“The body is a well of wisdom filled with truth.”
The past decades have seen a renaissance of the role of the body in well-being and therapeutic effectiveness (catchword “embodiment”). Much therapy and coaching is “top-down”-oriented - you talk about your issues, explore your history and situation with words and concepts, you try to create a new, different understanding of things in life & business and apply different coaching tools to change your behaviour in future situations. While this can be highly effective, it misses an essential part of the picture. What about the reality of our embodied mind and brain and its role in how we feel, perceive, live in this world?
It is our firm belief that “bottom-up” approaches are essential to complement “top-down” oriented formats. With bottom-up techniques such as Holistic Bodywork, “Integrative Somatic Process”, or general “Somatic Coaching” techniques we can access our feeling & energy states and thus our “subconsciousness” directly - subconscious as “existing in the mind but not immediately available to consciousness” (cf. Merriam-Webster dictionary).
The Somatic Coaching / Bodywork techniques we apply can be with or without touch. The sessions can be explorations of breathing and movement patterns, feelings & perceptions in the body, Gestalt techniques giving a form to situations (such as Voice Dialogue Technique or as known in family constellation) or massage and deep bodywork techniques addressing chronic holding patterns in the myofascial system (the system made from muscles and connective tissue).
Using touch as a reference point for nervous system change and integration
There is a whole world to be discovered if we include the body and feeling states in our exploration of well-being and personal as well as professional development.
What can we work on?
Presence & Self-Confidence in Public Speaking & Leadership
Much is to be said when talking about the role of the body when engaging in communication. You can not not communicate. It is fairly obvious to communication experts but may be surprisingly new to others to learn that most of what is impactful in communication is not what is being said. Instead, impact comes from how you say it (the para-verbal, encoded in acoustic information and transmitted via the voice and body resonance) and what people perceive visually from you as the speaker (the non-verbal) in terms of posture, gestures, facial expression, gaze, and other movements / changes in bodily expression. Trust, the impression of competence, resonance and the desire to follow someone are created when we perceive a speaker to communicate in an authentic, empathetic, clear and grounded way.
They key to such communication lies in mind-body integration and then in being able to perceive signals from both the audience and your own body while being engaged in communication (on stage or off stage in personal conversations). This is called presence. Being fully there, fully alive and connected to yourself and to the others around you. In this connectedness and presence lies the true power of any human being, and especially the power of every leader.
With Somatic Coaching you learn to better integrate the body and its valuable cues / layers of information into your interactions with your environment, which is most useful in all situations where you want to persuade / convince someone of doing something / moving into a certain direction. Let’s say we’re getting not just more mindful but more bodyful ;-).
Effective communication is the essence of leadership, so somatic coaching is key to success and to personal development - going from good to great in life and business. Our support can help you get there.
“Complexify yourself you can sense more of the complexities around you.”
Going deep - personalized transformation journeys
How can you resolve deep issues, how can you create breakthrough, “system-wide” change in the ways you operate in the world? A well designed personal learning journey through different carefully curated top-down and bottom-up experiences can catalyze personal development in unforeseen and highly potent ways. Old blockages and obstacles to growth can be removed, and true integration can happen which leads to the experience of getting to your true self, of connecting with your inner voice & purpose, of “standing in your full power”, of feeling alive, vibrant, connected and joyful and read to take on any challenge life and leadership might trough at you.
How can such a journey look like?
Confidence, authenticity, vitality and presence are often goals for the coaching process.
Of course everybody’s life and business situation is different. Also, mindsets (“Haltungen”) and developmental challenge or transformational tasks are different - so here’s just an example of a very short 3 session program designed for one of our clients recently to give you a flavor of what we can do when it comes to a personal transformation journey:
Theme: “Getting ready for the top job” (in politics, business, admininistration)
Example of an Experience Journey in 3 sessions (Dec. 2020).
1.) Breathing. Freeing the breath - creating awareness around personal breathing patterns, dissolving old (constraining) breathing patterns, resolving blockages, expanding the breath. Feeling the breath in the whole body and gaining access to the flowing of energy in the whole system. Experiencing aliveness and connectedness. Resolving old traumas. Increasing energy, being fully awake.
Techniques: Integrative Somatic Process & breath experiments
2.) Constellations. Getting to know different selves / aspects of your own personality - dominant selves and unchartered or suppressed voices. Establishing dialogue between the inner parts, getting to know their energies and styles and becoming able to hold and direct the tension between them from the place of the “aware ego”. Goal: Feeling more freedom, having more freedom of choice. A larger space is created inside of your mind / consciousness and you can perceive more in yourself and in others. As the composer Arnold Schönberg said: “Harmony is the balance of forces that are in utmost tension”. It’s that balance where life flows.
Method: Voice Dialogue Method & Hakomi
3.) Revelations. Presence - being fully there, for yourself and in the perception of others. Standing in your own full power. Body awareness and exhalation as a regulatory instruments. Calm, engagement and prosody of voice. Being attuned and getting into resonance with your audience or conversation partner. Being grounded and connected. Feeling the life force.
Methods: Rehearsals, public speaking exercises, breathing techniques. Bodyfulness exercises.
Reading up on somatics & bodymind work
Selected readings on somatics / mind & bodywork:
Dr. Daniel Siegel: Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
Peter A. Levine, Ph.D.: In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma & Restores Goodness
Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.: The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, brain & body in the transformation of trauma
Dr. Alan Fogel: Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness
Dr. Daniel Siegel: Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human
George Downing: Körper und Wort in der Psychotherapie: Leitlinien für die Praxis
Dr. Stephen W. Porges: The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation
Peter A. Levine, Ph.D.: Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory
Dr. Laurence Heller: Healing Developmental Trauma - How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship (The NeuroAffective Relational Model / NARM)
Weiss, H., Johnson, G. & Monda, L. (ed.): Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy - A comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice
Further readings on the mind & consciousness:
Michael Graziano: Consciousness & the Social Brain
Michael Graziano: Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience
Stanislas Dehaene: Consciousness and the Brain
Daniel Dennett: From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
Antonio Damasio: Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain
Antonio Damasio: The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness
Marvin Minsky: The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, & the Future of the Human Mind
Ian McGilchrist: The Master & His Emissary: The Divided Brain & the Making of the Western World
Michael Pollan: How to Change Your Mind - The New Science of Psychedelics
Claudio Naranjo: The Healing Journey - Pioneering Approaches to Psychedelic Therapy
Héctor García and Francesc Miralles: Ikigai - The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
Martin Permantier: Mindset Matters - Shaping leadership & corporate culture for the future
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