Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction with adults, to help a person change behavior and overcome problems in desired ways. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. There is also a range of psychotherapies designed for children and adolescents, which typically involve play, such as sandplay. Certain psychotherapies are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders. Others have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Rolfing is a form of alternative medicine originally developed by Ida Rolf (1896–1979) as Structural Integration. It is typically delivered as a series of ten hands-on physical manipulation sessions sometimes called "the recipe". It is based on Rolf's ideas about how the human body's "energy field" can benefit when aligned with the Earth's gravitational field. Practitioners combine superficial and deep manual therapy with movement prompts. The process is sometimes painful. It is not known whether Rolfing is safe.
Dance/movement therapy (DMT) in USA/ Australia or dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) in the UK is the psychotherapeutic use of movement and dance to support intellectual, emotional, and motor functions of the body. As a modality of the creative arts therapies, DMT looks at the correlation between movement and emotion.
In alternative medicine, bodywork is any therapeutic or personal development technique that involves working with the human body in a form involving manipulative therapy, breath work, or energy medicine. Bodywork techniques also aim to assess or improve posture, promote awareness of the "bodymind connection" rather than the "mind-body connection", or to manipulate the electromagnetic field alleged to surround the human body and affect health.
Process-oriented psychology, also called process work, is a depth psychology theory and set of techniques developed by Arnold Mindell and associated with transpersonal psychology, somatic psychology and post-Jungian psychology. Process oriented psychology has been applied in contexts including individual therapy and working with groups and organisations. It is known for extending dream analysis to body experiences and for applying psychology to world issues including socioeconomic disparities, diversity issues, social conflict and leadership.
The Hakomi Method is a form of mindfulness-centered somatic psychotherapy developed by Ron Kurtz in the 1970s.
Vegetotherapy is a form of Reichian psychotherapy that involves the physical manifestations of emotions.
Somatic experiencing is a form of alternative therapy aimed at relieving the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental and physical trauma-related health problems by focusing on the client's perceived body sensations. It was developed by trauma therapist Peter A. Levine.
Body psychotherapy, also called body-oriented psychotherapy, is an approach to psychotherapy which applies basic principles of somatic psychology. It originated in the work of Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud and particularly Wilhelm Reich who developed it as vegetotherapy. Branches also were developed by Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos, both patients and students of Reich, like Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy. Skeptics consider this form of body psychotherapy to be pseudoscience.
The Trager approach is a form of somatic education. Proponents claim the Trager approach helps release deep-seated physical and mental patterns and facilitates deep relaxation, increased physical mobility, and mental clarity. The founder, Milton Trager, called his work Psychophysical Integration. He was an athlete, dancer, and bodybuilder. He began doing bodywork with no training and later worked under a variety of practitioner licenses, including an MD earned in Mexico followed by 2 years residency in psychiatry. Trager wanted western medicine to accept his proposed mind-body connection in treating challenging conditions such as postpolio, Parkinson's, and other neuromuscular conditions. Doctors reportedly referred patients to him and were surprised by the results, but "none seemed to consider his drugless treatments as effective as surgery or medication" and the medical approach to these conditions did not fundamentally shift away from them as he had envisioned. Late in life, at the Esalen Institute, he was encouraged to begin teaching, which he did for the last 22 years of his life.
Somatic psychology is a form of Psychotherapy that focuses on somatic experience, and the embodied self, including therapeutic and holistic approaches to body. Body psychotherapy is a general branch of this subject, while somatherapy, eco-somatics and dance therapy, for example, are specific branches of the subject. Somatic psychology is a framework that seeks to bridge the mind-body dichotomy.
Postural Integration is a process-oriented body-based therapy originally developed in the late 1960s by Jack Painter (1933–2010) in California, US, after exploration in the fields of humanistic psychology and the human potential movement. The method aims to support personal change and self development.
Sensorimotor psychotherapy, developed by Pat Ogden, is a trademarked method of somatic psychotherapy and is a "body-oriented talk therapy". "Sensorimotor Psychotherapy blends theory and technique from cognitive, affective, and psychodynamic therapy with straight forward somatic interventions, such as helping clients become aware of their bodies, track their bodily sensations, and implement physical actions that promote empowerment and competency." The first course in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy was offered in the early 1980s. The first book on the approach, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, was published in the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology in 2006, followed by the second book, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment in 2015.
Rosen Method Bodywork is a type of Complementary and alternative medicine. This bodywork, described as "psycho-somatic", claims to help integrate one's bodily and emotional/mental experience while identifying unconscious patterns of muscular holding, feeling, and behavior. The main theory underpinning this method is that a person protects themselves from past painful experiences through the body, separating one from one's true self. This alleged protection is said to be experienced most frequently as chronic musculoskeletal pain and tension, and purportedly can be observed by the bodywork practitioners as restricted patterns of movement and posture, muscular tension, or shortness of breath. Rosen Method Bodywork purports to integrate the body, mind, emotions and spirit; and unlock the unconscious.
Strozzi Institute is an organization located in Oakland, California that offers coaching services and trainings in leadership, organizational development, and personal mastery. It uses a somatic approach to learning. Programs are offered primarily at the institute's Sonoma training center.
Watsu is a form of aquatic bodywork used for deep relaxation and passive aquatic therapy. Watsu is characterized by one-on-one sessions in which a practitioner or therapist gently cradles, moves, stretches, and massages a receiver in chest-deep warm water.
Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience. The term is used in movement therapy to signify approaches based on the soma, or "the body as perceived from within," including Alexander technique, the Feldenkrais Method, and Rolfing Structural Integration. In dance, the term refers to techniques based on the dancer's internal sensation, in contrast with "performative techniques," such as ballet or modern dance, which emphasize the external observation of movement by an audience. Somatic techniques may be used in bodywork, psychotherapy, dance, or spiritual practices.
Stanley Keleman was an American writer and therapist, who created the body psychotherapy approach known as "formative psychology". He was one of the leaders of the body psychotherapy movement nationally and internationally. His methodology rested on an anatomical base and incorporates an evolutionary, philosophical and mythological perspective; within this formative paradigm the human is capable of learning voluntary self-influence of instinctual and emotional expression as a way to manage dilemmas of daily living and to form personal choices for creating a future. Keleman started developin and articulating his concepts in 1957. In 1971, he published the first of 10 books.
Marion Rosen was a German-American physiotherapist. She developed the Rosen Method, a bodywork that was named after her.