Body – Mind Psychotherapy – Susan Aposhyan

She was literally “pouring on the charm.” Energetically, it was as if she had pulled all her energy up and out of her lower body and into her face. I felt overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of her attention, and felt that I must shrink in response. There was no perceptible opening for me to move toward her in any way. I shared all this with Tracey and showed her what I had seen her doing.

She understood the dilemma immediately. In response to the dilemma, I talked to her about circular attunement: We sat across from each and went slowly through the process. “I see you, and my perception of you enters my eyes and is communicated downward through my whole body. I feel myself and I feel myself adjusting to my awareness of you.

Whatever happens inside me, I feel. When you make a shift, I perceive it and that perception mixes with my experience of myself. Together we make a loop of communication. I see you seeing me. I feel myself seeing you. I see you seeing me, see you.” We practiced this together. “Wow,” Tracey said, “That’s really different. It’s like the workday at the office.” When she and her team at work moved the offices around she had really enjoyed coming into the office in jeans as everybody worked together to move desks and filing cabinets.

She said that she felt really comfortable with the guys in her office that day. “I wasn’t trying so hard.” She had allowed herself to stay with herself and be in relationship. Tracey began to practice this in her life. She realized that she had been lying to people about what she enjoyed and wanted.

She realized that she wanted to learn to do what she wanted to do and not what she thought would be good for the others. This practice of circular attunement can be important in working with couples and can provide a helpful metaphor for sexuality. In addition, psychotherapists working with their own embodiment, can use circular attunement to stay in touch with themselves and their clients. In BMP, as therapists develop their own embodiment, circular attunement is the bridge into embodied relationship. Breath, sensation, intrinsic movement, emotional expression, and the core self are all means to approach embodiment.

If we combine all of these elements within a context of awareness and respect, we have the practice of embodiment. This practice allows the more self-directed individual to work with themselves in a potent, developmental manner. Occasionally, a very astute client, drawing from pieces of work with breath, sensation, and movement will assemble this practice spontaneously within a therapy session.

W. W. Norton & Company New York • London A Norton Professional Book 1kitap1.com/en Dedication To my father, whose passing coincided with the birth of this book, sealing his gift of joyful work. 1kitap1.com/en Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1 Body-Mind Psychotherapy in Context 2 The Body-Brain Partnership 3 Bringing Together Biology and Human Consciousness: Fundamental Principles of Body-Mind Psychotherapy PART II TASKS AND FORMAT 4 Charting the Course: Tasks of Body-Mind Psychotherapy 5 The Interaction Cycle: The Basic Format of Body-Mind Psychotherapy 6 Cultivating Bodily Awareness: Synchronizing Body and Mind PART III BODY SYSTEMS 7 Observing the Body Systems 8 Systems of Form: The Muscular, Skeletal, and Nervous Systems 9 Systems of Experience: The Skin, Fluids, Fat, Viscera, and Endocrine System PART IV ANCHORING CHANGE IN THE BODY 10 Energetic Development: The Interaction Between Early Motor Development and Psychological Development 11 The Possiblity of Transformation: Accessing Cellular Change 12 Specific Clinical Issues: A Body-Mind Psychotherapy Approach Glossary Internet Resources References Index 1kitap1.com/en Preface This book is about Body-Mind Psychotherapy (BMP), an approach to psychotherapy integrating somatic (body-based) techniques into the basic framework of psychotherapy.

Since the early 1980s, psychotherapists have been increasingly integrating body-mind techniques into psychotherapy. BMP is an attempt to accomplish this integration in a simple, sensible, and seamless manner, so that the techniques are not just tacked on, but fit integrally and intelligently into the theory and practice of psychotherapy. Furthermore, the practice of embodiment, fundamental to BMP, offers a potent and practical way to enhance the clinician’s ability to attune, both with themselves and with their clients.

In the 1930s, Wilhelm Reich, once a close student of Freud, began to use the body as a tool in the psychoanalytic treatment of his patients. Since then, Reich’s work has been extended by later researchers and it has branched out in many directions. Many other psychological theorists have made significant and independent contributions to the field of somatic psychology, or body psychotherapy. In addition, many psychotherapists are spontaneously working various techniques of body-mind integration into their clinical practices.

The body is increasingly included in the practice of psychotherapy today with a wide range of populations.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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