Somatic Perspectives on Psychotherapy

In this conversation, we explore ethics and embodiment. This conversation is available as a video, as well as audio only, and as a printable PDF transcript. Audio only: Dirk Marivoet is the director of the Institute for Bodymind Integration in Ghent (Belgium). He studied Core-Energetics under John C. Pierrakos, MD; Postural Integration®, Energetic Integration and Pelvic-Heart Integration under Jack Painter, PhD (and has been a certified trainer/supervisor since 1999). He has also worked extensively with native shamanism both in Europe and North America. Earlier in the 80s and 90s he was adjunct faculty Psychomotor Therapy at Leuven University, where he still teaches.

Steven Hoskinson, MA, MAT, is the Founder and Chief Compassion Officer (CCO) of Organic Intelligence® and the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Organic Intelligence Outreach Institute. Steve created the Human Empowerment And Resiliency Training (OI HEARTraining®) based on Organic Intelligence, which is a positive psychology, fractal method known for its implicit exposure approach to trauma. Since 1999, Steve has trained thousands of professionals in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in the art of the compassionate treatment of trauma. As Professional Training Faculty for the SE™ Trauma Institute, he has mentored and trained teachers across the globe and is also Adjunct Faculty for JFK University’s Somatic Psychology program. Steve is a founding member of the Northern California Society for Integrative Mental Health and the International Transformational Resilience Coalition. He also served on the Global Training and Education Council for the SE™ Trauma Institute.See OrganicIntelligence.org Published May, 2016. See printable PDF transcript.

Neal H. Brodsky, LMFT uses expressive therapies to help adults, young people, and families create lives they love. He is licensed in Marriage & Family Therapy and certified in both Core Energetics and Embodied Couples Work (Exceptional Marriage Approach.) Neal was originally trained in Film and Television and is particularly adept in helping clients visualize and create profound and lasting change in life. He is one of 10 therapists from around the world contributing a chapter to the 2015 book “Deep Play: Exploring the Use of Depth in Psychotherapy with Children” and his work supports the “inner children” of adult clients to resolve past family difficulty and allow the flourishing of life tasks and relationships. Neal’s U.S. offices are in New York City and Connecticut and he works with expat couples and families around the world through video-assisted online sessions along with his wife Judy Gotlieb, LMFT. See LoveLifeCounseling.com. Published: March 2016. See printable PDF transcript.

Greg Madison, PhD, is an existential psychologist and psychotherapist active in various academic and professional communities across Europe and internationally. He has written the books, The End of Belonging and Existential Migration and co-edited three books on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy and Existential Therapy. He continues to write articles on contemporary topics related to experiential-existential psychotherapy, participatory democracy, psychology and society. He founded The London Focusing Institute and is co-editor of Existential Analysis. See: www.gregmadison.net and www.londonfocusing.com Published: January 2016. See printable PDF transcript. For more conversations about Focusing, see the Focusing Institutes’s website for Focusing conversations.

Dirk Marivoet is the director of the Institute for Bodymind Integration in Ghent (Belgium). He studied Core-Energetics under John C. Pierrakos, MD; Postural Integration®, Energetic Integration and Pelvic-Heart Integration under Jack Painter, PhD (and has been a certified trainer/supervisor since 1999). He has also worked extensively with native shamanism both in Europe and North America. Earlier in the 80s and 90s he was adjunct faculty Psychomotor Therapy at Leuven University, where he still teaches. Published November 2015. See printable PDF transcript.

Aline LaPierre, PSYD, MFT, is the coauthor of Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship, and she has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed somatic journals. She was on the faculty of the somatic doctoral program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute for 10 years. A graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute, she also trained as a psychoanalyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. She is the creator of NeuroAffective Touch™ and Experiential Psychobiology™ workshops supporting the development of embodied awareness for psychotherapists and bodyworkers. In private practice in West Los Angeles, she specializes in the integration of relational psychodynamic and somatic approaches. Published September 2015. See printable PDF transcript.

Marti Glenn, PhD, Co-Director, Quest Institute, offering intensive retreats for healing early trauma. She is founding President of Santa Barbara Graduate Institute with graduate degrees in somatic psychology, prenatal-perinatal psychology and clinical psychology. A pioneering psychotherapist and trainer for three decades, she was also professor of clinical psychology, integrating body psychotherapy with affective neuroscience, attachment, and trauma. Dr. Glenn serves on several non-profit boards and has chaired numerous professional conferences, including APPPAH and Neurons to Neighborhoods: Preventing and Healing Trauma. She co-produced the broadcast quality documentary, Trauma, Brain, and Relationship and has appeared in such documentary films as What Babies Want; What Babies Know; Reducing Infant Mortality and Improving the Health of Babies. She continues to train mental health professionals with a focus on relationship and the experienced body, weaving neuroscience, polyvagal theory, epigenetics, trauma and attachment into clinical practices. She is a frequent speaker at conferences world-wide. See website. Published July 2015. See printable PDF transcript.

Dr. Wager is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and a faculty member in the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in cognitive psychology in 2003, and served as an Assistant and Associate Professor at Columbia University from 2004-2009. Since 2010, he has directed Boulder’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience laboratory. He has a deep interest in how thinking influences affective experiences, affective learning, and brain-body communication. His laboratory also focuses on the development and deployment of analytic methods, and has developed several publicly available software toolboxes for fMRI analysis. Unfortunately, the quality of the recording is not very good. You may want to read the transcript (below) as you listen to the audio.  See also Editorial Comment: Embodied Positive Psychology: Expectancy and the healing relationship Published May 2015. See printable PDF transcript.

Lorena Monda, MS, DOM, LPCC, is a practicing psychotherapist (since 1979), a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, and a certified qigong teacher. She is a trainer for the Hakomi Institute and on the faculty of the AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine in Austin, Texas, where she teaches courses in clinical communication integrating Hakomi skills. Lorena is the author of The Practice of Wholeness: Spiritual Transformation in Everyday Life and a coeditor of I Have Arrived, I Am Home: Celebrating 20 Years of Plum Village Life and Hakomi Mindfulness Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (Norton, May 2015). She is currently working on a book called Mindfulness, Qi, and Transformation. Lorena is in private practice in New Mexico and teaches in the US and internationally. Published March 2015. See printable PDF transcript.

Gregory Hickok, Ph.D. is Professor of Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine, Founder, Director Emeritus, and current Fellow of the UCI Center for Cognitive Neuroscience & Engineering, Founder and Director of the Center for Language Science, Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and the Center for Hearing Research, and past Chair of the Research Imaging Center’s Imaging Steering Committee. Beyond UCI he is the founding President of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Editor-in-Chief of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and author of The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition. Published January 2015. See printable PDF transcript.

Dr. Michael Picucci, PhD, MAC, SEP, brings decades of investigation and experience to his practice of Psychotherapy, Focalizing and Consulting. His professional expertise spans a wide-range of disciplines as a Psychologist, Licensed Psychotherapist, Master Addictions Counselor, Sexologist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Organizational Consultant. Recipient of the National Institutes on Health “Outstanding Leadership in Research Award,” the last 30 years of Dr. Picucci’s exploration in Social Sciences, Organizational Development and Energy Psychology has focused on addictions, trauma healing, sexuality, and interpersonal and group dynamics. During this time he has been observing and creating rituals for sane, healthy living for individual clients, couples, groups and organizations. The story of this journey and his discoveries is told in Dr. Picucci’s books which can be found at http://www.theinstitute.org/books/ as well as in all his other published works on healing and wholeness for individuals and communities: www.focalizing.com Published November 2014. See printable PDF transcript.

Pierre Morin, MD, PhD, is president of the International Association of Process Oriented Psychology (IAPOP) and a founding faculty member at the Process Work Institute Graduate School in Portland, OR. He was a clinical director of Switzerland’s leading rehabilitation clinic for brain and spinal injuries. After moving to Portland, OR, he studied health psychology and rehabilitation psychology. He currently works as a clinical director and supervisor in an outpatient mental health program and in private practice. Dr. Morin is a co-author of Inside Coma and author of Health in Sickness – Sickness in Health. He has written several articles on mind-body medicine and community health. See website. Published September 2014. See printable PDF transcript.

Raja Selvam, PhD, is a senior trainer in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE) professional trauma training programs and the developer of Integral Somatic Psychotherapy (ISP), an advanced approach for integrating body, energy, and consciousness into any psychological process, designed for experienced clinicians. Raja’s eclectic approach draws from bodywork systems of Postural Integration, Biodynamic Cranio-Sacral Therapy, […]

Judyth O. Weaver, Ph.D. in Reichian Psychology, began studying with Charlotte Selver in 1968, after returning from three years in Asia, most of them spent in a Zen Buddhist monastery. She is also certified as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and in Prenatal and Birth Therapy. She is a Rosen Method practitioner and senior teacher; and a master teacher in T’ai Chi Ch’uan, which she has been practicing since 1968.  Judyth taught at the California Institute for Integral Studies and other S.F. Bay Area graduate schools for 25 years. She co-founded Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and created its Somatic Psychology doctoral program.  She has developed her own integrated manner of working with people which she calls ‘Somatic Reclaiming.’ She maintains a private practice in Seattle, Washington, and on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada in the summers, as well as teaches internationally. December 2012. See: Printable PDF transcript. See also June 2011 conversation (audio).

Katy Swafford, PhD has worked in Eidetic Imagery for 20 Years. She has trained with the founder, Akhter Ahsen, PhD intensively and her practice is focused on developing applications for this comprehensive method.  Dr. Swafford conducts training in Eidetic Imagery and is working to introduce this somatically based theory into academic environments as well.  Eidetic Imagery is a comprehensive model of consciousness in which images of nature, development, and mythology come together in the body.  The somatic or “S” factor of an Eidetic Image, (Image – Somatic Response- Meaning) makes Eidetic Imagery a Body Psychotherapy with the image as the sensory entry point. Through the Eidetic Image, universal qualities of mind become a thick, rich, physical experience - mythic mind and physical body are together.  Akhter Ahsen (recipient of USABP’s Pioneer Award) is truly a Pioneer in the field of consciousness, never leaving the body in the universal fullness of mind. October 2012. See: Printable PDF transcript. See also video.