The therapeutic relationship is a crucial factor in fostering successful outcomes. This training is laser-focused on developing the therapist’s skills in creating and maintaining a safe and healing relationship.
This work involves accessing bodily experience. While embodied, it does not require physical movement or touch.
The “body” we are referring to is much more than just the physical body. It is the experience of the body from the inside. It’s a feeling, an intuition, a way of knowing that includes imagination and reverie. It is more than physical. It is a sense of the whole experience. Not an explication of the experience but an experience of the ineffable.
Working somatically deepens the healing experience. In the case of trauma, it is essential. It is how we can access the way the body stores trauma in a nonverbal way. For instance, working with dissociated states that are not accessible through explicit cognition is only possible with an embodied approach.
Felt sensing works well with trauma because it is gentle. Working with the felt sense naturally fosters an atmosphere of safety and connection. The felt sense reveals itself when the client is ready for it.
This way of working is inherently empowering. The therapist may guide the client and make suggestions, but the approach fosters the client’s own discovery process. Clients come to trust their inner knowing process as an embodied experience. This breaks away from the dynamic of power where the therapist is the expert. The client is the expert on their own inner experience. This process trains clients to listen to themselves and trust this sensing. This is the very opposite of fostering dependency on the therapist.