Somatic Psychotherapy Today

The executive in the chair says the quarter went well. Her shoulders are up near her ears, her breath sits high in her chest, and her jaw is working on something she has not said. This is a composite, drawn from patterns common in work with executives, not a single person. For many high achievers, the body is the first honest report in the room, and the last one anyone has asked to hear. Somatic clinicians know this already. What I want to offer here is a closer look at how this plays out with people whose job is to override discomfort and keep delivering, and a few ways of working that have helped me stay useful to them.

Regulation is not a small achievement, and I do not treat it as a preliminary stage before something more important. It is much of what makes any of this possible. But it is not always the end of the work. SPIRALAYA is a developing somatic-relational clinical model that grows from my professional training and influences, as well as my clinical observations. Its central clinical focus is the freedom available in relation to what becomes accessible and charged. Its broader aim is to expand a person's capacity for life. When something becomes accessible and charged, three questions organize the work: What is becoming accessible now? What else might it be? What other possibilities are there? How much freedom remains in relation to it?

Somatic psychotherapy has taught us to listen to the body. Eugene Gendlin invites us to take relational embodiment one step further and listen not only for what the body is expressing, feeling, or remembering, but for a vague yet palpable felt sense of what is emerging and not yet fully known. The body, he notes, does not first exist and then enter relationship; living is interaction from the beginning.  Through the lens of Gendlin's work, Charlotte Howorth explores what we mean by "body" in somatic psychotherapy and answers the question: what is this body that senses?

Framing death as both a social event and a human experience, not an exclusively a medical event, Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear argue in their new book, Well-Being at the End of Life: Reimagining Palliative Care, that if dying affects families, friends, neighbors, workplaces, faith communities, and civic institutions, then end-of-life care cannot belong only to professionals. They examine what has been happening historically in palliative care and hospice and invite readers to imagine how it could improve. A fascinating detailed read for any professional involved in caring for people nearing the end of their lives with the possibility for creating positive changes for all involved.

Brodsky’s Embodied Play Therapy emerges as a body-oriented, relational, sensory, and movement approach to working with children. As with any effective theoretical orientation, Brodsky provides a framework for his model, calling it the Four Pillars: Movement, Breathing, Feeling, and Playing.The book's theme underscores the need for children to have space and embodied movement for healthy psychic development. Brodsky highlights the reality of our culture of isolation, which he refers to as an “epidemic of emptiness,” as our children face increasing expectations for behavior and performance. The nervous system adapts and develops strategies to shut down and override the demands of our disembodied culture. As a Dynamic Play therapist, I found this book valuable for its illustrative, detailed approach to working with children in play.