I feel the other; only then do I have a counterpart by which I can feel myself. A lack of boundaries is a classic symptom of trauma. The person affected no longer feels their own boundaries and no longer perceives the boundaries of others. It’s a search for security within a nothingness. Is the body also a necessity in order to be a human being among other human beings?

Our body-temple has its own needs, which actually connect us to the world we’re a part of. The body-temple needs love, attention, care, and tenderness. It needs movement and good nourishment, as well as sensory contact, touch, and acceptance, to reach its full potential, to be strong but also tender and adaptable.

As I understand him, Rudolf Steiner also emphasized that human beings on Earth need a balance between what is spiritual and what is physical. And that incarnating “properly” is a prerequisite to taking up responsibilities while on the Earth.

Anthroposophy and Trauma

So why is the body so often missing in anthroposophy? “Anthroposophy is a spiritual path of experience,” says Dennis Danner. It produces great things: biodynamic food, anthroposophic therapies, and Waldorf education. But despite these “tangible implementations,” I miss the body. He feels the same way. But anthroposophy has something that’s essential for his work: an emphasis on ‘I’-consciousness. This is necessary in order to resolve trauma. We need a center, so to speak, from which the journey proceeds: a central navigator. Dennis is convinced that the role of the body in trauma therapy, together with the ‘I’-consciousness of anthroposophy, can create a powerful effect. They need each other. “In my experience,” he continues, “a focus on ‘I’-consciousness helps tremendously in order to feel and integrate the physical-emotional waves experienced in trauma therapy. It’s all about arriving on the Earth in the ‘I’-consciousness within the body.”

Arriving on the Earth, with my ‘I’ as the center from which all movement proceeds, while being open, at the same time, to all that’s around me. Hartmut Rosa, the sociologist and resonance researcher, calls this a resonance relationship, an “erotic relationship to the world. . . . A form of world relationship in which I remain an individual and find a bridge to others.” But this requires courage: “Allowing resonance relationships means making yourself vulnerable, and that’s a risk. But, at the same time, it means having the conviction that I can respond to whatever affects me.”⁵

Finding this certainty within ourselves (again) is one of the concerns of trauma therapy: appreciating our defenses, experiencing self-efficacy, and, at the same time, seeing through the extent of our “bias.” Because trauma is not only an individual phenomenon, but above all a collective one. I tell Dennis Danner about an impression I had after a conference in Dornach that “anthroposophy” lacked a way of coming to terms with the past. Rudolf Steiner died a hundred years ago. Where does the new come from? The wonder from which the spirit unfolds?

He responded: “From the perspective of trauma psychology, I see it like this: Opening up to the spirit is ultimately done by way of the body, our receiving organ. If there is a trauma, the process of embodiment falters, and the individual closes themselves off. They compensate for this isolation by taking on a certain posture or disposition towards what is given. I ‘know’ what’s ‘right’ or how to see something correctly. I can quote all the right passages, but I can’t really open to my own individual experience of the spirit.”

Is there a collective fear of doing something wrong?

“Every system,” says Danner, “has a trauma structure. In anthroposophy, it’s a one-sidedness in spiritualization.” One shouldn’t go one’s own way but instead pay homage to the founding figure. There’s a compulsory bond that stands between what’s known and one’s own freedom. Ultimately, it feels like a fear of self-empowerment—which, ironically, is actually what Steiner’s impulse really was all about, as I understand from Philosophy of Freedom. “The impulse or seed that Steiner gave,” continues Danner, ”is to live out of the inner freedom that opens up when we can find our way to the spirit.” In his opinion, this impulse can be filled with even more life. Perhaps it can really only develop now. It begins with a feeling.

Body Knowledge and Embodied Knowledge

The body doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t forget. It knows the path. In movement, everything is visible; we can read movements like an open book. Through movement, as in dance, we can express what words can’t say; truths from the unconscious become visible. It’s about seeing what wants to show itself and feeling what hasn’t been felt for far too long. New movements can also change things inwardly. An ancient bodily knowledge is revealed. New knowledge can be integrated.

‘I’-consciousness is the captain of my journey on Earth. The control center, the light, whose reach becomes limited when we experience a shock. Something healing and expanding occurs when I’m able to engage with and accept something that previously frightened me (for good reason, at the time). The body is both a place of activity and an anchor. My consciousness guides me through it. Understanding what made me freeze can be very helpful in realigning myself inwardly. The ‘I’ knows where the journey is to lead.

Carl Rogers⁶ once spoke of the human being’s tendency to actualize. What he meant was that we have an inherent, unconscious striving in our system for development and growth. We’re always the best possible version of ourselves in every moment. Experiencing, feeling, and accepting myself in this moment, consciously perceiving myself and “the other” in their present, current state of being, is healing.⁷ At a time when we’re all constantly thinking about the future while still struggling with the past, it seems to me to be one of the greatest resources for really making a change. And a truly spiritual act.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman

1. Gesellschaft für angewandte Psychologie (GAP) [Society for Applied Psychology], with other offices in Kassel. Dennis Danner’s latest book is entitled Anleitung zur bejahenden Traumaarbeit [Guide to affirmative trauma work] (Kröning: Roland Asanger Verlag, 2023).
2. In an interview with Thomas Hübl as part of the Online Trauma Summit 2024, Shefali Tsabary said, “We are not at all in line with the way we should be living and with who we truly are.”
3. Minna Salami, Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (New York: Amistad, 2020).
4. Lecture by Peter Selg, Sept. 29, 2024, Weimar.
5. Interview with Hartmut Rosa at the Pioneers of Change Online Summit, 2018.
6. Carl Rogers (1902–1987) was a humanistic psychologist and founder of person-centered psychotherapy.
7. Peter Levine, biophysicist, psychologist, and founder of “Somatic Experiencing,” said: “Trauma is the inability to be in the here and now.”