What is Integral Somatic Psychology?

The findings from research on the physiology of emotions shows that an emotional response, especially a difficult one, potentially involves the entirety of the brain and body physiology. This is because an emotional response to a situation is an assessment of the impact of that situation on the wellbeing of the whole organism.

Limiting the overall impact of a situation to one or more places in the brain and body physiology through physiological and energetic defenses in other parts of the body increases not only the level of stress and dysregulation in places where emotion is present but also throughout the organism.

The level of difficulty one has in tolerating an emotional experience is related directly to the level of physiological stress and dysregulation accompanying the emotional experience.

Expanding and supporting the emotional experience to as much of the brain and body physiology as possible instead of concentrating it in one or more places reduces the level of stress and dysregulation involved in the emotional experience, locally (where emotion is present) as well as globally even in places it is not present, so as to make it more bearable. It can be likened to the experience of reduced difficulty in carrying a heavy load with two arms as opposed to one arm.

When one develops a greater capacity for tolerating emotions in the body, the body is not as stressed or dysregulated or shut down in the face of difficult or unacceptable emotions. This can confer diverse benefits:

1. Improvement in physical and energetic conditions including resolution of psychosomatic or psychophysiological symptoms.
2. Healthy changes in cognition and behavior with the body more available for both functions and from more regulated emotions.
3. Better relationships because emotional regulation is key for interacting with others in a healthy manner.
4. With the body more open to the environment, better connection between the individual and the collective and its resources, improving conditions for individual healing and strengthening one’s (spiritual) connection with the whole.
5. Increased chance of success on the path of enlightenment as the capacity to tolerate opposites in emotional experience is a key requirement for enlightenment.

Awareness, intention, imagination, verbal and non-verbal expression, movement, client’s self-touch, and therapist’s touch are possible options as tools for working with the body during the practice of embodying emotions.

A model of physiological regulation and a model of energetic regulation are used to guide the directions of emotional expansion in the body so as to make the experience of emotion as regulated as possible.

In addition, archetypal resources from different levels of the psyche are accessed as needed to be of further help in embodying emotions.

Yes. The practice of embodying emotions: A guide for improving cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes by Raja Selvam, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist and developer of Integral Somatic Psychology, is a comprehensive theoretical and practical guide for the practice of embodying emotions in Integral Somatic Psychology.

Click here to learn more about the book.

All mental health professionals (psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, marriage, family, and child therapists, social workers, and counselors).

Practitioners of all therapeutic approaches including Psychoanalysis, Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotion Focused Therapy, body or somatic psychotherapy approaches such as Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, Bioenergetic Analysis, Bodynamic Analysis, and Sensorimotor psychotherapy, approaches based on mindfulness such as Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), energy psychology approaches such as EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), spiritual psychology approaches such as the Diamond Approach and Vedanta.

Bodyworkers, energy workers, coaches, trainers, educators, meditation teachers, spiritual teachers, and all those who work with emotional experiences in their clients as part of their practice.

Self-aware individuals looking for a state-of-the-art science-backed self-help approach for improving all aspects of their lives through regulating their emotional experiences.

The practice of embodying emotions from Integral Somatic Psychology has been found to be of value in the treatment of a wide range of clinical problems involving difficult emotions—from ordinary life events to extra-ordinarily difficult traumas, psychosomatic or psychophysiological disorders, developmental traumas, relational traumas, adverse childhood experiences (ACE), prenatal and perinatal traumas, attachment disorders, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, addictions, post-traumatic stress, shock traumas, complex PTSD, collective traumas, and intergenerational traumas.

ISP professional trainings and workshops have been offered in as many as twenty countries on all five continents.

Integral Somatic Psychology is typically taught in three four-day modules, in-person and online. Click here to learn more about the ISP Professional Training.

The format of lecture, discussion, guided experiential exercises, demonstrations with participants, and daily practice sessions among participants under supervision by experienced professionals with expertise in the method is designed to maximize embodied learning among training participants.

Training by video of one or more modules of the training is also possible.

In addition to completing 12 days of training, participants have the option of obtaining the ISP Practitioner Professional Certificate and being listed on the registry of practitioners on the Integral Somatic Psychology website by meeting the additional requirement of six hours of personal sessions and six hours of case consultations from approved ISP providers.

Shorter workshops with multiple demonstrations on special topics such as ‘prenatal and perinatal trauma,’ ‘trauma, development, and attachment,’ and ‘war trauma’ are also available in in-person, online, and video course formats. Click here to see the availability of workshops.