When the World Feels Divided
By Hadi Bahlawan Marcher
Comic & Anatomy Illustrations by Jenny Drew
What This Article Is About
This article is about how Bodynamic helps us understand human defences — in our bodies, in our relationships, and in the world. Through personal stories and real experiences, I share how learning to read the body can turn conflict into connection, pain into dignity, and trauma into growth — even across cultures, faiths, and historical wounds.
Meeting People Across Defences
When we talk about politics, religion, or painful conflicts, it is easy to forget that every person has their own defence system. Every human body reacts differently when overwhelmed.
When I was younger, I did not understand that. I am a very emotional person. I wanted to share, to tell my story, to open my heart. Sometimes, when I did that, the other person would suddenly withdraw. They would go quiet and leave the conversation. Sometimes without saying a word. Back then I thought:
"What is wrong with me? Did I do something terrible?"
I felt rejected and ashamed.
Then another part of me would say:
"Forget this guy!"
The connection would break. One person gone, the other angry. Both of us alone.
Through Bodynamic, I learned something that changed everything. These moments were not about me doing something wrong. They were about defence structures. Once I began to learn about character structures, I stopped taking it personally.
My emotional Late Existence character structure made me expressive and open. His Early Existence and Early Autonomy defences made him react differently, withdrawing when things felt too much, bracing when he felt he had to hold his ground.
I could see that he was overwhelmed. This was his defence. I could also see my own patterns, how fast I go from hurt to anger, how quickly I cut off connection when I feel rejected. Now, as an adult, I meet those situations differently. If someone withdraws, I do not have to collapse or chase. If I feel hurt, I do not have to explode. I can pause, ground myself, and remember that we all defend ourselves differently.
What I Saw in His Body Before He Spoke
Because of my Bodynamic training, I could read the subtle shifts happening in his system.
His Depressor Anguli Oris, a self-assertion muscle, part of the Will Structure, was tightening, signalling preparation to hold a position internally before expressing it.
His sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck was bracing, a classic sign connected to the Late Need Structure, where emotional checking and internal control around closeness become active.
His posture became more upright and slightly rigid, showing readiness to hold ground, a Will related pattern of organising the body around inner boundaries.
His eyes narrowed, not from anger, but from a need to stabilise himself. I recognised this as another Late Need response, where subtle suspicion and relational scanning emerge when emotional safety feels uncertain.
I also noticed engagement in his upper trapezius and levator scapulae, muscles in the shoulders and neck that often activate when someone is holding themselves together internally. While these muscles are not formally assigned to a single character structure in Bodynamic, they frequently come online during moments of mental effort, emotional control, and internalised pressure.
His entire system was organising itself to manage intensity, not through aggression, but through precisely tuned muscular holding. This was his way of staying composed in a situation that touched deep historical, collective, and emotional layers.
These reactions were not random. They formed a coherent bodily strategy, a map of how he was meeting something that mattered profoundly to him.
That's what makes Bodynamic so unique: it's not just a somatic method — it's a language of psychological development, written into the body. When we understand that language, we connect faster, with more dignity, even in emotionally charged situations.
As my mirror neurons picked up his activation (Rizzolatti, 1996), I didn't react — I responded. I grounded my feet. I activated my supporting muscles and energy management system. I centered myself and reminded my body: This is not an attack. This is a defense. He's trying to stay safe.
He began to speak:
"Can you imagine if this happened to your country? The Jews have been persecuted, attacked, treated so badly…"
His words weren't wrong — but the group's energy became tense.
Choosing Connection Over Conflict
He began to speak. He said, can you imagine if this happened to your country? The Jews have been persecuted, attacked, expelled, stripped of their rights, killed...
His words were not wrong but the energy in the group became tense.
Inside me, my own history rose up. I am half Lebanese. My father's family is from South Lebanon, where the fighting was happening. I have lost family members in these wars. In the past, I would have exploded emotionally. This time, I could feel my own defences and guide them. I held my upright posture without rigidity. I stayed with my grief and anger without collapsing into them.
This is what Bodynamic gave me. A stronger body ego, which supports a stronger observing ego.
That is something my grandmother Lisbeth Marcher and my mother Ditte Marcher taught me repeatedly. When your body ego grows, your emotional capacity expands. Your defences do not disappear, but you can guide them. You do not fall apart. You do not pass on pain. You meet life differently.
I remembered something my father once told me, the story of Salahadin, the Muslim Sultan who, after retaking Jerusalem in 1187, treated his enemies with mercy. When his opponent Richard the Lionheart became sick, Salahadin sent his own physician to care for him.
That story taught me that real strength is not only about power. It is about generosity and dignity, even in conflict.
So I looked at the man and said that I did not want that. I have children and I want something else for the future. We are both part of the human family. Maybe your family has traumatised mine, and mine has traumatised yours, for more than seventy years. Right now our countries are at war. Maybe even our families are fighting each other.
But we do not have to choose that here. We can choose something else. Care for the human. Connection. Dignity. Not as enemies, but as brothers. Because we are family, and family means we can break the cycle together.
We both cried. We hugged. Something shifted between us.
That moment — that meeting — showed me what is possible when we use this work to see the human behind the defense.
The Body-Mind Connection: Every Muscle Tells a Story
Every muscle is connected to an ego function. For example, the deltoid muscles are connected to boundaries. When the front deltoid is under elastic, a person may struggle to sense the other and set their own boundary. Activating the muscle also activates the ego function.
Defences are not pathologies. They are intelligent childhood survival strategies that may no longer serve us. They are resources, which means the goal is not to erase them, but to integrate them and to become the captain of your own defences.
Modern neuroscience supports this approach:
- Mirror neurons (Rizzolatti, 1996) explain why my body felt his defence before his words.
- Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011) shows how the vagus nerve controls safety and connection, and how grounding can shift us from defence into social engagement.
- Raja Selvam (2013) emphasises how increased emotional capacity in the body allows us to stay with painful feelings instead of collapsing into defence.
- Neuroplasticity research (Siegel, 2012; Doidge, 2007) proves the nervous system can rewire. Every time I meet a trigger with more awareness and dignity, I reshape the pathways in my brain.
- Implicit memory research (van der Kolk, 2014) confirms what Bodynamic found decades ago: trauma lives in the body, not just in the mind.
- And Bruce Lipton (2005) has shown how our beliefs and emotions impact our cellular biology - echoing what Bodynamic shows in practice: that healing the body heals the psyche.
A Dream for Our Shared Human Family
I carry a dream: to create trauma-healing spaces where people from both sides of conflict come together - Lebanese, Palestinians, Israelis, veterans, civilians, Ukrainians, Russians. To heal side by side, grow together, and practice post-traumatic growth as a shared path.
I saw something like this in Vietnam - where veterans and civilians gather every year in a place once destroyed by bombs. The crater has been turned into a lake with flowers. What was once horror has become a garden. They meet there. They talk, laugh, barbecue. They also remember. That is post-traumatic growth.
Now more than ever, in a world of rising superpower tension, climate instability, and polarised narratives, we will need this capacity. As global competition over future resources increases, we will be told:
"They are the enemy. We are the good ones."
But I believe it's more urgent than ever that we say:
"No - we are all part of the same human family. And we must find each other again."
This is why I want to show this beautiful tool of Bodynamic to the world. It offers a new language, an extra layer to the spiritual, psychological, and relational wisdom we already carry. It helps us build on what past generations taught - and gives the next generation more tools to live with more connection and consciousness.