Improve Your Outcomes by Helping Your Clients Embody their Emotions
The ISP™ Professional Training has been designed to help improve cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes in all therapies on the basis of clinical implications of older and newer evidence-based theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience on the physiology of cognition, emotion, and behavior, including the newer paradigms of embodied and embedded cognition and enactive emotion.
For more information about Integral Somatic Psychology™, the science behind it, and the evidence that supports its effectiveness in any psychological process, visit our section What is Integral Somatic Psychology?
Get Your ISP Practitioner Certificate
Join the thousands of therapists using Dr. Selvam’s scientific approach to transform your practice. This premium training has been designed to help you improve outcomes in all therapies.
- Live online training
- Daily demonstration sessions
- Daily supervised practice sessions with participants
- Know you’re doing it right
Visit the training schedule to register today.
How to Develop Practical Skills in an Easy-to-Learn Scientific Approach
We will study the findings on how cognition, emotion, and behavior depend not only on the brain but also on the body and the environment; how cognition, emotion, and behavior are inter-related in the physiology of the brain and the body and its relationship to the environment; and how emotion and greater involvement of the body in emotional experience are important for improving cognition, emotion, and behavior.
We will also study the older and newer findings on the physiology of emotions in-depth in relation to the physiology of self-regulation in the brain and the body.
We will learn and practice clinical strategies that can be implemented in all therapies for involving the body more in a broader range of emotional experiences (primary, secondary, and always-present and often-overlooked sensorimotor emotions), to develop greater affect tolerance through the body, and improve cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical, energetic, relational, or spiritual outcomes.
We will also learn how to use the concept of archetypes from Jungian psychology to connect the individual to resources at the various levels of the collective, to access, expand, regulate, tolerate, and stay longer with emotional experiences in the body so as to learn most from them.
ISP was a very helpful addition to my training in Somatic Experiencing. The emphasis on the bodily experience of emotions and how to work with them—recognize, experience deeply, and manage/regulate—was invaluable for my professional and personal growth.
The 7-Step Protocol for Embodying Emotion is especially useful for clients with low affective tolerance or high physiological dysregulation, found in people with complex traumas, psychophysiological symptoms, and syndromes.
The Core Clinical Strategy in Integral Somatic Psychology
The 7-Step Protocol for Embodying Emotion is the core clinical strategy in Integral Somatic Psychology.
The practice is taught during the ISP Professional Training, with concrete steps and tools for how one might go about “embodying emotions”, or building a greater capacity for tolerating emotions through expansion of its conscious experience to as much of the body as possible, to improve treatment times and diverse a range of outcomes in all therapies including other body psychotherapy systems.
Find online or in-person training in our Training Schedule.
References
Aviezer, H. Trope, Y., & Todorov, A. (2012). Body cues, not facial expressions, discriminate between intensive positive and negative emotions. Science, 338(6111), 1225-1229.
Barrett, L. F. (2018). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Boston: Mariner Books.
Beilock, S. (2017). How the body knows its mind: The surprising power of the physical environment to influence how you think and feel. New York: Atria Books.
Casanto, D. (2011). Different bodies, different minds: The body-specificity of language and thought. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 378-83.
Colombetti, G. (2014). The feeling body: Affective science meets the enactive mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Craig, A. D. (2015). How do you feel? An interoceptive moment with your neurobiological self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Critchley, H. D., & Nagai, Y. (2012). How emotions are shaped by bodily states. Emotion Review, 4(2), 163–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911430132
Crocker, L., Heller, W., Warren, S. L., O’Hare, A. G., Infantolino, Z. P., & Miller, G. A. (2013). Relationships among cognition, emotion, and motivation: Implications for intervention and neuroplasticity in psychopathology. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 1-19. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00261
Damasio, A. & Carvalho, G. (2013). The evolution of feelings: Evolutionary and neurobiological origins. Nature Reviews in Neuroscience, 14 (2), 143-152.
Fincher-Kiefer, R. (2019). How the body shapes knowledge: Empirical support for embodied cognition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Gross, J., & Barrett, L. F. (2011). Emotion generation and emotion regulation: One or two depends on your point of view. Emotion Review, 3(1), 8-16.
Hufendiek, R. (2016). Embodied emotions: A naturalistic approach to a normative phenomenon. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Johnson, M. (2017). Embodied mind, meaning, and reason. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Laird, J., & Lacasse, K. (2014). Bodily influences on emotional feelings: Accumulating evidence and extensions of William James’ theory of emotions. Emotion Review, 6, 24-37.
Maiese, M. (2011). Embodiment, emotion, and cognition. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMilllan.
Okon-Singer, H., Hendler, T., Pessoa, L. & Shackman, A. J. (2015). The neurobiology of emotion and cognition interactions: Fundamental questions and strategies for future research. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00058
Peper, E., Lin, I., Harvey, R., & Perez, J. (2017). How posture affects memory recall and mood. Biofeedback, 45(2), 36–41. https://doi.org/10.5298/1081-5937-45.2.01
Price, T. F., Peterson, C. K., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). The emotive neuroscience of embodiment. Motivation and Emotion, 36, 27-37.
Tyng, C. M., Amin, H. U., Saad, M., & Malik, A. S. (2017). The influences of emotion on learning and memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1454.
Winkielman, P., Niedenthal, P., Wielgosz, J., Eelen, J., & Kavanagh, L. C. (2015). Embodiment of cognition and emotion. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, E. Borgida, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology, vol. 1. Attitudes and social cognition (p. 151–175). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14341-004
*Integral Somatic Psychology is neither a regulatory nor licensing organization and therefore not sanctioned to certify, license, or otherwise bestow the legal authorization to practice as a mental health professional.
