Drawing upon the Body's Intelligence: An Introduction to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

In this course, Dr. Pat Ogden, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, explains how clients who have endured trauma and attachment failures have created a somatic narrative to try to defend themselves and be resilient in the face of ongoing trauma and oppression. Dr. Ogden uses the modulation model to explain how to recalibrate a dysregulated nervous system with somatic resources. The paradigm shift required in order to successfully implement sensorimotor psychotherapy is from “talking about” trauma to exploring the habits around which a client’s experience is organised. Embedded relational mindfulness and sensorimotor sequencing are shown to help. Ogden also distinguishes social, attachment-related defences from trauma-related defences, and proximity-seeking actions from defence (avoidance and boundary) actions. She outlines how thriving involves expanding the window of tolerance (of arousal).