It is common for therapy clients to be intimidated by questions like “Where do you feel it in your body?”
Not just clients. It is also disempowering for many therapists who undertake training in body-oriented, experiential approaches.
Of course, it is important to be in touch with what is happening in your body. And there is a lot to be said for being direct and asking for it. This works well for people naturally prone to it. But insisting on it disempowers people who are not prone to it—unnecessarily and sadly so.
People are different. For some people, it is quite natural to identify a felt sense in their body. For others, this feels very daunting. Being asked to do so creates a vicious cycle, similar to what happens when you tell a tense person to “just relax.”
Does this mean that people need to try harder to identify their feelings? It would make as much sense as asking somebody who is unable to relax to just try harder.
A 90-minute workshop for therapists on December 1
In this 90-minute experiential workshop, we explore how to get to an embodied therapy process by meeting the client where they are.
The underlying physicality is always there, whether you are currently able to sense it or not. It is there because that’s how we evolved to process life’s interactions.
The skill of the therapist is in recognizing the underlying physicality where it is, instead of having a preconceived notion of how it should be and not finding it.
By definition, you build such a skill through active involvement. And so, this workshop in experiential.
Monday, December 1, on Zoom, from 12:15 to 1:45 pm New York time. Fee: US$50.
Register for Event