The Body, the Subtle Body, and the Psyche with Erica Lorentz

Summary

Jungian analyst Erica Lorentz joins Jeffrey Mishlove to argue that Western culture has turned the body into a 'shadow', a neglected and distrusted part of ourselves, and that Carl Jung's methods offer a way back into embodied healing. She describes how Authentic Movement, a Jungian form of free association through the body, helped cure her chronic headaches through a sudden kundalini-like energy release. The conversation ranges into the 'subtle body', the imaginal realm of the Sufis, a client who believes she communicates with her cancer, levitating mystics, and the possibility that we survive death in a subtle body.

Key takeaways

• 1Lorentz is the author of 'Body as Shadow: Jung's Method of Embodied Healing' and a training analyst at the Jung Institute of New England.
• 2Authentic Movement was founded in California by dance teacher Mary Whitehouse and developed further by Joan Chodorow and Janet Adler, who was Lorentz's mentor for about 20 years.
• 3Lorentz says that after five years of practice, energy burst through her solar plexus in an ecstatic, kundalini-like experience, and her long-standing headaches disappeared.
• 4Lorentz reads from Jung's account of his anima figure Salome, who worshipped him as Christ while a snake coiled around him, which she cites as an example of active imagination. She also cites historian Sonu Shamdasani's view that Jung's journey into the unconscious, beginning in 1913, is the 'Rosetta stone' of his work.
• 5Lorentz describes the subtle body and the mundus imaginalis as a Sufi-derived 'imaginal realm' between this world and the divine. Mishlove cites the reported levitations of Teresa of Avila as an example of the subtle body affecting the physical.
• 6Lorentz describes a client who believes her cancer 'talks to her' during active imagination, and she references Peter Kingsley on the pre-Socratics' dream incubation and Ed Tick's work on veterans' soul loss.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

my sensate function is my inferior function which is the function that takes you deepest into the unconscious so i started to move in such a profound way i would listen so closely and just follow little little uh little pieces of movement and exactly where i needed to be on the floor or standing or or uh for for a while when i was working with janet after that i i crawled around with my forehead on the floor because that's what my body wanted to do and i felt like i was seeing into the earth it was a profound grounding for me that helped me um so i mean any of the the way we work as jungians is not directed you know we want the unconscious to speak itself keep watching to learn more you can now download all nine copies of the new thinking aloud magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies go to new thinking aloud dot o-r-g new thinking aloud is presented by the california institute for human science a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind body and spirit the topics that we cover here we are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal visit their website at cihs.edu book four in the new thinking aloud dialogue series is charles t tart 70 years of exploring consciousness and parapsychology now available on amazon thinking aloud conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist jeffrey mishlove hello and welcome i'm jeffrey mishlove our topic today is the body the subtle body and the psyche my guest is erica lorentz who was a jungian analyst with over 40 years of clinical experience she is a training analyst at the jung institute...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Aug 10, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.