Resonance in imagery: making the inner undercurrent visible
This article originally appeared on the Belgian Shiatsu Federation (BSF) news blog: View the publication in NL or FR.
A personal reflection on Another Self — How Your Body Helps You Understand Others (Cindy Engel, 2024)
Within the field of energetic bodywork, such as shiatsu, practitioners regularly encounter experiences that are difficult to explain within a purely rational framework. These are moments that are neither tangible nor easily put into words.
Whether you are a student taking your first steps or an experienced shiatsu practitioner of many years, you will inevitably pass through phases of uncertainty in which rational understanding falls short.
In practice, these phenomena manifest differently for each practitioner. Some are visually oriented and perceive images or colours while giving a session. Others experience the client’s emotions or areas of discomfort physically within their own body. Still others simply “know” what is needed, without any clear internal cues.
Because rational thinking has only a limited grasp here, this form of embodied perception can feel confusing or even unsettling.
Sooner or later, this raises fundamental questions: What belongs to me, and what belongs to the other? Where does my experience end, and where does the client’s begin?
Cindy Engel, PhD in biology and a shiatsu practitioner, combines scientific research with clinical experience. As a specialist in human and animal empathy and behavior, she introduces the term somatic empathy, which she defines as follows:
“Somatic empathy: experiencing what other people feel while being aware that this vicarious state is produced by someone else.” (p.11)
Her book offers a grounded, biological perspective on these phenomena. For me, it immediately evoked memories of my own early years in energetic bodywork.
Moving with the Undercurrent
More than twenty years ago, following a significant life event, my perception of others noticeably shifted. It felt as though an internal reorganisation had taken place.
During that period, I became increasingly interested in bodywork. While travelling, I came into contact with a variety of cultures and met practitioners of dance, Japanese martial arts, and other body-oriented disciplines, as well as individuals who were highly attuned to subtle perception.
Gradually, a sense emerged that interactions are not solely physical or emotional, but may also involve a more subtle form of attunement.
With a nod to my background as a Business Engineer, I began to describe these experiences as wave patterns of varying intensity and rhythm.
Each encounter seemed to carry its own quality: at times soft and quick, at others powerful and slow.
It was as if I were immersed in a dynamic field in which my body resonated with the other, beyond any conscious will.
What grounded me at the time was a simple question from others: “Do you feel this too?”
My answer came almost automatically: yes — although at the time I barely understood what was actually happening, let alone put it into words.
This is precisely why Cindy Engel’s work feels so illuminating: it gently lifts a corner of the veil by offering a biological framework for experiences that are often perceived as vague or elusive. It provides grounding without diminishing the sense of wonder.
The Body as a 3D Simulator
Cindy Engel proposes that we understand the body as a kind of internal simulator:
“You can consider your body a 3D simulator of anything and everything that you give your attention to. Attention of any kind — even thinking about someone — will produce in you embodied simulations of them.” (p.156)
In this way, we do not merely understand others intellectually; we can genuinely feel empathy or compassion. We effectively simulate the processes of the other within our own body.
For example, when you see someone smile, a subtle, almost imperceptible version of that smile arises within you. You then consult, as it were, an internal “database” of past experiences: what does this sensation mean to me? You recognise it as pleasant, uplifting — and conclude that the other person is likely feeling something similar.
This process plays a crucial role in social attunement and empathy. At the same time, it presents a challenge. The internal simulator uses the same mechanisms as our own personal experience — for instance, when we ourselves laugh. This overlap is precisely what can make things confusing.
Engel’s work helps explain why, as practitioners, it is not always easy to distinguish what belongs to us and what arises through internally simulating the other.
A Personal Reflection from My Training
During my final shiatsu examination, I received a session from my exam partner, after which she presented her observations to the assessment panel and fellow students.
For the first time, I heard someone articulate with striking precision the subtle energetic patterns I had felt in different parts of my body.
This moment challenged the assumption that such embodied perceptions are inherently difficult to verbalise. It became clear that subtle resonance can not only be experienced, but also shared and expressed.
This insight marked a meaningful completion of my training and strengthened my confidence in the use and value of this form of perception.
Inspiration for Practice
In this section, I share insights from Cindy Engel’s work, combined with my own experience as a bodyworker. I outline five key principles that support the conscious use of subtle bodily resonance, attention, and empathy in practice, while protecting and regulating one’s own system.
1. The importance of your own reference point
To distinguish between personal sensation and resonance with another, it is essential to know your own baseline.
“If you are not aware of your ‘normal’ internal sensations, you cannot notice any change in them when you interact with other people.” (p.232)
2. The quality of attention
When we come into contact with the burden a client carries, it is not only empathy that matters, but how we direct our attention.
Cindy Engel emphasises that attention directly shapes our internal experience:
“Tell me to whom you pay attention, and I will tell you how you are feeling.” (p.156)
In other words, what we attend to begins to organise itself within our body.
For bodyworkers, this means learning to work consciously with the duration and intensity of our attunement. While attunement is essential for understanding and resonance, it also requires clear boundaries.
Engel notes that it is not empathy itself that is taxing, but the quality and direction of attention:
“[…] it is the quality of attention — rather than empathy per se — that requires reducing […]” (p.202)
If we remain caught in internally repeating or “carrying” the other’s state, our own system can become burdened. Through embodied simulation, the experience continues to resonate internally.
It is therefore helpful, after moments of deep attunement, to consciously return to oneself and redirect attention:
“Avoid, if you can, obsessing, ruminating on […] harmful states.” (p.207)
In practice, this means learning to move between proximity and distance: being present with the other’s experience while regulating the duration, quality, and focus of attention in a way that is both supportive for the client and sustainable for ourselves.
3. Recovery and co-regulation
If you feel overloaded after a session, movement, deep abdominal breathing, and time in nature can help regulate the system. This brings to mind body-oriented approaches such as TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises), where tension is literally released through neurogenic tremors.
Engel also highlights that moments in which a client feels deeply understood at an embodied level are often experienced as highly meaningful. This form of resonance can play a significant role in the healing process.
In addition, co-regulation allows us, as practitioners, to support a regulating effect. For instance, a spontaneous yawn from a teacher in a group of yoga practitioners can trigger collective relaxation.
4. On interpreting experience
At times, we may feel as though energy is being drained from us, or that we are absorbing “negative” energy. Engel (p.210) suggests reframing such experiences as a natural process of internally simulating the other, which helps us understand them more deeply.
Rather than constructing protective walls or mental shields — strategies often rooted in fear — she proposes evolving towards an attitude of detached compassion (p.209), a concept with roots in Buddhist philosophy.
To me, this evokes a shift from rigid boundaries towards a form of inner transparency: remaining present without shutting down, and without over-identifying with the other’s experience. This requires emotional maturity and inner integration, whereby others’ themes are less likely to destabilise us.
5. On influence and presence
Engel argues that what we feel and think is not entirely separate from our interaction with others:
“What we feel and think is not a totally private experience. Our existence — our presence — has an impact on those we interact with.” (p.227)
As energetic bodyworkers, it is therefore essential to handle our thoughts and emotions with care, and to maintain clarity of focus and intention during sessions.
This reminds me of a personal experience during the Covid period. On a sombre day, I found myself near a child while repeatedly thinking about how heavy life felt at that moment. The child, meanwhile, was fully absorbed in drawing, in a state of focused presence.
Suddenly, the child looked at me with open curiosity and repeated my exact thought aloud, asking for an explanation. Surprised by this unexpected mirroring, I responded with simple, honest clarity. The child seemed visibly reassured, exhaled deeply, and calmly returned to drawing.
Since then, I have become much more aware of my own mental state when interacting with children. This experience deepened my understanding of what I would call “mental hygiene” and invites reflection on its relevance when working with clients: our inner state subtly yet tangibly influences the quality of contact and attunement.
For this reason, it remains important for practitioners to regularly receive bodywork themselves, so that awareness of how one’s internal state shapes the experience and the effect of a session remains alive.
Accessing the Experiential Network in Dreams
Cindy Engel’s work is largely based on research into direct human interaction, including contexts without physical contact but with mutual engagement. This raises the question of how her insights apply in situations where such direct interaction is absent.
In other words: does this form of bodily resonance — as internal simulation of another — extend beyond encounters with a concrete other?
This shifts the focus from interaction to access. It is not only about how we relate to others, but also about which forms of experience and information are available across different states of consciousness.
In this context, one might ask whether dreams function as an alternative access point to an experiential network that is less directly available in waking awareness.
Dreams often present information not in abstract or linear form, but through images, symbols, and associations. Elements of nature — animals, plants, insects, landscapes — frequently play a prominent role.
I experience this as a form of meaning-making that is not primarily cognitive, but grounded in direct experience and symbolic resonance. In waking life, this “information” becomes accessible only through later reflection and interpretation.
Rupert Sheldrake offers an intriguing — though not widely accepted — hypothesis through his theory of morphic fields. According to this idea, living systems are influenced through resonance by previous patterns within similar systems.
I also see a connection with Peter A. Levine, who described how profound life events can open shifts in perception when they are not only cognitively understood but also physically integrated:
“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence. (…) Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.”
Practice-based observations in bodywork and trauma therapy — as described by Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk — suggest that shifts in embodied experience often coincide with a refined capacity for attunement and perception, making certain forms of symbolic and experiential information more accessible.
Point Mort: Moments of Stillness and Clarity
I believe that we, as human beings, can experience moments of “immediate knowing”: states in which distance, time, and conventional communication temporarily fall away, and information is no longer processed linearly.
What seems required is a deep sense of connection, engagement, genuine interest, and focused attention. Notably, Cindy Engel describes these as precisely the conditions essential for somatic empathy. Under such circumstances, it may feel as though what lives within me is also present in the other — and perhaps even beyond that, as part of a shared field of experience.
The concept of point mort helps me describe these moments. People who have had near-death experiences often report a transition into a kind of zero-point state. I like to use the metaphor of a car in point mort — or neutral gear: it neither moves forward nor backward, while the engine continues to idle. At this zero point, direction temporarily dissolves, and thought itself may come to a standstill.
A personal memory that stands out is a session in which an energy bodyworker focused intensely on a specific visualisation within my body. During the session, I entered a meditative state in which thinking ceased entirely, and I perceived the same vivid image as a form of immediate knowing. Afterwards, it became clear that this corresponded exactly with the visualisation that had been intentionally applied, which he later showed me in his reference material.
What I call point mort remains, in essence, a personal metaphor for a particular quality of consciousness. At the same time, it resonates with philosophical models from physics, such as David Bohm’s implicate order, where reality is understood as an underlying interconnected whole rather than a collection of separate entities.
In quantum physics, one also encounters notions of non-local correlations, as in quantum entanglement. Albert Einstein famously referred to this as “spooky action at a distance”, expressing his discomfort with phenomena that do not fit within classical notions of space and causality.
The metaphor of point mort, as I use it, may relate to a state between stillness and potential. It can loosely be compared to zero-point energy — a theoretical minimum level of energy which, according to quantum mechanics, is inherent in all systems, as described by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and others. Within certain philosophical reflections, this is seen as a threshold between emptiness and possibility.
These concepts are not used here as explanatory models, but as language to approach experience: not as proof of a mechanism, but as possible metaphors for a form of interconnectedness that cannot be described through distance or linear transmission.
Closing Reflection: Interconnectedness and Care for the Whole
In her concluding reflections, Cindy Engel emphasises that we cannot fully shield ourselves from the suffering of others. She raises the question of how a society driven by competition and individual gain — in which only a limited group thrives while others are left behind — relates to the quality of the shared field in which we live.
When groups of people, animals, or other living systems are under pressure or suffering, this seems to resonate—subtly yet meaningfully—in how we embody ourselves and relate to the world, often beyond conscious awareness. Through somatic empathy and embodied simulation, we are, in a sense, participants in one another’s inner and relational reality.
From this perspective, Engel expresses hope that recognising our fundamental interconnectedness may contribute to a more caring way of living together — one in which the wellbeing of the whole, including humans, animals, and ecosystems, takes a central place in how we think, act, and coexist.