Erik Jarlnaes, is the founder and a trainer at Bodynamic International. He is also the founder of Life Quality and Peak Experience Institute and a member of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy since 1990. 

His nuanced approach to teaching these exercises (not just using them) equips the therapist, in turn, to assist their clients in developing and integrating new resources by anchoring their insights into a deeply embodied experience.

His book, “50 Exercises for Life Quality” is near completion and will be available at the time of the conference. 

WHEN ARE “BODY EXERCISES” TRANSFORMATIVE?

Discover how specific bodily exercises, when taught with nuanced attention to three vital aspects, can be integrated to increase the capacity for resilience in both personal and professional identity during these transformative times. 

This unique approach to facilitating the embodiment of certain movements has ramifications on motoric, emotional, relational and energetic levels and increases the therapist’s and client’s ability to adapt to change as they strengthen existing skills and incorporate new ones. The identity of the once, disempowered client – as someone who can now set boundaries so s/he can be vulnerable and empowered to ask for and take in what s/he wants or reject what s/he doesn’t want – can be deconstructed and reconstructed through the embodied experience of these exercises, leaving the formerly constructed identity behind. 

The embodiment of these movements by the client necessitates that the therapist senses not only when and what movement is needed by the client, but also how to “teach” it to the client so it becomes well-integrated in the client’s daily life. 

Successful embodiment of a movement by a client requires (1) the activation and sensing of the specific muscles and movement, (2) giving words to the emotional tone and the psychological impact of the movement, and (3) reporting how it was to do this movement with the support of the therapist. Because these movements are so deeply sensed and integrated in my being, my somatic intuition “knows” when a particular movement needs to be experienced and practiced by a client so that it becomes truly embodied.  In short, embodiment necessitates deepened presence in both therapist and client.  

This is what I want to demonstrate in this workshop.

François Lewin is a psychotherapist, trainer, supervisor, lecturer. He teaches Biodynamic Psychology in Europe, Latin America and Japan. He is co-founder of the French Biodynamic School (1987) and of the Biodynamic Psychology Centes of Montpellier (1982) and Paris (1995). 

He was a founding member of the EABP, of which he was the treasurer for 6 years, and he organized the Paris Congress in 2008 (EABP and CSI). In his teaching, he intends to convey complex realities in simple words. Deeply convinced of the richness of life, he knows how to transmit confidence and freedom in everyday life. 

THE TRUTH OF THE BODY. WHO AM I REALLY? WHO LIVES DEEP INSIDE ME? WHAT DOES MY SOUL WANT?

Such questions tend to arise, sometimes painfully, especially in the current period when our usual reference points are in constant deconstruction. This is a perfect time to center ourselves in order to look beyond cultural, historical or social references and find the essential wisdom inhabiting the body. It is an amazing field of discovery and fortification, because the body’s memories contain the past, present and future.

This work is a specialty of Biodynamic Psychology, based on the attitude of listening as well as techniques to allow the wisdom of the body to emerge.

This workshop will allow you, through theory, demonstration and experimentation, to access the body’s consciousness and to allow the “primary personality” to unfold in connection with the “healthy core,” two basic concepts of Biodynamic Psychology.

In today’s world, finding one’s inner truth is an absolute necessity.

Lidy Evertsen is a Body Psychotherapist and has had her own practice since 1993.
The modalities she has trained in are Unitive Psychotherapy, Bodynamic Analysis and Bodynamic Trauma Therapy. Her work is also informed by Polyvagal theory. 
Lidy specialised in working with dissociation, dissociative phenomena and DID. She is a trauma therapist, a trainer, supervisor and therapist for Body Psychotherapy students and practitioners. Lidy was EABP president from 2010-2016 and she is active in the development of the profession of Body Psychotherapy in EABP Think Tank and Continuous Congress Content Committee.
Lidy’s first professional life was that of a professional classical singer and voice pedagogue.

THE SOUND OF ME

We, human beings, all go through transformative episodes, many times during our lives.
The transitions arise from developmental periods, as well as from crisis and trauma.
We identify with what we could call a collection of layers as a result of these processes. They influence how we experience events in our daily lives. These layers, which have their own characteristics, are relating to areas in the body and they have a voice, their own sound.

In this workshop we will use our curiosity to discover how some of these layers sound and how they might interact. We will work with voice, imagery, embodiment and the concept of memory systems.

Marianne Bentzen is a somatic psychotherapist and author. She has taught and supervised mental health professionals internationally since 1982. She has presented at more than forty national and international conferences and written numerous articles and books, published in both English and German. In the early 1990s, with her friend and colleague, psychologist Susan Hart, she developed the theory of Neuroaffective Developmental Psychology. NADP bridges personality development, brain development, trauma theory and evolutionary psychology as well as emotional training programs and assessment tools. A long-time meditator, she connects all this with meditative practice and wisdom research as well as emotional intelligence and personal development. 

Books in English and German: “The Neuroaffective Picture Book”; “The Neuroaffective Picture Book 2”, “Neuroaffective meditation”; “The Neuroaffective Picture Book 3 (autumn of 2023)”.

WISDOM AND THE BODY

Our body is our deep-rooted connection to the world – and also, the constant seat of our wisdom and insight. Components of wisdom include empathy, compassion, personal ethics, altruism, emotional stability, self-understanding and a tolerance for others’ values – things that tend to grow with age, but that can be cultivated from early childhood. 

All of these skills begin in the wordless spaces of the body and in our own ability to hold them in our awareness – but without being identified with them. This workshop will start with a bit of theory, but most of it will be experiential, as we work with awareness, interaction exercises, balancing beautiful and difficult memories, meditative process and dialogues.

Marilena Komi is a psychotherapist and ECP holder. She has a B.A. in Phil-Edu-Psychology and has completed a Master’s level training in Gestalt Therapy at the European Gestalt Institute – EINA. She is an accredited supervisor at Genovino Ferri-SIAR and a trauma therapist. She is a member of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy and an Honorary President of the “Wilhelm Reich Center” in Athens. Author of the book “The Group, the Body and Psychotherapy” (co-author Clorinda Lubrano-Kotoula, Thimari ed.).

 Despina Markaki is a psychotherapist and ECP holder. She has a B.A. in psychology and has completed a Master’s level training in Gestalt Therapy at the European Gestalt Institute – EINA. She is an accredited supervisor at Genovino Ferri-SIAR and a former President of the Greek Association for Body Psychotherapy (PESOPS/GABP). She is a member of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy and a Director of Studies of the “Wilhelm Reich Center” in Athens – E.I.N.A. Hellenic Institute for Vegetotherapy and Character Analysis.

CHARACTER TRAITS AND RESILIENCE

This experiential workshop will focus on the individual character and the concept of Resilience. Character is a source of identity and stability, but at the same time a source of restriction. The deconstruction of a character traits and the resulting crisis, must lead to a major degree of resilience which is necessary for our journey in a continuously changing and chaotic world.

Prof. Maurizio Stupiggia,  PhD, Department of Clinical Sciences – Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano.Body-psychotherapist.

He has been working for many years as a Body-Psychotherapist, with individuals and groups. He worked for several years for Italian Ministry of Health, in assisting the integration of immigrants.  For the last 10 years he has worked as a supervisor for therapists and educators who are responsible for immigrant women from Africa who are victims of the varius traumatic abuses in the wars. 

He is the founder, with Jerome Liss, of the International School of Biosystemic.

FROM DISSOCIATION TO MULTIPLICITY; FROM FRAGMENTATION TO INTERNAL COHERENCE

Extreme interactive speed, disintegration of the social/relational fabric, the “subtle normal dissociative state” given by internet use, and the loss of transitional “safe places” that protect identity, are all conditions that promote the dissociative tendency.

Mind/body dissociation becomes evident with the phenomenon of Somatoform Dissociations.

From a phenomenological point of view, we can say that the high speed of interaction that accelerates processes in general, decreases the internal passage time between emotional states. It “forces” us into rapid, and sometimes sudden, changes that prevent a perception of the self as a coherent and homogeneous unity: we can lose the sense of being real and the perception of having a secret core, the basis for living intimate experiences.

We are to transform this dissociated and incoherent multiplication of states of the Self, into a rich and creative multiplicity – the source of the feeling of feeling alive.

Participants will have the opportunity to identify, represent and befriend the parts of Self that will gradually emerge through expressive modalities, moving from internal conflict and disintegration to empathic and affective re-connection, in a kind of new collective orchestra.  Some possible ways of working with patients will then be shown to stimulate connection with the parts of Self.

Olaf Trapp is a certified bioenergetic therapist (CBT), based in Athens, Greece and a member of SGFBA Germany. He trained in the North German Institute for B.A. (NIBA) 1994-98. He was a NIBA Board member 2008-2016 and led the European Federation for B.A. (EFBA-P) from 2011-2020 as President and Vice President. He started his career in the field of body work 40 years ago, first as a massage therapist and teacher for Acupressure. He has led therapeutic workshops in USA, Chile, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Greece. He has been a teacher at IPD school for personal development, Zagreb since 2017 and also has a private practice with an emphasis on early developmental trauma, structural disorders and psychosomatics.

GROUNDING THROUGH THE OTHER

When we are born, we are not able to self-regulate; we learn that to the extent our primary caretaker teaches us through co-regulation. If this process is inconsistent, a stable, coherent self cannot develop. As a result, we feel ashamed and experience a deep sense of being alone. The related fear and emotional pain is often too strong to even realize, and states of freeze or collapse became “normal“. These unbearable experiences are embodied as visceral, fascial and muscular contractions. 

Our window of tolerance expands when the “safe other“(organism) is on our side, resonating with our fear, pain, rage. The therapist’s co-regulating organism functions as an extension of the client’s (bodily) containment to handle difficult emotions.

The character of this workshop is predominantly self-experiential. I will convey briefly my personal diagnostic system of early developmental trauma and present different co-regulating interventions.

Prof. Zaharina Savova MD, is a psychotherapist, a teacher and author. She is a member and teacher of the Public Health Faculty of Sofia Medical University as well as head of Filaretova Medical College. She holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology and public health. 

She has also completed postgraduate specializations in Health economics and management, neo-reichian body psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy. She is a member of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy, Bulgarian Neo-reichian Association and Bulgarian Psychotherapy Association. She is also a member of the board of directors and a teacher at the Bulgarian Institute for Neo-reichian Body Psychotherapy.
Web site: www.z-savova.com

THE 5 MOVEMENTS THERAPY

This workshop will introduce the participants то the “Therapy of the 5 movements”.  This is a Neo-reichian analytical body psychotherapy approach.

Each character structure, based on evolutive traumas, is related to a specific behavioral model-movement. Schizoid – planning, oral – submission, sadomasochistic – aggression, psychopathic – seduction, rigid – reality check. Each specific movement gets blocked, depending on the character structure and those blockages are imprinted in our bodies.

The aim of the ‘Therapy of the five movements’ is to unblock the body and provide an opportunity to increase the quality of life and achieve higher levels of personal integrity and development.

The workshop will be based on interactive experience of the specific body work with the 5 movements. It is an emotional work that gives access to the unconscious content that could be analyzed in the therapeutic process.

Rubens Kignel has a PhD from the University of Bologna, Italy. He is a psychotherapist, an international trainer for Biodynamic Psychology and Biosystemic and a guest teacher in University of São Paulo. He teaches and trains his own methods in several different countries, including Brazil, Europe, Japan, South America and North America. Along with Maurizio Stupiggia he co-founded The Bio-Integral Institute of Body Psychotherapy in Tokyo.

IS IDENTITY ALWAYS IN TRANSFORMATION?

Identification should not be confused with desire, since identification is everything that constructs being and object is everything that one would wish to have and not to be.

Is there an “I” without the other and without the community?

Is there only one “I”?

The culture of identity has progressively taken the place of the culture of narcissism, and in this fluid world of ours, it has become one of the responses to the weakening of the collective ideal.

What do I, my body, the I and the body of the other have to do with it?

Is there a new “I” coming to life?

What is the most important issue for human beings?

In this workshop we will explore the relationship between I and the Other, One’s body and the Other’s body,  how we can preserve and integrate diversity in human relations.

Will Davis is an American psychotherapist with over 45 years of experience. He has a psychology degree and was trained in neo-reichian Radix work, encounter groups, Gestalt Therapy and in various alternative healing methods. In the past 40 years, he has been practicing and training throughout Europe and before that worked in North America and Japan.

He developed the gentle connective tissue-based somatic release technique of Points & Positions and combines that with a unique synthesis of verbal therapy. He offers trainings in Functional Analysis Body Oriented Psychotherapy, based on the self-organizing and creative movement of the instroke of the pulsation. His book, articles and publications in professional journals are available in the “Articles” section of his website: www.functionalanalysis.org. Various articles are available in English, German, Italian, French, Albanian and Bulgarian. 

He is a member of: the International Advisory Board for the Journal of Energy and Character, the Scientific Committee of the Italian Society of Psychologists and Psychiatrists, the European Association of Body Psychotherapy, the European Association of Psychotherapy and the Editorial Board of International Journal of Body Psychotherapy. He has also taught as a guest trainer.

TRANSFORMING IDENTITY: CONSTRUCTION, DECONSTRUCTION, RECONSTRUCTION BY TOUCH THE ROLE OF CONNECTIVE TISSUE IN DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR

The connective tissue, not the muscles, holds the patient’s history and the characterological defenses within the body, creating its structure and determining the patient’s psychic, emotional and physical behaviors. Every system’s behavior is created by its structure; change the structure, and new behaviors emerge. Helping the patient to safely deconstruct and then reconstruct, is possible using the non-invasive touch of Points&Positions to activate connective tissue’s ability to reconstruct itself by touching in the correct manner.

In this experiential workshop, I will first explain recent neurological and anatomical research on connective tissue and the Points&Positions technique that works with and not on contracted tissue. A unique aspect of this method is that it is not the action of the practitioner that brings about changes. After some demonstrations, you will practice the P&P method, which is easily adaptable to all body-oriented psychotherapies, in dyads both learning about and experiencing the transformative powers of connective tissue’s plasticity; its ability to change its structure by adapting to changing conditions.