Portland Counseling | Portland Therapy for the Whole Person

What is MIND/BODY (Somatic) Counseling?

 

Like other body-oriented, somatic counseling and therapy practices such as Radix, Bioenergetics, Hakomi, Core Energetics, Alexander technique, Breema Bodywork, Bodynamics, Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, Rubenfeld Method, and Hellerwork, my Portland somatic counseling is founded upon the holistic principle of mind/body unity.

Somatic counseling is a personal growth practice that is founded upon the principle that each individual is a whole person consisting of a mind, feelings, and a body. For personal growth to be effective and lasting, it must touch and transform all of our levels.

By itself, the intellectual understanding offered by traditional verbal/cognitive counseling cannot penetrate to and transform the deeper levels of consciousness. If we deal with conceptual content, and we leave unchanged the deeper emotions and physical blockages, then the deeper roots of our problems remain untouched, allowing those problems to again manifest with the same or different symptoms.

Instead, each kind of blockage must be dealt with on its own level. Somatic counseling therefore uses a diversity of mind (verbal), feelings (affective), and body (somatic) counseling techniques to bring lasting change to each level of the whole person.

As the work progresses, clients resolve their issues. Typically they also begin to experience becoming more fully alive and more authentic. Of course somatic counseling is applied differently to clients according to their individual needs, and yet common themes underlie the work. Some of the goals of omatic counseling include:

• Develop mind/body integration, reducing dissociation, enhancing the experience of being fully alive.
• Ground you in your body and your experience of life, enabling greater competence in your dealing with life's daily issues.
• Center you in your experience of your own body, feelings, and thoughts, enabling your experience of your own authentic self.
• Create boundaries that define you to yourself, your relationships, and the world.
• Release emotional repression by expanding yur capacity to feel and express feelings.
• Contain feelings that might overwhelm you, until they can be expressed at an appropriate time in an appropriate manner.
• Strengthen your ego, your sense of and your experience of self.
• Restore the flow of your life force, enhancing its pulsation, your aliveness, and expressiveness.
• Enhance your capacity to increase and contain your biophysical energy -- to charge with energy and to tolerate increased amounts of energy, thereby enhancing your capacity for pleasure.
• Discharge long-held feelings anger, fear, pain, and longing allowing thereby for the enhanced capacity for feelings of love, trust, pleasure, and fulfillment.
• Increase your capacity for interpersonal contact, allowing therefore for greater emotional and sexual intimacy.
• Discover and express your authentic self, resulting in enhanced autonomy & self-direction.

My Portland somatic counseling practice is based upon the humanistic model that views individuals as being on a spectrum of personal growth, unlike many therapies whose medical models view persons as being either "sick" or "healthy."

Somatic counseling is rooted in the work of Wilhelm Reich, M.D. whose pioneering research on the relations of body, mind, and feelings has served to source so many of today's Western mind/body therapeutic practices. I also integrate the somatic technique of Focusing, discovered by Eugene Gendlin (see button on left for more information about Focusing).

The Origins of Somatic Counseling

Somatic counseling is rooted in the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich, M.D. During the first half of last century, Reich discovered relations between emotional functioning and the body's energetic processes. These discoveries anticipated the holistic movement's understanding of the mind/body relationship. They also helped to source many of today's contemporary body-oriented therapies and personal growth disciplines including somatic counseling.

Reich's work on the relationship between emotional stagnation and degenerative disease was ahead of its time. At the root of emotional stagnation is what Reich called muscular armor. Muscular armor is chronic muscular tension that blocks the natural flow of life force through the body that is experienced as emotions. The restriction of the life force can result not only in emotional stagnation, but also in physical disease.

Reich developed techniques to loosen muscular armor thereby helping the client to allow and experience blocked emotions and the freeing of the body's natural emotional expressiveness. Long-held feelings then could flow through the body and be transformed, leaving the client to feel more alive and better able to establish contact self and others.

Reich's research on the body's vital energy foreshadowed contemporary research into the body's subtle biophysical energy. It also confirms some of the findings of Eastern philosophies about chi /prana. His work on healthy sexual functioning anticipated contemporary sexuality research.

From Reich, numerous somatic schools have evolved including Somatic Experiencing, Radix, Bioenergetics, Hakomi, Core Energetics, Alexander technique, Breema Bodywork, Bodynamics, Focusing, Rubenfeld Method, and Hellerwork. My initial training was with the Radix Institute.

Consider a free consultation

Counseling is a transformative relationship shared by two persons. So, it is important that you take the time to check out counselor with whom you might work. Is the chemistry right for you? Does the therapist's background and abilities meet your needs? Would a referral be appropriate? Because I believe that it is important that you explore such questions at no cost to you before beginning work, I offer prospective clients the opportunity to meet with me for a free 50-minute consultation.

Consider a free consultation

Counseling is a transformative relationship shared by two persons. So, it is important that you take the time to check out counselor with whom you might work. Is the chemistry right for you? Does the therapist's background and abilities meet your needs? Would a referral be appropriate? Because I believe that it is important that you explore such questions at no cost to you before beginning work, I offer prospective clients the opportunity to meet with me for a free 50-minute consultation.

How do you arrange a consultation?

The easiest way to arrange a consultation is to use the "Online Appointment Booking" link at the top of the page. There you can book a consultation (or any appointment) at a day and time of your convenience. Of course this can be done by phone (503.226.2771) or email, but my busy practice may result in my not replying to you in a timely manner.

 

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