Somatic body-oriented counseling and therapy
As a therapist in private practice in Portland, my mind/body or "somatic" counseling applies to personal growth an approach that expands the counseling experience beyond mere talk to include working on our issues with the felt experience of them in our emotions and body. (Soma is greek for body).
Iif we are to experience lasting change, it is essential that we engage the felt experience of our issues. Our problems are not just bundles of thought. Instead they include emotions, patterns of feeling, habits of muscular tension, gestures, postures, and other non-verbal experiences. As a therapist, my counseling with a somatic approach allows my work to engage you and foster change on all these levels of your experience.
Somatic therapy is rooted in the the interdependent unity of the body and the mind. Contemporary scientific research tells us also that there is a cognitive brain and an emotional brain. The emotional brain is intimately connected with the body, much more so than the cognitive brain. That is why it is so much easier to access emotions through the body than it is through language.
This mind-body unity explains why throughout the world emotional and experiential therapy methods are propagating such as Somatic Experiencing, Radix, Bioenergetics, Hakomi, Core Energetics, Alexander technique, Breema Bodywork, Bodynamics, Focusing, Rubenfeld Method, and Hellerwork.
Understandably, the mind-body unity frees somatic therapy practices from the limiting constraints of talk-only therapy. When we only talk about our issues, we may experience remarkable intellectual insights. However our habits of feeling and patterns of physical tension remain untouched.
Many of us know persons who have undergone years of verbal counseling only to discover that despite their comprehensive intellectual understanding of their problems, their problems still shackle them and inhibit their aliveness.
My training as a somatic therapist includes certification in the Radix somatic counseling technique. Also, I am a teacher of Focusing, a special way of listening to the inner Self as experienced through the body's felt sense.
To learn more about my somatic counseling practice in downtown Portland, Oregon, I invite you to explore these somatic counseling links: About Somatic Counseling and Somatic Counseling FAQs.
I hope you will feel welcomed to explore any of these approaches which might interest you by using the menu selections located above.
Consider a free consultation
I believe that it is important that you have the opportunity to explore your interest in counseling at no cost to you. Therefore I offer prospective clients the opportunity to meet with me for a 50-minute complimentary consultation.
The easiest way to arrange a consultation or counseling session is to use this "Online Appointment Booking" link. There you can book your appointment at a day and time of your convenience. Of course this can be done by phone (503.226.2771) or email, but given my busy practice, I may not reply to you in a timely manner.
Directions and maps to my near-downtown office may be found using this "Portland office location" link.
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