Core Energetics
Core Energetics is a body-centered therapeutic modality created by Dr. John Pierrakos out of both his seminal work in co-creating bio-energetics with Dr. Alexander Lowen and his later spiritual work with his wife, Eva Pierrakos.

Bio-energetics was an evolution of the work of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, the first student of Freud to turn attention to the physical manifestations of psychological illness and neurosis. Reich established the importance of paying attention to the body in diagnosis. He taught therapists to note chronic muscular holding patterns, restricted breathing, and inadequate grounding as revealing inner emotional/mental issues. John was a student of Reich’s and, with Lowen, created a system for “reading” the five typical defensive patterns that show up in people's bodies. These came to be known as the “character structures,” with each physical structure representing a typical pattern of frozen emotions and thinking.

Lowen and Pierrakos created ways to help people loosen their bodily armoring and mobilize their frozen emotional energies through a series of bio-energetic exercises, done in groups and in individual therapy. John also had the ability to “read” non-physical energies, including that of the auric field.

When John started a personal and working relationship with Eva, they joined their different approaches to personal transformation. John’s profound understanding of the body and subtle energies and what they reveal about the emotional issues of each soul added a new depth to Eva’s work. Eva’s profound spiritual perspective, as revealed in the Pathwork lectures, also brought a deeper dimension to the therapeutic modality that John had developed. Bio-energetics evolved into Core Energetics, and the context for the work shifted from being solely psychotherapeutic to being grounded in an explicitly spiritual path toward oneness with the Divine.

Core Energetics is a regular part of the Pathwork as taught at Sevenoaks. An understanding of the character structures and of working with the body is part of the training of Helpers in the Mid-Atlantic region.