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What is Sensorimotor Psychotherapy? What is Integrative Body Psychotherapy?

What is somatic therapy?  "Somatic" simply refers to the body.  By bringing attention to your own body's way of reacting to thoughts, memories, and emotions, we have an extra tool by which to work toward healing.  For clients who have been in talk therapy before with limited or short-term success, this may be a new avenue for growth and change.  I have found these somatic techniques can facilitate deeper, more meaningful work in less time with positive outcomes that continue over time.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented, talk therapy developed by Pat Ogden. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy blends cognition, emotion, and talk with physical interventions that address traumatic memory.  Post-traumatic stress can become exacerbated by implicit body-based memories and nervous system dysregulation.  Many clients report disrupted sleep, difficulty in relationships, mood swings, disordered eating, substance use, and other symptoms.  By bringing our awareness to the body and the information it holds, we can integrate what may not be in one's consciousness.  This therapeutic approach is unique in its ability to attend to psychological trauma, physical trauma, and traumatic attachment.

Integrative Body Psychotherapy is a non-invasive somatic psychotherapy that treats the whole person, integrating body, mind, and emotion.  Borrowing from  Eastern and Western psychological, physiological and spiritual body-mind theories and practice, IBP experiential practices help to break through old, somatically maintained dysfunctional behavior patterns by reawakening and establishing fully integrated states of well-being.  Through guided breath work, we together explore holding patterns stuck in the body and ways to restore integrated breathing that can contribute to an overall sense of well-being and connection to self.

Somatic work is not for everyone, and it is always up to you whether you want to explore these modalities of practice.