Integral Somatic Psychology

My new Trauma, Emotion, and Spirituality course was recorded as an in-person workshop. It was so well received that I am making the recording available as an on-demand course. Explore the course: https://lnkd.in/d54UP5A6 Buy now for just $149 This introductory offer expires on December 5th. The course includes 9 demonstration sessions treating different types of traumas. If you are a therapist, the course will help you integrate spiritual growth with your work with trauma and emotions and deepen your clinical practice. On a personal level, it will help you embody your spiritual and psychological practice. If you are trained in Integrative Somatic Psychology™ (ISP™), the course will also deepen your ISP practice. #trauma #spirituality #traumacourse #somaticpsychology

According to the polyvagal theory of the autonomic nervous system, the actions of the face and throat musculature (forming what Porges refers to as the “social engagement system”) are highly coordinated with the functioning of the heart and the lungs through the ventral vagal nerve in emotional and other experiences. Research on psychophysiological symptoms has shown that they are driven by a combination of adverse experiences in childhood and a low capacity for sensing and expressing one’s emotions. In human development, nonverbal vocalization and facial expression of emotion precede verbal expression of emotion through words. Therefore, I decided to experiment with the following intervention in the treatment of psychophysiological symptoms: imagining someone else or oneself expressing the discomfort in the psychophysiological symptom in the body through vocalization or facial expression, and then actually doing the vocalization or facial expression if necessary, with the therapist mirroring and supporting both modes of expression. It worked! I found that this intervention can offer many benefits. It can give the person relief, help them understand the more differentiated emotions involved, integrate the head and neck area and the rest of the body in emotional experience, and help to expand the emotional experience throughout the body to increase the person’s ability to tolerate the emotional experiences to resolve the symptoms. Vocalization of emotion is a rudimentary verbal as well as nonverbal expression of the emotional experience. Because 95 percent of any expression is said to be nonverbal, vocalization offers the possibility of initiation of nonverbal expression and expansion of emotion throughout the body. If you’d like to become a more effective therapist doing deeper transformational work with your clients, explore the ISP Professional Training: https://lnkd.in/erjkQY6C #EmbodyingEmotions #ISP #SomaticPsychology #DrRajaSelvam

In addition to body expressions such as twisting, turning, pushing things away, or pulling others toward oneself, children express their emotions early on primarily through facial expression and vocalization of sounds before they learn to express their emotions through words. Vocalization, in addition to its function of communication, provides the child relief and regulation by discharging some of the arousal fueling the emotion. Vocalization serves all the purposes that are attributed to facial expression. Mothers can distinguish different emotions in the cries of a child from very early on. Through mirroring their cries, mothers can generate the corresponding emotional states in themselves. Vocalization, like facial expression, helps to integrate the head and neck area and the rest of the body in emotional experience. It can also help in clarifying and differentiating emotional experiences in oneself and others. We can tell that vocalizations generate and enhance emotions by observing the obvious pleasure children derive from vocalizing. Inhibition of expression of one’s experience through words or vocalization inhibits the physiology in the throat and can be a powerful physiological defense, not just against the expression of emotional experiences but also against generating them. We can see this in our everyday experience of being able to come into our emotions as soon as we start to share our experiences with others. The throat musculature is similar to the facial musculature in its ability to generate and defend against emotions. More in my book The Practice of Embodying Emotions https://lnkd.in/gctQHchM #EmbodyingEmotions #ISP #SomaticPsychology #DrRajaSelvam

Posture, the particular way in which we hold our bodies, can tell the world a lot about who we are. We consciously or unconsciously communicate our mental states to the world all the time. Whether we sit with our chest open and our arms at our sides or with our chest closed and our arms crossed in the front of us can communicate to the world how open or closed we are to the person and the communication we are engaged in. Such a posture also affects our ability to be open and communicate with the other person nonverbally, electromagnetically, or quantum-mechanically through interpersonal resonance. Postural analysis is a formal tool in body psychotherapy approaches going back to their beginnings, in the psychology of Wilhelm Reich. It is used to determine a person’s character—their habitual ways of thought, feeling, and behavior—from their usual body postures in different life situations. Postural analysis is something we do all the time unconsciously or consciously to some extent. For those who wish to delve more deeply into this subject, the book Embodying Experience: Forming a Personal Life by Stanley Keleman is a good beginning. Posture not only communicates our thoughts, feelings, and behavioral intentions to others; it can also generate, constrain, and defend against them. The use of posture, gesture, facial expressions, and other body expressions to generate and embody suitable cognitive, emotional, and behavioral tendencies is common in acting classes. Forward-leaning postures are associated with emotions of attraction, and backward-leaning postures are associated with emotions of aversion. Putting people into forward-leaning postures and having them process situations that involve emotions of aversion and into backward-leaning postures to process emotions of attraction significantly alters the brain’s ability to process the emotions as well as the situations in which they arise. Again, as with all other dynamics, whether posture is being used to generate an emotion or defend against it depends on our knowledge of what the emotion is and the situation we find it in. More in my book The Practice of Embodying Emotions https://lnkd.in/gctQHchM #EmbodyingEmotions #ISP #SomaticPsychology #DrRajaSelvam

How do you integrate spiritual growth and deepen your clinical practice? Find the answers in my new course: Trauma, Emotion, and Spirituality Explore the course: https://lnkd.in/d54UP5A6   Buy now for just $149 This introductory offer expires on December 5th. 19 hours, with 9 Demonstrations What is the course about? In this course, we will answer the following questions, both in theory and practice: • What are the different levels of your self? • In other words, how many bodies do you have? • What is the nature of each of your individual and collective bodies? • How does each body contribute to all your experiences, including emotions? • How does trauma affect each of your bodies? • How does one work with each of the bodies? • What is spiritual growth? • How does improving relationships among your various bodies aid your spiritual growth? • How does working with trauma and emotion aid spiritual development? • How can trauma and emotion work be made more efficient by including all of your bodies? • What are simple practices for including all of our bodies for psychological and spiritual work? #trauma #spirituality #traumacourse #somaticpsychology

So many of us sit with questions about how working with trauma could support spiritual growth. Neither somatic psychology nor spiritual teachings address these questions adequately. Today I want to share a new course that closes the gap between healing trauma and spiritual growth. Trauma, Emotion, and Spirituality Course Explore the course: https://lnkd.in/d54UP5A6 Just $149 This introductory offer expires on December 5th. 19 hours, with 9 Demonstrations The regular price is $450 Who can benefit from the course? If you are a therapist, the course will help you integrate spiritual growth with your work with trauma and emotions and deepen your clinical practice. It will help you embody your spiritual and psychological practice on a personal level. If you are trained in Integrative Somatic Psychology™ (ISP™), the course will also deepen your ISP practice. Give yourself this unique gift! #trauma #spirituality #traumacourse #somaticpsychology

In addition to body expressions such as twisting, turning, pushing things away, or pulling others toward oneself, children express their emotions early on primarily through facial expression and vocalization of sounds before they learn to express their emotions through words. Vocalization, in addition to its function of communication, provides the child relief and regulation by discharging some of the arousal fueling the emotion. Vocalization serves all the purposes that are attributed to facial expression. Mothers can distinguish different emotions in the cries of a child from very early on. Through mirroring their cries, mothers can generate the corresponding emotional states in themselves. Vocalization, like facial expression, helps to integrate the head and neck area and the rest of the body in emotional experience. It can also help in clarifying and differentiating emotional experiences in oneself and others. We can tell that vocalizations generate and enhance emotions by observing the obvious pleasure children derive from vocalizing. Inhibition of expression of one’s experience through words or vocalization inhibits the physiology in the throat and can be a powerful physiological defense, not just against the expression of emotional experiences but also against generating them. We can see this in our everyday experience of being able to come into our emotions as soon as we start to share our experiences with others. The throat musculature is similar to the facial musculature in its ability to generate and defend against emotions. More in my book The Practice of Embodying Emotions https://lnkd.in/gctQHchM #EmbodyingEmotions #ISP #SomaticPsychology #DrRajaSelvam

The role of facial expression in emotion has been extensively researched. Charles Darwin was the first to scientifically establish that facial displays communicate our inner emotional states to others. The understanding that facial expression also plays a role in generating and defending against emotional experiences came later. We can infer the emotional states of others not only by observing their facial expression but also by mirroring their facial expressions with our own faces and generating corresponding emotional states in ourselves. More than other parts of the body, the face is programmed to mimic the faces of others from immediately after birth. Inhibition of involvement of facial musculature in emotion has been shown to disrupt the brain’s processing and recall of not only the emotion but also its context, i.e., the details of the situation that gives rise to the emotion. Making sense of an emotional experience in the body by connecting it with the face is considered to be an important milestone in our development from childhood to adulthood. Because the facial muscles generate a wider range of expressions than the rest of the body, facial expression helps to bring greater clarity to the physical or emotional experience in the body and to differentiate it further; for example, physical pain can become emotional anguish. The polyvagal theory of the autonomic nervous system shows us that the facial muscles can be more quickly energized and moved than other muscles in the body through the ventral vagal nerve’s action on the heart’s natural pacemaker. This makes it possible for the facial muscles to act more rapidly in generating or defending against emotional experience. Research with people who have had Botox treatments that immobilize parts of the facial musculature for cosmetic reasons shows that such treatments can reduce depression by reducing the ability of facial muscles to generate negative emotions. So, given the face’s special place in the physiology of emotions for all of the above reasons, it makes much sense to work with the face in therapy. More in my book The Practice of Embodying Emotions https://lnkd.in/gctQHchM #EmbodyingEmotions #ISP #SomaticPsychology #DrRajaSelvam

Gesture, like posture, can communicate our cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dispositions to others as well as generating them or defending against them. Often, I bring this point home to participants in my classes by having them reach out with both their arms and say “I hate you” or “I do not want you.” This gesture usually communicates longing for another person and is used in the psychomotor act of reaching out to the other person to fulfill that longing. The class participants laugh when they realize that what their body is doing generates a strong emotional state that overrides the emotional state they are trying to generate in their brain by saying “I do not want you.” It is also good exercise to convince people of the role of the body in emotional experience. Please note that gesture, posture, facial expressions, and other body expressions can also be used to conceal our inner states or deceive others. For example, we might be able to convince others of our confidence with an upright posture, which usually communicates confidence, while hiding the diffidence we might feel deeper in our body. The extent to which we actually end up believing our manufactured confidence depends on the degree to which we can shut down the cries of diffidence from deeper within us. Dennis Slattery, a professor specializing in imaginal psychotherapy at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California, where I earned my PhD in clinical psychology, is the author of the book The Wounded Body: Remembering the Marking of Flesh. One morning Slattery woke up with an inspiration that important gestures in dreams could be the portals through which one could access the core emotions in the dreams. He then went about having his clients identify gestures they thought were important in their dreams, enact the gestures, and hold them in place while they processed their dreams. Lo and behold, his inspiration proved to be right, and another method of working with dreams was born. More in my book The Practice of Embodying Emotions https://lnkd.in/gctQHchM #EmbodyingEmotions #ISP #SomaticPsychology #DrRajaSelvam

It takes time to develop self-confidence in the application of Somatic Experiencing® and achieve good outcomes. Quality case consultation is the secret to successful clinical practice. Joining regular case consultations is an excellent opportunity to broaden your expertise while getting support from your SE™ community. I'll answer your questions, discuss several cases, and guide you to the most effective strategies. Friday, December 13th 10 - 11:30 am US Eastern Daylight Time 16:00 – 17:30 Central European Time Location & Cost: Online / $50. Full attendance required for SE faculty consult credit. Languages & Recordiing: Separate channels for English and German / Audio & Video files will be available for review. Register for the English channel: https://lnkd.in/eM_2Ryjk Register for the German channel: https://lnkd.in/e2VgvkQA