Web sites for my teachers:
Generative Somatics — Staci Haines
Strozzi Institute — Embodied Leadership
Transformative Dance with Zuza Engler
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
Additional Sonoma County Somatic Psychology Resources:
Embodied Relationship Class
This course is suitable for individuals who want to be more effective in relationship, couples who want to work through blocks and deepen their intimacy, as well as professionals who work with couples.
Over six Saturday afternoons, we will take a journey into the heart of relationship. We will begin by deepening mindfulness through somatic understanding. We will open into the truth of who we are an how each of us is pulled into our destiny.
Using practices for embodied learning, we will learn how to sustain satisfying relationships, break through stuck patterns and deepen intimacy.
Practices will facilitate awareness and embodiment of qualities necessary for relationship such as mindfulness, willingness, acceptance of difference, trust and generosity.
The course is organized around a theory for change based in somatic psychology.
Held at the Bodyworks Yoga Studio, 2nd Street, Petaluma
First series 3/13, 20, 27, 4/10, 17, 24
Cost $55 per person, per class/ $100 per couple, per class
(Must enroll in entire series/ 10% discount if paid by 2/7/09.)
Somatic Psychology
Somatic psychology is based on the understanding that talking about experience is not enough to create change. We must experience ourselves in an embodied way.
Whether we realize it or not, the ways that we act, the issues that we have and the symptoms that make our lives less satisfying are all based on interactions of body, mind and emotions. When we have been neglected, shamed or traumatized as a child, our thoughts, emotions and physical structures work in harmony to create ways to help us survive effectively, yet these very ways can lead to future problems. For example, when we are met with disdain for expressing anger, our solar plexus may constrict the breath, restricting our emotional vitality. Simultaneously, we might say critical things to ourselves to support the solar plexus holding.
When an experience of support and acceptance is registered in the mind, body and emotions, we more easily face the truth of who we are and begin to risk change. We move from being stuck into an experience of more freedom — accepting the things that can’t be changed, and understanding what we can do to transform those things that are possible to change. With more freedom, we can work actively and directly to reweave psychological structures.
I employ a variety of techniques for involving a whole body experience in psychotherapy. Each begins with embodied acceptance and connection, and moves toward actively taking control of your life.
One important therapeutic modality I use is Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy™ (AEDP). AEDP uses interactive regulation to recover emotional expression.
In addition I am trained in Generative Somatics which combines a psychological discourse and embodied learning with hands on body work to help experience deep resource and unwind body armoring.
When we practice conscious embodiment, we encourage ourselves toward a fascination toward what is possible.
—Wendy Palmer
Jim Matto-Shepard, Ph.D Phone 707-762-1670
One Bodega Ave. #4
Petaluma, CA 94952 mattoshepard@comcast.net
