Somatic psychotherapy

There are a number of forms of somatic psychotherapy. Many incorporate other complementary or creative therapies. In each case the idea involves “hearing” the mind and body through the “soma” or symptoms /feelings manifested in the physical body. The model is based on a rejection of the Cartesian divide, and the acceptance of mind and body being intimately linked, or indeed one.

Questioning the body versus exploring issues

Some methods focus on the body and determine what the cause might be by “listening”. Other styles explore commonly linked themes drawing on the underpinning theory of that style. Some practitioners may use intuition or linguistic clues.

Mindfulness

Methods like meditative listening and body scanning are commonly used to “hear” and process. This also enabled enhanced emotional awareness of self, emotions and soma.

Hypnotherapy

Mindfulness based methods, visualization based methods, meditative methods, hypnoanalysis, and regression methods as well as ideomotor questioning are among the methods used.

Analysis

Various forms of analysis, including psychodynamic or psychoanalysis can occasionally use topic association to explore links between physical sensations and emotions underpinning them.

Intuitive movement

Dance, intuitive chi gung or role play are among methods that can he used to explore through movement. (Stuart uses the second two but not dance).

What can somatic work assist with?

Stuart bases all clinic work around research evidenced or NICE recommended core methods. Somatic exploration can therefore be combined with a range of recommended and evidenced methods to treat clinical mental health conditions. This is a multi modal approach allowing holistic adaptation while maintaining evidence based practice.

Key words

Depression, mental health, anxiety. relationships, emotional release, somatic therapy, somatic psychotherapy, somatic hypnotherapy, somatic Mindfulness, MBSR, MBCT, CBT, CBA, CBASP, DBT, Gestalt, humanistic psychotherapy, body mind work, body psychology, humanistic psychology, psychoanalysis in body work, critical psychotherapy, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Glasgow.