Somatic psychology

Somatic psychology, also referred to as body psychotherapy, is an interdisciplinary field involving the study of therapeutic and holistic approaches to the body, somatic experience, and the embodied self. It is based in psychological, neurological, developmental, medical, social and cultural sciences. The word somatic comes from the ancient Greek somat (body). The word psychology comes from the ancient Greek psyche (breath, soul hence mind) and logia (study). Wilhelm Reich was the first to bring the body into psychoanalysis, and to physically touch the client. The only reference to the body in psychotherapy had previously been physiological and neurophysiological. Some credit Reich as a singlehanded founder of somatic psychology (though he called his early work character analysis). Many body-oriented psychotherapies trace their origins to Reich, yet in mainstream psychology his work remains marginalised. However, there are earlier practitioners for example, the Persian physician Avicenna (980 to 1037 CE) who performed psychotherapy only by observing the movement of the patient's pulse as he listened to their anguish. This is reminiscent of both traditional Tibetan medicine and current energy therapies that employ tapping points on a meridian. Some writers describe 'body as slow mind' and this has coincided with research into embodiment and consciousness, and an unconscious mind that 'speaks' through the language of body. Dance therapy reflects this approach and is included in the field of somatic psychology. .

Principles
1. Every event in the body is registered and placed in a temporal and spatial order (when, where and what priority) by the human brain and by the senses that infuse tissue and fluid with ripples of electrical and chemical stimulation. Each person's ordering and awareness of sensory information is different to a degree, but generally touch is immediate in impact, sight more distant. Life threatening events are of higher priority than life maintaining events. Witnesses at and victims of a car accident for example, seldom perceive the same order of events in the same way. Memory and recall are constructed on the basis of that fundamental ordering of sensations, those both in and out of awareness. Consciousness of these background events is influenced by prior experience, for example to what extent the person has learned to trust the information from their senses and to what extent the family and culture in which they live, facilitates access to somatic awareness.

2. Together with proprioception the human body can sense in the order of 20 million bits of information per second. Conscious mind (itself only a fraction of consciousness) can process a maximum of about 40 bits of information per second. The bulk of body events thus occur out of conscious awareness including for example, nociception or physiological pain - a nonconscious perception of near-damage or damage to tissue.

3. Body events influence decision making. In that realm, conscious mind is hundreds of milliseconds behind a decision made, for example, to move or even to sense an emotion. Some of this apparently involuntary activity in the back of the mind may be accessed through somatic awareness. People have been taught with biofeedback equipment, for example, to alter heart rate and blood pressure. People have learned with the skills of meditation to listen to 'unconscious gossip' in the back of their mind, which shapes later emerging thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

4. Enveloping the body is a matrix of connective tissue called fascia, which protects and gives structure to the body. Fascia holds the body posture and shapes how, where and when a person moves. Fascia is part of the neuroarchitecture of remembering, including remembering how to do things such as ride a bike or how to express oneself 'appropriately'. In much practiced skills like playing a musical instrument, body memory is a necessity. Conscious mind could not instruct each finger to move in the appropriate time and manner.

5. Mind manifests in movement whether it is subtle electrical events moving across the surface of the brain, and the body's fascia or complex movements such as thought, speech or emotion. Somatic psychology recognizes the continuity and connections that these processes contribute, in equal fashion to the organization of the whole person. There is no hierarchical relationship between mind and body, between psyche and soma. They are reciprocally interacting aspects of the whole, and this unitary relationship of mind-body is the working model for somatic psychology.

6. Mind is embodied and body is embedded both in its environment and its history. Life experience tends to become embodied - an individual’s past and present whole-body experiences are shaped and expressed in their breathing styles, movement patterns, musculature tensions, cognitive style, emotional expression, and relational patterns. Somatic psychology studies the mind-body connection with contemporary psychological and developmental theories and practices. It integrates research and practice from related fields such as traumatology, pre- and perinatal psychology, psychoneuroimmunology, and neurodevelopment.

7. Body is both metaphor and a narrative. Somatic psychology explores the personal and cultural story of body and of posture. For example, an individual with hunched shoulders that pull the head lower into the chest, may create neck and head pain that has both personal significance, sends a message and also tells a story of how that came to be the habitual position for enabling subsequent chronic pain. A somatic psychotherapy session might invite unfolding of the story or metaphor in order to increase awareness of the pattern of holding the body in a particular shape or posture. Family and culture can support a habit of 'pulling one's head in'; it is slang for 'shut up!' and it associates with labelling the hunchback as an outcast, sometimes used as a cultural symbol of selfless love under a monstrous exterior.

8. A principle of 'energy' may be referred to as the curative agent, for example that 'energy follows awareness'. This is a belief, grounded in ancient principles of vitalism, that energy will bring healing to the affected parts if sufficient awareness is directed there. Some somatic practitioners believe they are working with a universal human energy field (perhaps as a metaphor of all of the foregoing principles) and others raise the idea to scientific fact. Whilst principles of bioenergy are supported by quantam physics, the laws of physics in fact limit this popular view. It is not likely an infinite, continuous field of energy linking all of humanity.

9. The primary relationship addressed in somatic psychology is the person's relation to and empathy with their own felt body and bodily sense of self.

Applications
The practice of psychotherapy is undergoing a paradigm shift as discoveries within developmental neuroscience, research in early child development, and the study of infant and parent interaction challenge long held positions about the development of self. This research points to the psychological importance of body-based and non-verbal experience across the life span, particularly in the first three years of life. One area of interest is mirror neurons, which influence contagious yawning for example, and underlie the evolution of gesture, language and empathy. Mirroring is an early stage of movement oriented somatic therapies. Without some base in empathy, psychotherapy could not proceed.

A wide variety of techniques are used in somatic psychotherapy including sound, touch, mirroring, movement and breath. An individual records life experience during a pre- and nonverbal periods differently than during a verbalized and personal narrative period. Working with the client's implicit knowing of these early experiences, somatic psychology includes the non-verbal qualities that mark most human communication, especially in the first years of life. This understanding of consciousness, communication and mind-body language challenges some traditional applications of the talking cure.

Somatic psychology considers bodily states of consciousness, postures and gestures, muscular patterns, chronic contractions and tensions, movement range and shapes, ways of breathing, skin and color tones, somatic habits, energetic qualities, use of space, and body pulsations and rhythms as part of therapy process. It utilizes a dynamic systems theory approach that considers the whole person and all of their constituent domains as relevant to the psycho-emotional life. Practitioners in this field believe psychological, social, cultural and political forces support the splitting and fragmentation of the mind-body unity. These pressures affect an individual’s mental, biological, and relational health. For example, the writer Alice Miller's in her recent book 'The Body Never Lies' says, ''Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but is rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality''.

Somatic psychologists tend to bring body, body processes, and body experience into the foreground of psychotherapy practice, trauma treatment, child development, infant-parent mental health and attachment theory based practices, neuro-developmental inquiry, health and wellness, pre- and perinatal psychology, evolutionary psychology, psycho-anthropology, among others.

Education
The Institute for Integrative Bodywork & Movement Therapy provides diploma level training in the UK and Germany. The European Association of Body Psychotherapists accredits training organizations and hosts the International Congress in Europe. The Santa Barbara Graduate Institute offers M.A. and Ph.D. Degrees in Clinical Psychology, Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology, and Somatic Psychology. State accredited somatic psychology programs that meet the educational requirements for licensure as a California Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) include John F. Kennedy University and California Institute of Integral Studies The program that meets the educational requirement for licensure for Colorado's Professional Counselor License (LPC) is Naropa University.

There is a growing body of literature and journals in somatic psychology, and there are several international and national organizations, including the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy.

Somatic psychology books include:
 * The Body in Psychotherapy by Johnson and Grand
 * Getting Our Bodies Back by Christine Caldwell
 * Working with the Dreaming Body by Arnold Mindell
 * The Body in Psychotherapy by Edward W.L. Smith
 * Body Process by James A. Kepner
 * Bonding by Stanley Keleman
 * The Body in Recovery by John P. Conger
 * The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild
 * Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy by Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton & Clare Pain
 * Body, Breath and Consciousness: A Somatics Anthology, ed. by Ian Macnaughton
 * Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences by Peter A. Levine & Ann Frederick

The Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI) is an educational organization dedicated to the study and teaching of a somatic approach to clinical psychotherapy practice. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented talking therapy that integrates verbal techniques with body-centered interventions in the treatment of trauma, attachment, and developmental issues.

SPI offers trainings and workshops for psychotherapists and allied professionals in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and courses for body therapists on somatic resources. The courses taught by SPI are based on principles of mindfulness and mind/body/spirit holism and informed by contemporary research in neuroscience, attachment theory, trauma, and related fields.

History of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy In the 1970's, Pat Ogden became interested in the correlation between her clients' disconnection from their bodies, their physical patterns and their psychological issues. As both a psychotherapist and body therapist, she was inspired to join somatic therapy and psychotherapy into a comprehensive method for healing this disconnection. SPI offered its first course in the early 1980's under the name Hakomi Bodywork. Influenced by leaders such as Emilie Conrad, Ruth Lanius , Peter Levine , Peter Melchior, Ellert Nijenhuis Ellert's homepage is retrieved October 23, 2007 , Stephen Porges, Allan Schore , Dan Siegel, Martha Stark , Kathy Steele , Onno van der Hart , Bessel van der Kolk , and Ken Wilber. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy draws from somatic therapies, neuroscience, attachment theory, and cognitive approaches, as well as from the Hakomi Method, a gentle psychotherapeutic approach pioneered by Ron Kurtz. Sensorimotor Psychotherapists are attending trainings throughout the world, and the practice of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy has been gaining international acclaim over the past twenty-five years.

Critique
1. The level of evidence required in psychology and pharmacology for an efficacious treatment is a fraction of that required in physical sciences. 'What criterion', of evidence Stenger asks, 'should be applied to those studies that claim to show some therapy works, when that therapy violates well established scientific principles, such as the conventional laws of physics?'. Stenger,V.J. 'The Energy Fields of Life' retrieved from May 21, 2007 QUote 'Much of alternative medicine is grounded on vitalism, the notion that living organisms possess some unique quality, an élan vital, that gives them that special quality we call life. Belief in the existence of a living force is ancient and remains widespread to this day. Called prana by the Hindus, qi or chi by the Chinese, ki by the Japanese, and 95 other names in 95 other cultures (Brennen 1988), this substance is said to constitute the source of life that is so often associated with soul, spirit, and mind. Wheeler (1939) reviewed the history of vitalism in the West and defined it as "all the various doctrines which, from the time of Aristotle, have described things as actuated by some power or principle additional to mechanics and chemistry. In my field of particle physics, reputable journals such as Physical Review Letters will not publish any claim of a new phenomenon, such as evidence for the top quark or the mass of the neutrino, unless the data have a "significance level" of 10-4 or less. This means that if the same experiment were repeated 10,000 times, the reported effect would have been produced artifactually, as a statistical fluctuation or systematic error, no more than once on average. In medicine, and related fields such as psychology and pharmacology, and in the social sciences as well, the significance level for publication in the best journals is typically five percent. That is, the experiment need only be repeated twenty times, on average, to have the reported effect not be real but to result from an artifact of the experiment. This means that every twentieth paper you read could be a fluke, although many, of course, exceed the significance threshold and so the fraction of reliable results is probably, thankfully, much greater. This very loose criterion in the human sciences is justified by the very reasonable argument that any new result should be put to use as soon as possible in case it may save lives. What criterion should be applied to those studies that claim to show some therapy works, when that therapy violates well established scientific principles, such as the conventional laws of physics? For example, should we publish an experiment that indicates Therapeutic Touch works where the significance level is five percent? I argue that we should not. Given the difficulty of accurately estimating errors in any human experiment, any such claims are far more likely to be wrong than one in twenty. One in one are more likely to be wrong."

2. The concept of body is socially constructed. What has been considered the limits of body has changed significantly throughout the history of medicine and likely will continue to change as mechanisitic principles underlying mind and body are disclosed by the scientific method.

3. The flaws of a theory of vitalism, which gives rise to models of bioenergy in many culture for example, qi and prana, are well argued here as a form of Neurotheology.

4. Wilhlem Reich's pre-eminence as founder of the modern field is open to question. His teacher and the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud explored the role of body in neurosis as well as undertaking research on the therapeutic effects of cocaine (beginning on April 24, 1884 when he ordered his first gram of cocaine from the local apothecary). Freud also showed an interest in the nasal reflex neurosis and in vital periodicity, explored during a significant relationship with Wilhelm Fliess between 1887 and 1902. Wilhelm Fleiss believed that the nose was the centre of all human illness through its structural deviations to the passage of breath. Freud ordered all his correspondence with Fleiss be destroyed. Princess Marie Bonaparte ensured that it wasn't.

5. In addition the early history of clinical psychology points to somatic psychotherapy first practiced in Persia around 930 CE.

External sites

 * Sensorimotor Psychotherapy