Bodymind Integrated Psychotherapy

Bodymind Integrated Psychotherapy (IP) takes the body as the entry point for psychotherapeutic inquiry. This adds a lot; the body provides direct and effective answers. IP sessions bring visibility to your physical, mental and emotional blockages, and you develop concrete tools to experience more vibrancy and opportunities for self-expression in your daily life. It teaches you to recognize strategies you use in daily contact to be loved, but which can actually get in the way of deeper contact. It uses the framework of Reich and Lowen’s character styles.

 

An important element of this 4-year course is the dynamics around distance and closeness. What feels too close for one person, experiences someone else as too far away. By exploring the narcissistic and co-dependent layer of your own character, you can place yourself on this spectrum. This helps you to be able to direct this difficult dynamic in the contact.

 

Components of the teaching program include Group Dynamics, Bio-Energetics, Bodydrama, Breathwork and Body-centered Communication. In addition, I learned about the understanding and importance of the therapeutic relationship and my personal input into it.

 

Photo: Annie Spratt

NARM (The NeuroAffective Relational Model™)

“Paradoxically, the more we try to change ourselves, the more we prevent change. On the other hand, the more we allow ourselves to fully experience who we are, the greater the possibility of change.” ~Dr. Laurence Heller, Founder.

 

NARM is a form of trauma therapy that focuses on healing relational, attachment and complex developmental trauma (C-PTSD). In NARM sessions, we work with survival patterns that create lifelong difficulties in connecting with ourselves and others. These early unconscious patterns get in the way of connection and are linked to a variety of psycho-biological symptoms.

 

The patterns emerge around five life themes that we all encounter in our development: connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality. NARM places less emphasis on why someone is the way they are, and more on how the survival style distorts what the person is experiencing in the present moment. The here-and-now way of working is based on ‘somatic mindfulness’ and increases our capacity for self-regulation. Thus we create more capacity to be present with ourselves and with others.

 

Foto: Tehzeeb Kazmi

Somatic Experiencing (SE)®

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” ~ Peter Levine, grondlegger SE

 

Somatic Experiencing is a form of body-oriented trauma therapy. SE is a scientifically based method for working with physical and psychological symptoms of stress, shock and trauma (PTSD). SE incorporated the Polyvagal Theory of Stephen Porges into a healing modality.

 

SE focuses on completing the natural responses to traumatic events and making feelings of helplessness and despair understandable. Unprocessed traumatic experiences disrupt the natural rhythms, the regulation of the nervous system. Resilience then decreases. This can lead to a variety of physical, emotional and psychological symptoms. Integrating that stored survival energy restores the vitality and resilience originally present. In SE sessions, the body’s natural self-regulating systems are addressed by i.a. increasing somatic awareness, slowing down, processing traumatic experiences in small steps, finding resources, the breath, movement and touch.

 

Foto: Eric Combeau

collective trauma & the cultural crisis

“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to permanent war, none is so great as this deadening of our response.” ~Joanna Macy

 

Trauma is where liveliness has come to a halt. Trauma is not an individual problem, it is a social problem and it is systemic. It does not belong to an individual, but it is relational and always takes place in a context.

 

Collective trauma happens when groups of people dominate and others are excluded, when human rights are violated. Think of racism, colonialism and sexism. The consequences lie like a layer of permafrost in human history (Thomas Hübl).

 

Many indigenous peoples see the interconnectedness. In modern Western culture, we have come to believe in the illusion of separateness and hyperindividualism. This culture is at the root of the climate and ecological crisis. This crisis is about injustice that is so woven into our culture that we hardly see it. This injustice is related to our inability to feel the other within ourselves.

 

The people who contribute the most to making the crisis worse suffer the least. Climate disruption hits those who contribute the least the hardest, such as people in the Global South, young people, people not even born yet and species other than us. We in the West live a life of privilege, this brings with it the responsibility to address injustice and to do the right thing. We lack leaders who show us that standing up to injustice comes from our commitment to others.

 

If there is one thing the climate and ecological crisis makes abundantly clear is that we are all connected. All life on earth breathes the same air. All life is physically connected to and therefore through the earth. And everything each person contributes makes a difference. Healing collective trauma is everyone’s responsibility. We heal it when we can see and feel the other in ourselves.

 

Photo: Simon Berger

Climate stress & eco-emotions

“Emotions are often what lead people to act.” ~Dr. Britt Wray

 

In sessions around the climate and ecological crisis, we focus on increasing resilience so that we don’t get stuck in feeling through the wide range of emotions. It is human to feel fear, sadness, anger, guilt, shame and despair when we face the reality of climate science and we are confronted with the loss, unpredictability and threat.

 

It is also human to want to protect ourselves from this, pain we often want to avoid. We can become overwhelmed or numb if we start to feel too much at once. Then we are no longer able to act and this does not help us. Just trying to contribute something gives meaning to our lives.

 

If we want to find our way in the wilderness of these times, we have to feel what is within us. We feel because we love.

 

What is important is that we not only pay attention to that which challenges us, but we also pay attention to that for which we are grateful, for what brings us joy, for beauty and for that which enriches our lives. It is in the tension between pain and fear on the one hand and gratitude and love of life on the other that our resilience grows.

 

“Emotions often spur people to action. It may well be that feelings of ecological anxiety and sadness, while enormously challenging, are in fact the crucible through which humanity must pass in order to muster the energy and conviction needed to make the life-saving changes needed now.” (From: Bron)

 

Photo: Javier Miranda

embodied activism & resilience

“At its best, activism is a form of healing. It is about what we do and how we show up in the world. It is about learning and expressing regard, compassion and love.” ~Resmaa Menakem

 

Standing up and speaking out yourself against the status quo that is causing climate disruption and ecological crisis in any form is an act of activism.

 

We are all born with the capacity to speak up and to come out in protest when we or another is wronged. Every human being has the right to stand up for themselves and for others. To do this, you need access to your commitment, your heart, your voice, your courage, your strength.

 

Sustainable activism is about moving back and forth between pain and action. If we move too quickly from pain to action and we don’t allow ourselves time to mourn what we have already lost and are about to lose, we try to mask our pain with solutions. This is where we can burn ourselves out.

 

The reality is this: it’s already too late. And is there is a lot we can still do.

 

These times call for inner activism and outward activism (Caroline Hickman). The inner process of daring to feel our fear and grief can ignite the vibrancy we need to use and engage our voices to address injustice and stand up for life. This is what brings meaning and creates hope.

 

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” ~Vaclav Havel

 

Foto: Michiel Wijnbergh