Brief Introduction to Body Psychotherapy

Body Psychotherapy is a branch of psychotherapy that centers the body in the therapeutic process as a crucial component of healing. This allows for a deepened understanding of how experiences like addiction, relationship and attachment, resource and safety, grief, and trauma are experienced and stored on the level of the physiology and can impact our nervous system responses, and how this in turn, influences how we relate to ourselves, others, and our world. This includes how bodies exist in systems of power and oppression, and how this impacts both clients’ and therapists’ experiences of the above. Body psychotherapy centers the following as hallmarks; the cultivation of somatic or body-focused sensory awareness, the use of present moment experience in therapeutic inquiry, sequencing–the following through or completion of movements and emotions, and tracking–the paying attention to the physical experience of both the therapist and client.