What is body-centered psychotherapy?
First off, body-centered psychotherapy is really weird. I’m not going to lie.
Instead of sitting there in a therapist’s office chit-chatting about changing your thought patterns or understanding “the why” of your behaviors, you deliberately get out of your comfort zone and make things happen. By using your body.
You stand. You breathe deeply. You bend. You hit stuff. You bend even further. You make loud sounds. You learn how to surrender to your body’s impulses.
Who is body-centered psychotherapy for?
It’s not for everyone. Definitely not for everyone. Actually, I’ll go so far as to say that only individuals who are highly motivated to achieve peak emotional success are going to dive deeply into the techniques of body-centered psychotherapy.
That’s because when you get the energy in your body moving, you can’t avoid your feelings. And feelings can be hard to handle. Especially if at any time in your past you were ever overwhelmed, helpless, or afraid and no one was there to help you manage the experience in a loving and protective way.
The weirder the idea of using your body in therapy is to you, the less connected you are to your body, the more you need body-centered psychotherapy to get the results you are looking for out of life.
Why body-centered psychotherapy?
If you’ve never suffered an actual “trauma,” the idea that anything in your past could be affecting your life today might seem preposterous. But it’s not. The past always matters. Believe it or not. That’s because our brains work predictively, based on our past experience and our current context.
In order to stop doing something you haven’t been able to make yourself stop or start doing something you haven’t been able to make yourself start, you have to do something different than you’ve ever done before. Willpower isn’t going to cut it for the long term. It always fails in the end. Practicing new ways of being in the world, practicing with frequency and duration is how things change.
So, if it’s peace of mind and a sense of emotional satisfaction in your life and relationships that you’re after, body-centered psychotherapy is the way to get them. Fast.
Want to know more?
Call me, we’ll talk.
Leah Benson, LMHC is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Tampa, FL
