Ebooks

 

Healing Touch
Honoring the Somatic Dimension of Psyche (2012)
PDF format, 84 pages, $20 USD

There is a taboo about using touch as an intervention in psychotherapy.
In Healing Touch, I propose that this taboo is largely due to a lack of somatic understanding and to what I call “touch illiteracy.” The fear of touching clients expressed by professionals in the mental health field has obscured the need for specialized training that can educate therapists who want to include touch in their repertoire of interventions.

The exploration of touch undertaken in this ebook is based on the premise that splitting the causes of disease into either somatic or psychological origins leads to an impasse. Following the current developments in psychobiology, the body is seen as an environment for energy transduction with an uninterrupted chain of communication moving in reciprocal loops bottom-up from nonverbal micro-levels of the body and from top-down verbal, cognitive awareness.

Touch is explored as a tool that supports the integration in awareness of issues that lie encoded in nonverbal body memory. I focus on nurturing touch as intrinsic to all other forms of healing touch and present three session examples of the use of touch in the therapeutic relationship.

Touch & Sexual Healing
Touch as the Primary Element of Sexual and Erotic Expression (2007)
PDF format, 36 pages, $10 USD

In Touch and Sexual Healing, I address sensual and erotic touch experiences from several perspectives. I explore the personal and intimate sensual and erotic dimension of our human relational experience. First, I look at the neural basis of the sense of touch by reviewing the key tactile receptors in the skin, muscles, and deep tissues and their effect on the brain. With these sensory principles in mind, I present touch exercises that address the development of palpation awareness. Then, I look at how the power of intention and the importance of focused attention help us enter the present moment of sexual relationship and fine tune the psychological experience of touching a partner erotically. Finally, I consider the important aspect of using touch to heal the wounds that abuse and neglect leave in our lives.

I end on an inspirational note with the description of a healthy erotic touch exchange seen as a three phase unfolding of attunement, resonance, and integration.


 

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Free Articles

Working with Connection in Healing Developmental Trauma
Hakomi Journal (2013)

An introduction to the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), an approach that uses somatic mindfulness to re-regulate the nervous system and resolve distortions of identity such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment that are the outcome of developmental and relational trauma. While not ignoring a person’s past history, NARM emphasizes working in the present moment to focus on clients’ strengths, resources, and resiliency in order to integrate the experience of connection that sustains our physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.
>>Full Article

The Changing Face of Age
The USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, Volume 8:1 (2009)

This article chronicles the author’s coming to terms with aging and her search for inspirational literature to help define a time of life whose powers are too often devalued. In such luminaries as Betty Friedan, James Hillman, and Robert Johnson, among others, she finds the unheralded pioneers who are redefining age as a powerful stage of life during which we complete the task of birthing the Self.
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The Language of Neuroception and the Bodily Self
Hakomi Forum, Issue 18, pp.37-39 (2007)

This article explores the importance of language especially as it relates to the micro-sensory experience of the body for which vocabulary is often inadequate. It outlines the role of attuned caregivers whose task it is to name reality for the developing child and argues the importance of finding adequate cortical representation for the felt sense.
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Part III: Neuroscience in Somatic Psychotherapy
The USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, Volume 5:2, pp.43-60 (2006)

This third section considers the emergent connections between neuroscience and somatic psychotherapy. Does neuroscience support or challenge existing somatic approaches? Can neurobiological knowledge lead to new guidelines for crafting therapeutic interventions and suggest refinements and modifications for existing frameworks? Intuitively, one would have to answer a resounding YES! Indeed, there is much to be excited about.
>>Full Article


 

Part II: Affective and Developmental Neuroscience
The USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, Volume 4:1, pp.28-50 (2005)

This second of a three part digest looks at the theories of Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio, at Allan Schore’s regulation theory, and Daniel Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology.
>>Full Article

Part I: A Neuroscience Digest [with Primer of Terms and Concepts]
The USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, Volume 3:2, pp.4-29 (2004)

This first of a three part digest approaches the now extensive neuroscience literature with an educational objective and an eye to its relevance to our somatic psychotherapeutic work. These reviews are intended to serve as an orientation to the broad field of neuroscience and as a point of reference to one of its core integrative questions: What is the self in neurobiological terms?
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Understanding the Mind-Brain and Nervous System

From Felt-Sense to Felt-Self
Psychologist-Psychoanalyst, Volume XXIII, Fall 2003
Reprinted in the Hakomi Forum, Issue 16-17 (2006)

Whatever the nature of the clinical issues, there is now solid evidence for the critical role of touch in human psychology and biology. Recent neurobiological research indicates that critical levels of tactile input of a specific quality and emotional content in early postnatal life are important for normal brain maturation. —From the introduction by Dr. Allan Schore
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Body-Centered Publications Based on the Psychology of
C.G. Jung

The USA Body Psychotherapy Journal, Volume 2:2, pp.60-74 (2003)

This article presents nine body-centered Jungian-based publications addressing four important themes that are in the foreground of body symbolism: 1) the body in archetypal symbolism, 2) the body as intuitive sacred ground, 3) the body as repository for unarticulated feelings, and 4) illness as metaphorical source of insight motivating the individuation journey. Relevant Jungian concepts are explained so that the reader who is unfamiliar with Jungian approaches can become more conversant in Jungian theory.
>>Full Article

Soul Roots
Psychological Perspectives, The Semi-Annual Journal of the C.G. Jung Institute, Issue Twenty-One, pp.130-139 (1989)

A poetic and visual essay which makes the link between the author’s paintings and childhood photographs.
>>Full Article


The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing
by Ernest Lawrence Rossi, PhD
New York: W.W. Norton (1986)


Technical illustrations for the book. I worked with Dr. Rossi to develop
illustrations that conveyed the transduction of awareness between the mind, body, and cellular levels.
>>View Illustrations