What is body psychotherapy?

Wilhelm Reich, the founder of body psychotherapy introduced the theory of body armour.  According to this theory when feelings are repressed in the mind there is a corresponding armouring in the body. Body psychotherapists have argued that without addressing the underlying 'body armour', clients may understand their patterns but however remain unable to change the destructive patterns and feel condemned to endlessly repeat the patterns that have brought them into therapy. As body psychotherapists we believe that change happens when there is integration between understanding and perception and a corresponding freeing of the body and energy patterns that have previously held the psychic structure. 

In many instances body psychotherapy may initially be like any other psychotherapeutic approach. You talk about your concerns and problems and the work develops from there. But because the self is embodied i.e. experienced in and through the body, unconscious patterns may be held within the body. Your emotional experience is attended to by using bodily interventions, like touch, sensory awareness, breathing, movement and other active approaches as well as talking to evoke your awareness of the fullness and complexity of your experience. In this way spontaneous processes and cognitive reflection are both given room, an important condition for the integration of conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche.

It is important  to distinguish between various forms of body therapy treatments and Body Psychotherapy. Massage or physical exercises, work simply to improve physical well-being and psychological benefit may be an indirect result. Body psychotherapy however works with the client’s subjective reality including the different levels of emotion, sensation and mind that form this reality. Modern Body psychotherapy is relational, which means that it sees the development of the individual within a social context of the family, the group, the social milieu. Real change only happens through relationship with another human being, because the original damage and consequent formation of habitual patterns occurred in the dynamic with people in an individual's early environment. So while body treatments work from a medical model in which the practitioner as an expert treats the patient, body psychotherapy sees the relationship between the client and the therapist as the important vehicle and crucible of change. Body Psychotherapy is not a technique or a treatment 'done' to the client. No particular technique is considered therapeutic in itself, but only as an integral part of a therapeutic relationship. Body Psychotherapy addresses the psychological implications and meaning of bodily expressions and in doing so works against a fundamental split between body and mind.

Body Psychotherapists work with the assumption that human beings are energetic beings, i.e. energetic processes are fundamental to all human functioning. These link the various levels of body, emotion and mind into an intricate, interdependent whole. The energetic shape and organisation, the
'how' of the client's presence is as important as 'what' is expressed.