- When was the last time you felt comfortable in your skin?
- When was the last time you felt like someone literally held your back?
- What does it feel like under your skin?
- When will you grow a new skin?
- Where do you feel safe in the world?
These are all the questions that I have either asked myself, the divine, or that have been asked of me. Nobody provides the answers, but you need to trust that you can find them. Your body knows all the answers and if it hasnโt got them, Relational Body Psychotherapy can support you find them.
Wilhelm Reich in 1930s became interested in what he called โbody armourโ. Freud also expressed an interest in the body. Reich went one step further. He described this as our repressed emotions and developed a method to do what he called โemotional releaseโ in his clients. Reich was expelled from the psychoanalytic mainstream and his work found a new place in the world within what was known as the โgrowth movementโ of the 1960s and 1970s. It became a method seen as liberating the body. In the 1980s and 1990s body psychotherapy sat on the fringes of psychotherapy.
Since the early 2000s psychotherapy has become interested in the body and how we embody emotions and other disciplines such as cultural and sociological. Modern day experts that have lead this path before me, have all told us how we need to tune into our bodies and nervous system: Bessel Van Der Kolk in โThe Body Keeps the Scoreโ (2014), Nick Totton in โEmbodied Relatingโ (2015), and Deb Shapiro in โYour Body Speaks your Mindโ (2006).
Relational Body Psychotherapy is where the body, heart, soul and mind connect. It is how we connect physically with our feelings, our history, our culture and how we interact through our body with those around us.
For 16 years I have lived with a physical disability. Through the work I do I understand how my physical symptoms communicate with me. Relational Body Psychotherapy has begun to answer some of the questions I went into with it. I know when my body is tired, stressed or anxious about the future, I need to listen to it and treat it with care.
Relational Body Psychotherapy has allowed me to fill the missing piece of the puzzle with clients who have faced trauma and, following the trauma, support clients to regulate their nervous system again. This I hope will continue to be my lifeโs work in enabling people to progress in their daily lives.
Having completed two years of studies in Relational Body Psychotherapy and ten years of seeing clients. I feel very privileged now to be able to integrate this methodology appropriately, when clients are ready, into the psychotherapeutic work I do.
All it requires clients to do is to come with an open mind and we will work slowly together to build trust in our therapeutic relationship. Then I will support you to feel confident, grounded and safe in your body, and help you to connect with your body, heart, soul and mind.
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