What is it?
Integral Somatic Psychology™ (ISP™) is a wholistic approach to improve therapeutic outcomes through embodiment of all aspects of our human experience including the spiritual aspect, so denied in many traditional psychological methods.
Integral Somatic Psychology was developed by Raja Selvam, PhD ( A Senior Teacher of the Somatic Experiencing Training Institute). It is a comprehensive approach to experience embodiment based on Western, Jungian as well as Eastern psychology. It is currently taught in over a dozen countries in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Integral Somatic Psychology is not another classical approach to doing therapy. It is the complementary modality that increases the effectiveness of any therapeutic method: body oriented therapy, energetic, psychotherapeutic, medical, social, and spiritual practices.
Why the importance of working with emotions through embodiment?
“Building of capacity to tolerate difficult emotional experiences, is one aspect of the work with emotions, and it is extremely important to psychological health” Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood (1995).
It is important to note that no matter what the nature of an overwhelming experience or situation is, it is ultimately difficult because the emotion associated with it is unbearable. And, there is adequate scientific evidence that embodying emotions improves mental, behavioral, and personal as well as professional outcomes.
Emotions are embodied when they are generated over a wider area in the brain and involve our body physiology. When this happens there is a greater capacity to tolerate and stay with it and also over a longer period of time. Then the brain has more information in the form of molecules of emotion (opioids, neuro-peptide receptors, electrical and neurochemical neurotransmittors, etc) and the more time we are processing it improves all aspects of an individual’s life and experience.
How does Embodiment work?
Embodiment is about our felt experience of the body ‘inside-out’ and we use the 4 aspects of embodiment:
1.The ability to expand and bring depth of the experience and emotions in the body.
2.The ability to tolerate the experience in the body. This requires the ability to understand and work through innate resistance to all unpleasant experiences and psychological resistance.
3. The ability to understand or make sense of the experience through clearer thinking and cognitive work.
4.The ability to behave more harmoniously in relation to the experience.
Trauma Healing, Embodiment and Spirituality
When we suffer the effects of trauma we feel a sense of separation and fragmentation towards parts of our body, our self, our emotions, environment, nourishing connections to people and life in general. However by processing trauma we start to feel again a greater sense of connection and trust towards ourselves, people and the divinity . And a sense of awe emerges. As we embody this experience of trauma healing we learn to engage our attention into the body, so we can touch what is always just beneath the surface of our everyday life. And so, we learn that the journey home is putting together the lost parts, inhabitating our body and through embodiment.
How does somatic therapy and embodiment look like in TouchStudio?
During a therapy session you will be invited to engage in your body with emotional awareness. A process of psychoeducation is essential to involve aspects like body awareness, intention, imagination and visualization, body movements, breathing, your own self-touch, understanding the phenomenon of resonance, sometimes my therapist’s touch, bodywork and energy work.
We integrate the physical, mental, emotional, behavioural and spiritual realm.
I will also explain you how and why transforming resistances in the brain and physiology are necessary. (This includes the regulation of the Nervous System). I will teach you how our psychological defenses are on the way of making progress.
Depending on the theme of the client, I integrate accordingly diverse methods and modalities I’m trained to work within therapy such as Somatic Experincing, Co-dependency, Inner Child Work, Attachment and Relational Work, Transactional Analysis, Polyvagal Theory, Bodywork and Embodiment Exercises to ground, center and find balance to expand the experience in the body.
What kind of benefits come from sessions?
– Psycho-somatic issues improve greatly.
-Symptoms of trauma find a faster resolution
– Learn the physiology of emotions – breathing patterns, postures and the function of sensori-motor emotions
– Learn how chronic stress is directly related to emotional overwhelm and trauma.
– Increase the capacity to tolerate uncomfortable emotions and affects (such as anxiety, panic attacks, jealousy, anger, grief, shame, guilt, loneliness, hopelessness, dissociation and collapse)
– Learn processing emotions with your body experience, (movement, breathing and self touch)
– Have a greater connection to yourself and to others.
– Transform limiting beliefs that you confuse with reality
– Improve the results of any therapy treatment you are
– Improve greatly the treatment for PTSS and trauma resolution.
– Embodied emotions lead to better cognitions: clearer thinking, focus and mental sharpness
– Transform unhealthy behaviours like aggression and addictions
- For High Sensitive Personality….
– learn tools to feel more grounding
– learn how to protect and filter your energetic boundaries.
- For therapists…
Go deeper into your own healing process in order to support better your clients
- For spiritual seekers…
– Comprehend what Spiritual bypass is (the dangers and potentials)
– Learn about the role of individual and collective energy and how they impact the psychological and physiological regulation of a person.
– Process complex spiritual and intense experiences (such as healings with medicinal plants, shamanistic practices, soul retrieval, satori experiences) and integrate them better in your everyday life.
For who?
Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) have excellent results if you…
– are ready to work in depth
– are willing to take better decisions and transform unhealthy or self destructive behaviors (such as addictions or issues with aggression)
– are open to an holistic approach
– are curious to learn embodiment
Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) is not offered to everybody, specially if you…
– are not willing to work in depth
– want the quick fixes
– there are so many symptoms of dissociation and trauma involved (we need to work with other tools like Somatic Experiencing only)
– have a personality diagnosis (like squizofrenia, bipolar, etc)
– are having an ongoing chronic illness (your physiology is not prepared to tolerate intensity)
