USABP Spotlight - The Growing Scientific Evidence for Somatic Psychology
Raja Selvam, PhD
Presented by Raja Selvam, PhD
Founder of Integral Somatic Psychotherapy
Description
These days, there is unprecedented interest in somatic interventions among mainstream psychotherapy professionals. In spite of this or perhaps because of it, CE organizations are increasingly withdrawing CEs for somatic approaches they used to approve on a regular basis, without offering clear reasons for the change in policy. Interestingly, mainstream modalities with neither scientific bases nor adequate outcomes research continue to receive CEs under a vague rule that they are used by a large number of mental health professionals.
A number of research findings in cognitive and affective neurosciences in the past twenty-five years have revolutionized our understanding of the central role played by the body in cognition, emotion, and behavior. This body of knowledge offers an adequate modern scientific basis for all body psychotherapy approaches, something that most mainstream psychological approaches lack. In this presentation, we will look at some of these findings, see how they constitute a solid scientific basis for somatic psychology, and explore how they could be used by different somatic psychology modalities to support their scientific validity
The Main Points of This Workshop:
- Recent scientific findings on the important role of the body in cognition, emotion, and behavior
- Recent scientific findings on the neurophysiology of cognition, emotion, and behavior
- Recent scientific findings from the paradigm of embodied emotions
- How these scientific findings together offer a solid scientific basis for all somatic psychology and body psychotherapy modalities
- How these scientific findings can be used by different body psychotherapy and somatic psychology approaches to develop a scientific basis for their methods
Participants will learn:
- Cite two recent important scientific findings on the neurophysiology of cognition, emotion, and behavior
- Cite two recent important scientific findings on the important role of the body in cognition, emotion, and behavior.
- Cite two recent important scientific findings from the paradigm of embodied emotions
- Describe how these recent scientific findings offer a scientific basis for all body psychotherapy and somatic psychology modalities
- Describe how these recent scientific findings offer a scientific basis for one specific body psychotherapy or somatic psychology approach.
Your Instructor
Raja Selvam, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist (California, PSY30233) is a senior trainer in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE) professional trauma trainings and the developer of Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) (www.integralsomaticpsychology.com). ISP is a complementary body and energy-based modality informed by Western and Eastern psychology and the emerging neuroscience of embodied cognition, emotion, and behavior. It’s aim is to improve outcomes and shorten treatment times in all therapies including body-oriented modalities through building a greater capacity for a wider range of emotions. It is taught in over a dozen countries in North and South Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Dr. Selvam’s eclectic approach draws from bodywork systems of Postural Integration, Biodynamic Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Polarity Therapy, body psychotherapy systems of Reichian Therapy, Bioenergetics, Bodynamic Analysis, Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, psychoanalytic schools of Object Relations and Inter-Subjectivity, Somatic Experiencing® (SE™), Affective Neuroscience, Quantum Physics, Yoga, and Advaita Vedanta.