Body Psychotherapy – INTEGRA CPD

Zoom Recording: Working with the Breath in Psychotherapy

MM — Sun, 10 May 2020 11:14:00 +0000

You can find the original workshop description for this CPD event here.

As you can see from that description, I had originally suggested to run a series of 5 days (a weekend and 3 follow-up days), because past experience suggests that it takes at least a weekend to introduce the basic principles and the four recurring pitfalls, and several further days for people to become familiar with ways of addressing and navigating these pitfalls. This all depends, of course, how much experience you have with the technique to begin with.

This particular session was scheduled for 3 hours, and could only be an introduction to the general principles, rather than the detailed experiential exploration and practice proposed for the workshop series (which is necessary for anybody to become thoroughly acquainted and confident with the technique).

Preparatory Materials

In preparation for the session, I suggest you read the following long paper, written many years ago (1995), on Working with Polarities / Dialogue / Two-chair work. In many places, this paper is quite laboured, somewhat repetitive and obviously written by a German, but the basic principles and distinctions still seem sound to me after 25 years, and will form the basis and starting point of the teaching.

Here is an edited transcript of an interview, addressing some key questions in anticipation of a past CPD workshops on two-chair work; same interview as an mp3 audio file.

If you want to do more detailed preparation (especially if you are not that familiar with the technique), you can watch the following online videos, by a variety of Gestalt therapists, demonstrating two-chair work. I suggest you watch them with both an appreciative and critically enquiring attitude, experimenting internally with identifying both with the client and therapist. I suggest you watch for charged and significant moments in the interaction, and pay attention especially to the issue of spontaneity versus performance (how natural & emergent versus contrived & instructed does it seem). One of the main stumbling blocks in using the technique is that it very obviously is a 'technique', a therapeutic exercise and tool, that requires the client's collaboration and can therefore become artificial and contrived.

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with Work Perfomance Issue

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with the Internal Critic

Dr Peter Pearson Demonstrates Two-Chair Work

Two Chair Work -TA Therapy Explained

Materials

Agenda/Overview for Zoom call
Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / ‘Two-chair’ work © 1995 by Michael Soth
Summary: The Technique of Two-chair work © 1995 by Michael Soth

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Zoom Recording: Mastering the Creative Therapeutic Technique of Two-chair Work

MM — Sat, 02 May 2020 13:32:45 +0000

You can find the original workshop description for this CPD event here.

Preparatory Materials

Here is an edited transcript of an interview, addressing some key questions in anticipation of a past CPD workshops on two-chair work; same interview as an mp3 audio file.

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with Work Perfomance Issue

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with the Internal Critic

Dr Peter Pearson Demonstrates Two-Chair Work

Two Chair Work -TA Therapy Explained

Materials

Agenda/Overview for Zoom call
Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / ‘Two-chair’ work © 1995 by Michael Soth
Summary: The Technique of Two-chair work © 1995 by Michael Soth

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post Zoom Recording: Mastering the Creative Therapeutic Technique of Two-chair Work appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Body Psychotherapy and the Body in Supervision – Interview for CONFER (2013)

MM — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 06:25:41 +0000

In this interview, Jane Ryan from CONFER was asking Michael about Body Psychotherapy, the role of the body in our emotional lives, and the body in supervision, in preparation for the upcoming event in the series ‘LIVE SUPERVISION – THE BODY’ which Michael has entitled: ‘The Fractal Self in Supervision’.

“Live supervision is an ideal context for illustrating a key feature of enactment: like a bar of soap in the bath, it is elusive. It shape-shifts between multiple self-states, different people, various levels of experience and awareness (somatic, emotional, mental). The harder I grasp and try to pin it down, the more likely it is to slip from my grip. But in the group context, it is then likely to slip into somebody else, and specifically into somebody else’s bodymind process. By attending both to the relational and the bodymind field in the group context, there may be a way in this session to demonstrate the following principle: ‘The more levels of parallel process can be held in awareness in the here and now, the more likely it is that transformative containment of enactment can occur’. Michael will illustrate how he extends the notion of parallel process to both interpersonal (transference-countertransference) processes as well as intra-psychic (body-mind) processes.”

Listen to the audio-file (.mp3)

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Different Paradigms of Embodiment Work in Relation to Character (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a summary of a flip chart for Integration Training (summarising the transcript of my talk on the history and theory of embodiment work). Different types of embodiment of work can be differentiated by how they position themselves in relation to the client's character. Any kind of instructional awareness or mindfulness exercise will have to be received and followed by the client's ego, and will therefore have a tendency to be applied within the established personality structure. Any such practice will eventually have to come up against the habitual bodymind limitations imposed by character. The question then is: what kind of practice can engage with, challenge and transcend character? I proposed that at that point the teacher/therapist/coach will have to become relationally engaged, rather than taking a fixed teacher position.

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The Return of the Repressed Body – Not a Smooth Affair (2010)

Michael - Articles & Papers — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0000

These are a few thoughts, written fairly quickly, on my misgivings with the currently fashionable attempts to (re-)include the body into psychotherapy. These attempts, strongly supported by neuroscience, are welcome and long overdue. However, how can we seriously imagine that bringing the body back after 100 years of disembodied 'talking therapies' is just a question of a few new techniques?   After spending 20 years making considerable noise, trying to get the body noticed in psychotherapy, we now have the opposite problem: we have reason to discourage all kinds of well-intentioned strategies of 'using' the body in psychotherapy, as we now need to be precise and principled about how to include it.   Are we doing justice to the body (the spontaneous, vibrant, alive body that we had in mind all along, as the embodied ground of a subjective sense of self) when it becomes another therapeutic 'tool' ?   Here I formulate some ideas for a 'prologomenon (an initial critical survey of a topic, before making any claims or drawing any conclusions) for including the body in psychotherapy - some basic principles to be taken into account. These are some notes, rather than an elaborated argument, and I hope you find them useful as such, as a starting point for further discussion and exploration.

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Therapy Today: Questionnaire – Michael Soth (2010)

Michael - Articles & Papers — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The BACP Journal 'Therapy Today&' has a regular column where established practitioners get interviewed and are asked both personal and professional questions. This is the longer, online version of an interview/questionnaire published in December 2010. “Michael Soth is passionate about the possibility of a new integral and relational practice which draws on all therapeutic approaches, and brings a new conception of the mind-body relationship.”

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Bodily Functions (Terrence Higgins Trust, 2007)

Michael - Presentations — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

In this presentation - based upon and similar to "No 'Relating Cure' without Embodiment" - I offered a way of catching up with the still pervasive mind-over-body dualism in counselling and psychotherapy. This becomes especially limiting when the client group brings pain and symptoms into the consulting room where the somatic and the psychological are inextricably linked and interwoven. Unless the practitioner can be rooted in their own somatic experience in the therapeutic relationship, it will be difficult to respond to and contain the client's pain.

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Potentials and Pathologies of Character Structure Theory (EABP 2006)

Michael - Presentations — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Character Structure theory is a central aspect of Reichian and neo-Reichian Body Psychotherapy, and its underlying holistic 'functionalism' has stood the test of time. In its expanded and integrated form, as presented by Stephen Johnson ("Character Styles", 1994), it provides a solid diagnostic and clinically relevant developmental model that is compatible with other dynamic psychotherapeutic approaches. As a comprehensive body/mind map of pathology it is more coherent and applicable than DSM IV. However, as applied throughout the tradition of Body Psychotherapy, character structure theory also contains inconsistencies and shadow aspects and - as every other therapeutic tool or concept - can be used in counter-therapeutic ways or can acquire counter-therapeutic functions in the relationship between client and therapist. Many of us have always had difficulty with its pathologising, medical terminology, but this is just a surface symptom - the real problems with the model run far deeper. In this workshop I would like to extend and expand our model so it can be used in both 'medical model' and relational ways of working. This will involve questioning the contradictions inherent in the model, following through its implicit assumptions and adapting it in order to do justice to the complexities of the transference-countertransference process. This has significant theoretical implications, but more importantly it affects our technique and relational stance as Body Psychotherapists.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]"

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Character Formation (1995)

Michael - Handouts — Fri, 03 Mar 1995 00:00:00 +0000

This is a summary of the previous two handouts on one page - both a description of the 5 steps of character formation and Reich's diagram of an impulse 'turning back against itself', using terms from Transactional Analysis. This early version is in line with a traditional conceptualisation of character which does not pay much attention to the ego (which historically was just oversimplified and reduced to the defensive ego and its repressive functions). This traditional version fits with Reich's aim to ""liberate the life force/animal"", inclining the body-oriented therapist to construct their role as an ""enemy of the client's ego"". This construction of the therapeutic position was recognised and challenged as a one-sided trap by formulating the 'relational turn', and then the formulation of the 'conflicted ego in conflict with a spontaneous conflict'. This then resulted in a later, more complex version, of the character formation diagram which includes the conflicted ego.

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