Embodied Approaches to Psychotherapy

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: the Body’s Role in Psychological Healing

Following a brief history of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP), which initially drew upon a range of body modalities – movement therapy, postural and structural integration, yoga and Hakomi – Dr Pat Ogden explains how SP works in in the treatment of those who have experienced trauma or attachment distress. First and foremost, within SP trauma is looked upon an experience which first and primarily effects the body and nervous system. Animal survival responses are activated at the time of trauma before cognitive or narrative areas of the brain react. However, often these instinctual defenses – such as the desire to run or fight – are unfulfillled, leaving the client with a habitual sense of unease. We think of completing these physiological and somatic responses in therapy, letting the wisdom and intelligence of the body lead the way and thus working with the client’s embodied memory of trauma via “bottom-up” processing. Therapeutic work lies in resolving the enduring effects of the original traumas, rather than the memory itself, and in helping people change how they inhabit their bodies so that the experience more integration physically and psychologically. Even if patients cannot talk with you, Pat Ogden says, changing how they live in their body is in itself is both possible and deeply therapeutic.