Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Your body is part of your brain.
Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an
outgrowth of the Hakomi Method, which in turn arose from Gestalt,
Reichian, and Feldenkrais psychotherapies which all attended to aspects
of how one carries psychological and emotional information in the
body. Pat Ogden, an early collaborator of Ron Kurtz in founding the
Hakomi Method, sought to extend the use of body centered psychotherapy,
particularly in the treatment of traumatic stress.
Videotapes of her work are being presented regularly at
prominent conferences where therapists who work with PTSD convene.
She advocates the Modulation Model which asserts that autonomic
nervous system (ANS) arousal activated by triggered state-dependent
memories of traumatic events cannot be successfully processed and
resolved by the person unless the level of arousal is in a moderate
range so as not to be too high or too low.
Oftentimes well-meaning therapists may attempt to process such
traumatic memories with clients when ANS arousal is so high that the
brain circuitry precludes the involvement of the person’s prefrontal
cortex because their entire system is engaged in fight, flight, or
freeze reaction -- as though the event were occurring in the present.
Conversely, if the person's ANS arousal is in shutdown mode, then
information won’t be properly integrated either.
Paying attention to heart rate variability, breathing, posture,
gestures, muscle tension, and other somatic cues can help the therapist
and person track the level of arousal and modulate it toward optimal
processing.
Peter Levine, in Waking the Tiger, describes a related approach,
stating that PTSD is the result of uncompleted defensive behavioral
responses due to the freeze reaction. His method is called Somatic
Awareness. Babette Rothschild, author of The Body Remembers,
advocates slowing the reactivity before processing the content of
traumatic experience, otherwise one risks aggravating PTSD instead of
resolving it.
I
have studied the approaches of many of these leaders in body-centered
psychotherapies, and incorporate somatic and sensorimotor
awareness techniques in my integrated individualized treatment.
