Relational Implicit & Somatic Psychotherapy

Judyth O. Weaver, Ph.D. in Reichian Psychology, began studying with Charlotte Selver in 1968, after returning from three years in Asia, most of them spent in a Zen Buddhist monastery. She is also certified as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and in Prenatal and Birth Therapy. She is a Rosen Method practitioner and senior teacher; and a master teacher in T’ai Chi Ch’uan, which she has been practicing since 1968.  Judyth taught at the California Institute for Integral Studies and other S.F. Bay Area graduate schools for 25 years. She co-founded Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and created its Somatic Psychology doctoral program.  She has developed her own integrated manner of working with people which she calls ‘Somatic Reclaiming.’ She maintains a private practice in Seattle, Washington, and on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada in the summers, as well as teaches internationally. See: JudythWeaver.com.

June 2011. See: Printable PDF transcript. See other conversation with Judyth Weaver.

Judith Blackstone, PhD, developed the Realization Process, an integrated method of somatic psychotherapy, embodiment, relational healing, and spiritual awakening. She is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City and offers classes, workshops and teacher trainings in the Realization Process, throughout the United States and Europe. She is the author of The Empathic Ground, The Enlightenment Process, The Subtle Self, Living Intimately (to be republished in Fall, 2011 as The Intimate Life) and the upcoming Belonging Here. She has been a student of Eastern contemplative traditions for thirty-five years. She is founder of Nonduality Institute in New York City. See: JudithBlackstone.com.

May 2011. See: Printable PDF transcript

David M. Allen, M.D. is the author of a new book for general audiences, How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders: A Balanced Approach to Resolve Problems and Reconcile Relationships, and three books for psychotherapists: A Family Systems Approach to Individual Psychotherapy, Deciphering Motivation in Psychotherapy, and Psychotherapy with Borderline Patients: an Integrated Approach. He is a Professor of Psychiatry and the former Director of Psychiatric Residency Training at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, a position he held for 16 years. Prior to that he was in private practice in Southern California during the advent of managed care. Additionally, he has done research into personality disorders and is a psychotherapy theorist. He is associate editor of the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. See: davidmallenmd.blogspot.com.

April 2011. See: Printable PDF transcript

J. Tyler Carpenter, Ph.D., FAACP, is a board certified clinical, and research, forensic, and academic psychologist, with over 25-years of experience treating seriously disturbed individuals, and teaching and consulting to the professionals who work with them, in assessment, treatment, institutional, and systems settings. He utilizes the full-spectrum of personal, group, educational, and internet-based tools, to treat and consult regarding both research and applied understanding and specialized knowledge. He has published, presented, served on boards and a commission, with respect to his expertise in the integration of treatment approaches, correctional, and disability populations. He works as a clinician and consultant in the Greater Boston area.

Published November 2010. See printable PDF transcript.

Christine Caldwell, Ph.D., LPC, ADTR – Founder and former director of the Somatic Counseling Psychology Department at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she currently teaches. Her work began twenty years ago with studies in anthropology, dance therapy, bodywork and Gestalt therapy, and has developed into innovations in the field of body-centered psychotherapy. She calls her work the Moving Cycle. This system goes beyond the limitations of therapy and emphasizes lifelong personal and social evolution through trusting and following body states. She has authored two books: Getting Our Bodies Back, and Getting In Touch. She offers trainings in somatic psychotherapy (the Moving Cycle), with specializations in addictions, play, movement sequencing, therapist training, scientific inquiry, and birth and death.

Ryan Kennedy, LPC, LMFT, RN, CACIII, BC-DMT, CLMA is the Chair of the Somatic Counseling Psychology Department at Naropa University and also serves as the Director of the Body Psychotherapy Program. In addition, he serves on the faculties of Prescott College, University of Colorado Denver, and Front Range Community College. His clinical background includes extensive work with chronic and persistent mental illness, trauma and dissociative disorders, addiction and recovery, domestic/family violence, and living with life-threatening illnesses. He use an integrative approach that draws from his expertise in trauma recovery, addiction treatment, couple and family therapy, human sexuality, domestic violence prevention/intervention, Gestalt psychotherapy, Jungian analysis, contemplative practice, existential psychotherapy, expressive arts therapies, and movement-oriented, body-based psychotherapy.

Tara Topper has a master’s degree in Somatic Counseling Psychology, with a concentration in Dance/Movement Therapy, from Naropa University and a BA in Psychology and Sociology from UCLA. She is a Registered Dance/Movement Therapist (R-DMT) and has a systemic, somatic (body-centered), and person-centered approach to counseling people. This means that she believes understanding your relationship to yourself and others, how you move or inhabit your body, and how you discover your innate wisdom will be essential to building the therapeutic relationship. Her specialties include trauma processing, individual and couples therapy, and experiential play therapy.

November 2010. See: Printable PDF transcript

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Instructor at the Trauma Center, an outpatient clinic and research center founded by Bessel van der Kolk.  Known for her expertise as both a clinician and a presenter, she is also Assistant Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, an EMDR International Association Consultant, past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, and a former Instructor, Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Fisher is the author of a number of articles on trauma treatment and lectures nationally and internationally on the integration of the neurobiological research and body-oriented psychotherapy into traditional therapeutic modalities.

October 2010. See: Printable PDF transcript. See other conversation with Janina Fisher.

Bill Bowen, MFA, LMT, is the founder of Psycho-Physical Therapy. His background combines an immersion in the life of the human body with a clinical practice informed by multiple trainings in somatic psychotherapies and bodywork. He is trained in Rolfing and Rolfing Movement work, Hakomi Body Centered Psychotherapy, Bodynamic Analysis, Somatic Experiencing, Biovalent Manual Therapy  and numerous other somatic and psychological disciplines.

His unique therapeutic method has evolved out of his 40 years of  experience working with the creative process, body therapy, somatic psychology, and spirituality. The active integration of the physical and psychological has been the continuing focus of his work. He has been a trainer in the Hakomi method and was co-founder, with Pat Ogden, of Hakomi Integrative Somatics. Bill has taught at colleges in both Europe and the United States and is currently on the faculty of the Somatic Psychology program at JFK University.

September 2010. See: Printable PDF transcript

Courtenay Young trained in Body-Psychotherapy about 30 years ago, with Gerda Boyesen, David Boadella, John Pierrakos, and later with Stan Grof and Arnold Mindell; he works transpersonally and within the UK NHS. He has been a significant member of the European Association for Body-Psychotherapy for many years and helped establish Body-Psychotherapy as a ‘scientifically-validated’ psychotherapy. He is also a founder member of USABP; compiles the EABP Bibliography of Body-Psychotherapy (on CD-ROM and now on-line); is an editor for the International Journal of Psychotherapy, the Journal of Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy; and is the editor for the forthcoming American edition of the massive and seminal ‘Handbook of Body Psychotherapy’. He has written numerous published journal articles and several chapters in books about Body-Psychotherapy and about psychotherapy in general (all on his website). His first book: “Help Yourself Towards Mental Health” has been recently published by Karnac Books.

August 2010. See: Printable PDf transcript

Richard Schwartz earned his Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Purdue University, after which he began a long association with the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and more recently at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. He is coauthor, with Michael Nichols, of Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, the most widely used family therapy text in the United States.

Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of experiencing various parts within themselves. He saw these parts as forming an “internal family” within an individual, and started to work with the parts from a systems perspective. He noticed that addressing the parts’ concerns reduced disruptions. This helps the client to accede to the wise leadership of what Dr. Schwartz came to call the “Self.” In 2000, Richard Schwartz founded The Center for Self Leadership in Oak Park, Illinois. Dr. Schwartz has published four books and over fifty articles about IFS.

February 2010. See: Printable PDF transcript . See also conversation with Richard Schwartz, about inner conflicts.

Robert Scaer, M.D. received his B.A. in Psychology, and his M.D. degree at the University of Rochester.  He is Board Certified in Neurology, and has been in practice for 36 years, twenty of those as Medical Director at the Mapleton Rehabilitation Center in Boulder, CO.   More recently he has pursued the study of traumatic stress and its role in emotional and physical syndromes and diseases.

He has lectured extensively, and has published several articles on posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociation, the whiplash syndrome and other somatic syndromes of trauma. He has published two books, the first The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation and Disease in 2001, with a second edition released in October, 2007.  A second book, The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency was published in 2005.  He is retired from clinical medical practice, and continues to write and lecture in the field of traumatology.

January 2010. See: Printable PDF transcript.  See other conversation with Robert Scaer.