Integrative body-psychotherapy II.: Psychotherapeutic process

In the body-psychotherapy we enter the psychotherapeutic process on three levels: bodily, emotional and verbal. Apart from observing the verbal and emotional content of the client the therapist also uses skills of somatic resonance, body-reading and mindfulness to bodily feelings and emotions on himself and the client. He works with the reflection of transference and countertransference. He uses embodied knowledge of interventions aimed to release and also at ground the bodily affective energy. An important part of the process also takes up the verbal work (esp. exploration of the past, formulation of the deficient needs, integration of experience). The body-work is proposed as an offer of tentative experiments. The client learns to be mindful to himself and his reactions in the process. The body-work usually brings deepening of experience, newly felt relationship to one’s own body and its inclusion into the self. The personality shift is also reflected in the change of sensing and holding the body. In the process we try to avoid several difficult moments, e.g. emotional flooding, danger of retraumatisation. One casuistic example and its analysis is presented at the end.

Filip Abramčuk, Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, České Budějovice, Czech Republic e-mail: fabramcuk@pf.jcu.cz