Relational Somatic Psychology

A body-oriented approach to psychotherapy that values, supports and relates to the 'whole' person.

Somatic Psychology Education is a therapeutic process that includes the body, heightens sensory awareness and body awareness. It cultivates embodiment and presence. It is a channel to connect more deeply with our soul and goes beyond strengthening the ego.

Basic Aims

Resource the body, land in the body, embody experience, particularly for intolerable feelings. Increase the window of tolerance, to navigate life more easily.

When you are at home in the body you can move through experiences in life in a much more grounded way.
We all organize our ego structures in a particular way to form ourselves and our responses in the world.
Unexpressed or trapped energy creates tension and physical holding in the body. We are interested in how
the flow of energy is shaped and organized in the body on all levels. We want to know how it becomes blocked
and interrupted and how we can encourage its liberation and self-regulation.

Without liberation an interrupted reaching out movement occurs, which literally shows up in body. A somatic approach looks at different holding patterns in the body, which are symbolic for how we hold ourselves in the world. How do we hold ourselves in relation to another? Do we need to protect, defend, be compliant, merge, etc… We form our experience by how we ‘‘hold’’ our “selves” in our bodies.

How do you hold yourself in the world?

What is your holding pattern? Hold up, hold down, hold together, hold Back, hold in.

Psychological wounds are carried and remembered in the body. The cells in our bodies are shaped by past and present experience and stored in the body. A very important factor in all this is breath. Breath is symbolic for life energy.

How much do you allow yourself to be alive and, ultimately, to exist?

Relational Somatic Psychotherapy attends to what happens to us in relationship with others. How do we gain or lose contact with our body in relation to another? How do we gain or lose presence in relation to another?

Psychotherapeutic Premise: Real change can only happen through the relationship with another human being. A Relational Somatic Process explores that and includes the body in the process.

The original formation of habitual patterns occurred in the dynamic with people in our early environment. The working-through and resolution of these patterns also needs to happen within a relationship.