Body-oriented or somatic psychotherapy techniques have the capacity to deepen awareness and integrate mental, emotional, and sensory experience. All clinicians can expand their practice through adding these basic techniques to their repertoires. Somatic skills can provide deeper, more integrated healing than talk therapy alone, especially for experiences that are difficult to verbalize.
This program will teach clinicians basic somatic tools for creating increased self-awareness including body sensing, somatic mirroring, developmental movement, and imagery work.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. Identify core principles of body-oriented (somatic) psychotherapy and describe how they differ from exclusively talk-based approaches.
2. Apply at least two body-sensing techniques to increase clients’ awareness of physical sensations linked to emotional experience.
3. Demonstrate somatic mirroring strategies which enhance attunement and therapeutic presence within a clinical interaction.
4. Practice basic developmental movement interventions to support integration of mental, emotional, and sensory experience.
5. Utilize guided visualization techniques to facilitate clients’ access to nonverbal emotional and somatic experiences.
6. Integrate selected somatic tools into existing therapeutic modalities while maintaining ethical and scope-of-practice considerations.
