in English (with expert simultaneous Greek translation)
\n\n\nOrganisation & Booking for therapists from Greece: Dimitris Tzach anis - info@ge staltsynthesis.gr
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Booking & Payment for therapists from UK\, US and elsewhere: Michael Soth - m ichael.soth@gmail.com
Even though counsellors and psychot
herapists are traditionally expected to focus predominantly on emotional\,
mental and verbal communications\, many clients invariably do br
ing their physical and psychosomatic symptoms into the therapeutic space.<
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After all\, being ill and suffering symptom s and bodily pain very quickly goes beyond the physical and becomes an emo tional issue\, too. Illness makes us regress and we tend to feel helpless\ , scared or out of control\, and most of us become more needy of emotional support. As therapists\, we have\, of course\, no hesitation to offer tha t support\, and that in itself is fairly straightforward.
\nHowever\, this workshop addresses those situations where the work goes beyond pure emotional support\, and the therapist gets draw n into the tricky territory of the psycho-somatic and body-mind connection . Often\, the recognition becomes unavoidable that the psychological and t he somatic cannot remain neatly distinguished\, but are in a constant mutu ally co-creative reciprocal feedback loop\, in both illness and health. Th e psyche is embodied\, and illness is a bodymind process: emotional confli ct creates muscular tension and physiological stress\; trauma creates inte nse neuro-biological activation affecting our hormonal and immune systems down into the microbiology of every cell. Our mental states are manifest a nd mapped into our bodies\, and the state of our body in turn shapes and c onditions our capacity for feeling and thought. It is now well established that developmental trauma early in life can create a life-long internal b odymind atmosphere that is detrimental to physical health and a predictor of chronic illness and psychosomatic symptoms later in life.
\nBecause emotional and mental well-being are so inter connected with physical health\, maybe the client has a point when they ar e bringing their illness\, physical symptoms and bodily suffering to the t herapist?
\nSo how can the field of therapy keep its task a nd focus only on the psychological processes as entirely separate from the body and its tendencies to manifest the emotional and mental subjective r ealities? How can the therapist turn a blind eye to the element of emotion al suffering inherent in psychosomatic symptoms and illness?
\nAs many practitioners know\, this can become a minef ield: on the one hand the client easily feels accused and shamed\, as if t he message is that they have created their own symptom and are responsible for it. In reaction against this common guilt and shame\, many clients fe el relieved by the idea that their illness is a purely organic\, genetic\, random physical affliction that can happen to anybody and has no emotiona l correspondence at all. The first category of clients feels totally respo nsible for their own symptom in an exaggerated irrational way\, the second category refuses all connection and accountability in an exaggerated irra tional way.
\nAs therapists we get caug ht and involved in these dualisms which are part and parcel of the client’ s inner world. We cannot refuse to get entangled with these dichotomies\, without the client feeling that we have removed ourselves to a comfortably safe\, disengaged position\, where we restrict ourselves to dealing with the psyche and leave the medical profession to deal with the body. The cli ent will feel that this is an artificial distinction that fails to engage with the body-mind-psyche wholeness of their experience. They can only fee l held by our care if we actively relate to the totality of their reality\ , and what matters to them. Physical pain and symptoms\, psychosomatic dis ease and illness constitute a significant part of human suffering\, and ou r clients need us to engage profoundly and competently.
\nWi th some illnesses - like hypertension\, chest and heart problems\, digesti ve illnesses\, symptoms of the immune system - it is scientifically establ ished that emotional stress contributes to their origin. With many other p sychosomatic problems\, like all kinds of pain\, tinnitus\, insomnia\, chr onic fatigue and many other unexplained symptoms\, it is known that the in tensity of the suffering can be ameliorated through psychological therapy that addresses the regulation and expression of emotion and de-stresses th e mind.
\nStress is the catchall phrase t hat supposedly explains the influence of our psychological body-emotion-mi nd state on illness. However\, what is less well understood\, is how our b odymind does not just respond to stresses in our current situation and lif estyle\, but carries accumulated stress from the past\, reaching all the w ay back to childhood. A holistic and bio-social-psychological understandin g of stress needs to include lifelong patterns of the bodymind including d evelopmental injury and trauma (what Wilhelm Reich originally called chara cter structures).
\nSometimes clients bri ng psychosomatic illness as a presenting issue to the therapy\, sometimes these symptoms actually evolve in direct response to the unfolding therape utic process\, and the therapist gets implicated in them\, e.g. “After las t session I had a headache for three days!”
\nDirect links to body sensations and symptoms as well as body image co me up as part of our work in sessions every day\, in so many ways: tangibl e pains\, tensions\, trembling and shaking\, breathing difficulties (hyper ventilation\, asthma)\, the physical side of unbearable feelings like pani c\, rage\, dread or terror. There are obvious somatic aspects to presentin g issues such as eating disorders or addictions. And then there are the ps ychological implications of actual\, sometimes terminal\, illnesses and ps ychosomatic symptoms and dis-ease.
\nHow do we work with these issues and symptoms in psychotherapy? What experiential w ays of working are available to us\, to include the client’s ‘felt sense’\ , their embodied self states\, their body awareness and sensations\, their physiological experience in our interaction with them?
\nThrough including body-oriented ways of working into the talking therapies\, we can learn to work with many of these symptoms more directly\, more deeply and more effectively (as well as learning to recogn ise situations where the hope of ‘curing’ illness through psychology is an unreasonable idealisation).
\nThis CPD w orkshop is designed to expand your understanding of the bodymind connectio n as well as offering a wide range of creative and body-oriented technique s to include in your practice.
\nIt will give you a framework for thinking about the role of the body as it is rele vant in your own style of therapeutic work\, based upon the different ways in which clients as well as therapists relate to ‘the symptom’. Throughou t the workshop\, we will use roleplay of actual issues and dilemmas brough t up by your clients. We will also identify and practice ways in which you can explore the emotional function and 'meaning' of your client's physica l symptom or illness.
\nMichael has been working w ith the psychological and bodymind connection of illness and psychosomatic symptoms for many years. In the 1990s he initiated a project called 'Soul in Illness'\, offering an integrative psychotherapeutic perspective\, dra wing on the wisdom which the different therapeutic approaches have accumul ated regarding illness\, both in terms of theoretical understanding and pr actical ways of working. He has run CPD workshops for therapists on ‘Worki ng with Illness’ many times\, and has developed a relational and embodied way of engaging with the client’s bodymind. In 2005 he presented for the f irst time his model of ‘10 ways of relating to the symptom’\, which addres ses the client’s own relationship to their symptom\, as well as giving an overview of the different stances taken by therapists in the various thera peutic approaches that correspond to each of the ways of relating to the s ymptom. These ten ways of relating to the symptom\, including the correspo nding theoretical understandings as well as methods and techniques for int ervention\, will form the underlying framework for this workshop.
\nThis framework is now almost 30 years old\, and has stood the test of time. It is based on the principle that all ten dif ferent ways of relating to the symptom are therapeutically valid\, but all of them are also limited and partial\, and they all can be used defensive ly and therefore become misleading and dangerous in degrees. It is only th eir comprehensive integration which brings out their full potential\, in c oncert with all the other - very different\, sometimes contradictory but e qually valid - ways of relating to the symptom. Over the weekend\, we will clarify what these ten different relationships are\, how to be sensitive to all of them as well as fluid between them.
\nThis requires an appreciation of all the different techniques and i deas which different psychotherapeutic approaches have developed over the last 100 years in relation to illness. Drawing on a wide range of humanist ic and psychoanalytic approaches (including Body Psychotherapy\, Process-o riented Psychology\, various schools of psychoanalysis and Jungian perspec tives) as well as the holistic paradigm underpinning most complementary th erapies\, we will weave together an interdisciplinary bodymind approach wh ich is applicable within the therapeutic relationship as we know it in cou nselling and psychotherapy.
\nFor mat\, learning environment and scope of the weekend
\nThis will be an online Zoom weekend\, organised in G reece for Greek therapists\, but taking place in English with simultaneous Greek translation\, so all English-speaking therapists from across the pl anet are invited. Michael's work and workshops are integrative\, therefore suitable and of interest for therapists from across the diverse therapeut ic approaches and traditions. It will be most likely the participants will bring very different levels of experience to this workshop - we will try to do justice to this and attempt to try and turn that problem into a prod uctive feature of our work together.
\nAl though we will be online\, communicating via computer screens\, Michael's teaching and workshops aim to be as experiential as possible within these limitations. Over the course of the weekend\, Michael will invite particip ants to volunteer examples from their work for supervision demonstrations in the middle of the group. Some of the work will take place in small grou ps. Experiential work and theoretical input and discussions as well as gro up process and skills practice will interweave in response to the emerging needs and priorities of the group and its participants. We want to be esp ecially mindful of confidentiality\, and commit to a shared undertaking th at nothing from the workshop will be indiscreetly shared with others\, oth er than your very own personal-professional responses to the workshop. Bas ed on that understanding\, we are proposing to record the workshop\, so th e recording can be shared amongst participants for future reference.
\nSome of the possible learning object ives:
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Michael Soth is an integral-relational Body Psychotherapist\, t rainer and supervisor\, who studied\, lived and worked in the UK between 1 982 and 2021. During those four decades\, he taught on a variety of counse lling and therapy training courses\, alongside working as Training Directo r at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy.
\nInheriting concepts\, values and ways of working from both psychoa nalytic and humanistic traditions\, he is interested in the therapeutic re lationship as a bodymind process between two people who are both wounded a nd whole.
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In his work and teaching\, he integrates an unusually wide range of psy chotherapeutic approaches\, working towards full-spectrum integration of a ll therapeutic modalities and approaches\, each with their gifts\, wisdoms and expertise as well as their shadow aspects\, fallacies and areas of ob liviousness.
\nHis original training at C hiron in the early 1980’s was based on body-oriented holistic psychotherap y\, strongly rooted in the Reichian and post-Reichian tradition (including Alexander Lowen's Bioenergetics\, David Boadella's Biosynthesis and Gerda Boyesen's Biodynamic Psychology). These approaches gave him a strong grou nding in bottom-up\, energetic\, bodymind ways of thinking and working\, w hich were supplemented by Gestalt\, Process-oriented Psychology and a vari ety of complementary holistic bodywork therapies. Towards the end of the 1 980s - through his practice and his own process - he began developing psyc hoanalytic understandings across a variety of psychodynamic orientations\, including Jungian analytic psychology and Hillman's archetypal psychology . During the 1990s\, he became one of the early pioneers of psychotherapy integration in the UK\, reaching further into other traditions and approac hes like existential\, systemic and family constellations.
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In the mid-1990s he in itiated the holistic health consultancy\, a project exploring soul in illn ess\, offering a unique integrative holistic approach to psychosomatic sym ptoms\, dis-ease and chronic illness. Based on his experiences and work wi th clients who came to him through this avenue\, he began distinguishing t he 10 different relationships to the symptom\, which form the foundation f or this workshop which was previously entitled 'Working with Illness in Ps ychotherapy'. For many years he used to run this workshop annually\, for c ounsellors and psychotherapists from across the various approaches\, suppo rting their attempts to integrate bodymind perspectives and bottom-up ways of working into the talking therapies. Over the last 25 years\, the somat ic trauma therapies have made these perspectives and ways of working much more accessible and widespread\; however\, they often do not include psych oanalytic\, systemic and relational considerations in their work with the body's spontaneous processes. Therefore\, in many regards\, this weekend o ffers an original and still rare opportunity to transcend the limitations of the fragmented traditions as we find them in the field of psychotherapy \, as well as the dualistic assumptions and paradigms inherent in the talk ing therapies.
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In 2021 Michael left the UK\, and is now living near the rainfores t in Central America\, where he continues to work online as well as buildi ng a sustainable regenerative retreat and refuge\, which will host worksho ps and trainings in the future.
\nHe has written numerous articles and is a frequent presenter at conferences. He i s co-editor of the Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psycholo gy\, published in 2015. Extracts from his published writing as well a s hand-outs\, blogs and summaries of presentations are available through h is website for INTEGRA CPD: www.integra-cpd.co.uk.
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150€ + VAT until March 10
\n210€ + VAT until Ma rch 30
\n270€ + VAT until workshop date A pril 13
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