Embodiment in Practice

Applying the latest advances in mind/body research

This new professional development course focuses on ways of understanding the body/brain/mind relationship and clinically applying recent neuroscience research findings.

We will be drawing from somatic psychotherapy theory and practice and from other refined body-oriented approaches, contemporary relational psychoanalysis and Eastern mindfulness techniques to look at when and how to work with lived bodily experience within a contemporary psychotherapy framework.

In each teaching session you will have an opportunity to explore and practice new ways of attending to, and working with, embodied experience within the therapeutic relationship.

The course will help you to develop your own capacity for attunement and affect regulation and to have more resources and confidence in working with a client’s somatic experience. It will also increase your ability to process, within your own body, the effects of powerful communications which arise in the therapeutic relationship.

The course will offer practical, experiential learning with a strong clinical and theoretical focus

You can expect to:

• Build new clinical skills in attending to and working with embodied experience
• Gain a greater understanding of the mind/brain/body relationship in early development, the effects of trauma and how emotional experience becomes embodied
• Deepen your awareness of your own moment-to-moment somatic experience
• Refine  and extend your ability to attune to and ‘read‘  both your own and your client’s implicit, non-verbal communications
• Explore how these communications influence and contribute to subtle, moment-to-moment shifts in the therapeutic relationship
• Use these moment-to-moment shifts as an avenue into understanding and working with unconscious processes within the therapeutic relationship
• Increase your understanding of the role and processes of affect regulation and your own patterns of self-regulation
• Enhance your skills and capacity for self and interpersonal emotional regulation
• Develop new skills in working more consciously and directly with somatic experience and in assessing when working on this level is appropriate.
• Explore the clinical and ethical implications of this approach

Please note: Course size will be limited to facilitate discussion and practice.

Each teaching session will include the opportunity for experiential exploration, discussion, practice of skills and consideration of case material. References and readings will be supplied.

The course will, at times, offer an opportunity for experiential "hands-on" exploration to enhance your understanding of body process and experience. Active participation in these exercises is voluntary.

The focus of the course will be on teaching an approach and skills which can be applied in any relational model of psychotherapy or counselling.

"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgementally." Jon Kabat-Zinn

Who is the course for

This professional development course is for people who want to understand more about emotional processes and the body and to develop skills in working with somatic experience within the therapeutic relationship.

It will be of particular value to those who already have training and clinical experience in psychotherapy or counselling and who wish to increase their understanding and skills in this area.

It will also provide an introduction to some aspects of somatic (body-oriented) psychotherapy for those who would like to know more about this approach.

Session Information

Detailed session information can be found by clicking here.