Somatic psychology and the potency of psyche

Somatic Psychology is the discipline that sees the body and psyche as an interconnected whole. It is the psychology of the body- an approach that focuses on our lived experience of embodiment as human beings and recognizes this experience as the foundation and origination of all our experiential potential.

Somatic Psychology is not a psychology of representations that might be referentially about matters of the body, on the contrary it sees our soma as a vehicle that lives, breathes, and speaks a life-force language of its own. Somatic Psychology, therefore, is about strengthening the roots of psyche so that its Ultimate Concerns and deep meanings can be revitalized by the ground of its being, its living matter.

Craniosacral Biodynamics can be seen as a form of silent somatic psychotherapy involving safe neutral touch, somatic micro-tracking of body states, work with perceptual fields, an ongoing curiosity of spontaneous imagery and emotion, and the skill of orienting soma to the primordial resource of original health.

This workshop will explore the interconnectedness of psyche and soma within the context of biodynamic theory. Expanding your clinical capacity to engage verbally with clients is a primary intention of the training and various models of psychosomatic assessment will be taught to give you new perceptual fields and diagnostic baselines for augmenting the potency of psyche safely in your life and in your craniosacral practice.

All subjects of the course include experiential components such as table work, group process, and interactive exercises.

Topics include:

• Biodynamic Verbal skills, history of somatic psychology
• Body reading and advanced focusing techniques
• Exploring transference/countertransference, emotional intelligence, and the Relational Field as “Potential Space”
• Scope of practice safeguards regarding verbal work
• The psychodynamics of the Play Affect System and spontaneity as a clinical capacity
• Models of “structural” psychological assessment and neural substrates
• Advanced work with Images: the natural fulcrum of the image in anthropology, mythology, and neurology
• Self as an internalized family system. Family systems work with a biodynamic sensibility.
• Culture, Psyche, and Mirror Neurons in the Ritual Process: Developing “Clinical Liminal skills”

These topics will give you a grounding in somatic psychology and how BCST practice can be informed by this discipline. Enhanced verbal skills, increased awareness of the relational field (transference/countertransference), new diagnostic baselines for assessing change processes, and an improved capacity to communicate with the language of the psyche— embodied images— are intended outcomes of the training.

The training situates psyche as a biodynamic field shaped by family, culture, and our species as a whole and its unique potency is what we will listen for with these clinical and perceptual skills.

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