Body-Oriented Psychotherapy

Body-oriented psychotherapy can be understood as a form of psychotherapy that takes into account both the psychological and physical aspects of the individual, and encompasses a range of psychotherapeutic methods. This type of treatment is based on the fundamental therapeutic principle that the body and mind form a single entity.

In these therapeutic methods, body awareness is used as a means of uncovering unconscious psychological processes.

The aim of the therapy is to help you reconnect with yourself and, through that, with others. Body-oriented therapy enables you to learn to perceive, recognise and express your needs and boundaries.

Here are a few examples of conditions that are commonly treated in body therapy:

• Pain such as migraines and tension headaches
• Functional disorders of the psychovegetative nervous system, e.g. irritable bowel syndrome
• Stress, burnout, sleep disorders
• Chronic muscle tension resulting from trauma

Psychotherapeutic methods are combined with physical exercises. These range from body awareness exercises to breathing exercises, so that you can learn once again to rely on your body’s natural abilities. This enables you to build a deep, friendly relationship with your body. After all, your body has its own memory and possesses the knowledge to regulate itself effectively in harmony with your mind.

To this end, we make particular use of the following therapeutic methods:

• Mindfulness-based techniques and various relaxation methods
• Breathing therapy technique
• Techniques from Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing 
• Hypnotherapeutic techniques from the field of psychosomatics (based on Milton Erickson)
• The Alexander Technique, Breema Bodywork and Body-Mind Centring

Our body-oriented psychotherapy approach aims to promote self-awareness, uncover unconscious intrapsychic processes and support patients in dealing with them on a physical level.

Body therapy takes place in both one-to-one and group settings.

In this way, patterns acquired over the course of a lifetime – which manifest themselves through thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and impulses to act – are explored through mindfulness and thus brought into conscious awareness. Through experiential spaces in which both touch and words play a part, past experiences that were not fully lived through can be vividly re-experienced in the here and now. This form of psychotherapy plays a particularly important role in the treatment of somatisation disorders.