Somatic Psychotherapy Today
As the Founding Editor-in-Chief and publisher of Somatic Psychotherapy Today for 13 years, I was blessed to write with contributors and share in their self-discoveries as they expressed themselves personally and professionally.
A substantial collection of articles and insights explored the relational realities in body-oriented psychotherapy practices. I culled cutting-edge theories and modalities in the somatic sciences to share with a worldwide audience and provided a forum for sharing news and advances in clinical practice, research, resources, and policy. I also dispersed information regarding professional activities and opportunities in the field of body-oriented psychotherapies.
While this publication was not designed to capture everything related to the immense field of psychotherapy and body-oriented practices, I strove to provide a venue for readers (be they therapists, students, researchers, or people in waiting rooms) to experience different perspectives in a light and lively manner.
SPT Magazine was an independent international publication. It was validated by professional organizations and associations representing various modalities in body psychotherapy, somatic psychology, and prenatal and perinatal psychology. In November of 2023, the magazine’s Facebook page had over 9,400 followers, with many willing to engage with our posts and come to our website to read articles and book reviews.
The United States Association for Body Psychotherapy welcomed SPT Magazine into its fold in 2024. They will offer a fresh perspective, and SPT magazine will continue to thrive with their input.
To visit the magazine website, please click here
Somatic Psychotherapy Today: 2011-2026
SPT Magazine was founded on the belief in the power of personal presence in a community of acceptance. What we do individually impacts our world – its health and well-being – and all living entities that dwell here. Voicing our truth is paramount, and finding the right venue to speak is just as critical. SPT offered writers and readers the space to connect and share thoughts, ideas, and opinions about what matters in the work we do to further our field of study and practice.
Please read more to access our archives.
Well-Being at the End of Life
Framing death as a social event and a human experience, not an exclusively medical event, Abel and Kellehear argue that if dying affects families, friends, neighbors, workplaces, faith communities, and civic institutions, then end-of-life care cannot belong only to professionals.
The authors examine what has been happening in palliative care and invite readers to imagine how it could improve. They identify six shifts that move end-of-life care away from an exclusively institutional, professional model and toward active participation and mutual responsibility (pg. 21). In their terms, this means civic participation at the end of life, as well as a more equitable level of care across diagnoses and a broader range of nonmedical support in a time of diminishing resources (pg. 46).
Their proposed answer is a model that integrates four components: specialist palliative care, generalist palliative care, compassionate communities, and civic end-of-life care (65). Together, these categories widen the field from professional service delivery to shared social responsibility.
[…]
Like many of my friends and colleagues, I have explored meditation in various forms—guided practices, mindfulness, mantra based techniques, and sound meditation. I understand the research supporting meditation’s benefits. And friends who have practiced for decades, many steeped in Buddhist traditions, speak about meditation as life changing. But my need to know often left me overwhelmed by the broader spiritual landscape—by complex lineages, historical frameworks, and, at times, teachers whose authority felt questionable. Nothing resonated in daily practice. Then, unexpectedly, an invitation arrived to review Elaine N. Aron’s new book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens. […]
Listening to the Living Body: What Gendlin’s Focusing Approach Contributes to Somatic Psychotherapy
By Charlotte Howorth
Somatic psychotherapy has taught us to listen to the body. Gendlin invites us to take relational embodiment one step further and listen not only for what the body is expressing, feeling, or remembering, but for a vague yet palpable felt sense of what is emerging and not yet fully known. The body, he notes, does not first exist and then enter relationship; living is interaction from the beginning.
Therapist and client remain distinct, yet each is continually forming within the interaction they are living. This interaction is generative: something new emerges that neither could have produced alone, changing what can happen next. Perhaps this is the deeper implication of listening to the living body. We are not only listening for what is already there. We are participating in a living interactive process through which what comes next can become possible.
[…]
The Poetics of Unnamed Emotion: From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to Core Strokes
Every language begins as breath. Before alphabets, before the first word was carved into clay or inked onto paper, someone exhaled a sound trembling with meaning — a cry, a hum, a sigh— each born from a body touched by life. The ancients believed that to name a thing was to call its spirit into form, and that to speak a word was to shape the invisible so that another could feel it.
Yet countless experiences pass through us nameless. They brush the edge of consciousness like wind through tall grass — felt but not yet formed. A sudden ache when a stranger smiles. The vertigo of being seen. The small grief of beauty already too perfect to hold. These are the “obscure sorrows,” the half-tones of being that John Koenig gathered into his improbable lexicon.
Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is less a book than a listening instrument.
[…]
Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free
By Nancy Eichhorn, Ph.D.
My inner editor smiles (envision a Cheshire Cat grin) when reviewing a new book, and its layout includes all the necessary guideposts. Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free by Terri Cole is a well-written, well-thought-out, and laid-out guide for people wanting to address their lack of boundaries and learn how to create healthy ones to benefit their lives. The text is designed to inform, educate, and support readers as they confront what is and consider what may be. The book is divided into two parts: Connecting the dots […]
The ‘New’ Collected Papers of Biodynamic Psychology, Massage & Psychotherapy: 2022
Edited by Courtenay Young
Gerda Boyesen’s ‘genius’ shines through her writings as well as writings by various family members, colleagues and trainers, students, practitioners and even clients and supervisees. According to Young, “As one reads these articles, one gets a sense of the breadth and depth of Gerda Boyesen’s Biodynamic works, and gets occasional glimpses of its brilliant heights, as well. Nearly all aspects of theoretical, clinical, and practical work in this field are richly examined.” He explained that the book was produced in […]
