Living Counselling - Somatic therapy

15/04/2025

Dear network!

🚨 Final call for the beta-launch of The Secure Base Lab Community — our new online therapeutic community for healing attachment wounds and deepening secure relating!

✨ Are you (or someone you care about) dealing with attachment-related issues?
✨ Have you already explored attachment theory and are now seeking to engage in attachment work
✨ Would you feel supported from joining a warm and caring community of 50–60 people on the same path?

Then this could be something for you!

We officially open on April 22, and we have some spots left for the beta launch 3-month membership for only $29!!
Inside, we’ll explore things like:

💠 Attachment Awareness
💠 The difference between understanding attachment and experiencing secure relating
💠 The power of group attachment and peer support
💠 The wisdom and science of secure relating.

You’ll be supported by experienced psychologists, facilitators, therapists, and a beautiful group of people committed to attachment repair, growth, care, and presence.

🌀 If you're curious, drop an “interested” in the comments or send me a DM.
🌀 Know someone this would be perfect for? Please share it with them.

We're co-creating what I hope will become one of the most meaningful spaces for attachment healing, secure relating, and community-based attachment work.

With love
Ivan and The Secure Base Lab🙏🏼☀️

15/09/2024

BOUNDARIES IN TRAUMA WORK (AND IN LIFE)

If we get traumatized through one or more major disruptions in our lives, we often lose our sense of boundaries. That’s partly what is traumatic about it. Boundaries are not just an imaginary membrane cocooning us. It’s best described as a personal container with its source in our center filling us up from inside and out. When the personal container is clearly felt there is no doubt what our personal space feels like. It feels like being united, whole.

Our felt sense of personal space supports us in acknowledging our limitations. Which means we can notice our limit in how much we can take on or take in. This is our boundary keeping ourselves together. For that reason, limitations and boundaries are interconnected.

Many of us have no or only little experience of feeling united for several reasons. In order to naturally sense our personal space, we need to have been ‘taught’ by our care takers as in experiencing them sensing their own personal space and relating to us – and life in general.

During our life course our personal space will undoubtably be trespassed or violated multiple times. When this happens without having anyone safe by our side, we automatically draw our field close to ourselves to protect us from further hurt or we expand our field – in both cases we become limitless. If disruptions repeat themselves over a longer period of time, we risk not being able to recover and to reestablish our personal space. Life moves on and we learn to live with a psychological disruption – and as time goes by, we forget the sense of personal space we once had. We find a way to carry on despite what happened to us. And good for us, as without this mechanism we would have risked dying or going insane.

In reestablishing our felt personal space and regaining our sense of limits, we can gradually begin to recover from the hurt that is still present in our lives. Without it we can’t stand the pressure of traumatic memories without dissociating or worse, re-traumatizing. We need to cultivate enough resilience to stand the internal pressure of change. For that reason, it’s crucial to work on establishing a felt sense of personal space.

In somatic trauma therapy the body is supported in the process of being re-built respectfully and compassionately in a safe setting. In the therapeutical process we can learn what we did not learn when we needed it most.

15/09/2024

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF WHILE TAKING CARE OF OTHERS !

A 3 day workshop 1 - 3 NOVEMBER - on Sydfyn, Denmark
with Bodynamic Analyst Lene Wisbom & trauma therapist Ivan Raphael.

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- Do you often feel drained in your professional or personal caring work?
- Do you desire a deeper understanding and hands on techniques to sustain your connection to yourself in interaction with others?

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With the understanding that deep structures in our body determines our ability to stay connected to ourselves while taking care of others without being drained enables change.
Based on the holistic understanding of body psychotherapy, we work with the psychological aspects of our muscular system. In this workshop you will learn how to establish the necessary changes for yourself and activate internal personal resources.
During these 3 days we will talk about the skills: energy management, grounding and boundaries - and how to take things less personal as well as learning to activate specific muscle groups through movement.
The muscle groups that support self-care skills in interactions are found in the abdomen, chest, neck and legs, enabling us to stand our ground and keep our boundaries in order to avoid compassion fatigue.

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In this workshop you will learn about:

- What specific challenges arises in you when you take care of someone
- What story are you possibly telling yourself of what you can or cannot do
- How to build and maintain interpersonal resilience
- How to stay connected to someone with a need and maintain healthy boundaries

Warmly welcome🍀
Lene and Ivan

For further information and practicalities:

Psykoterapi, supervision, grupper & Neurofeedback træning

08/08/2024

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF WHILE TAKING CARE OF OTHERS !☀️

NB. NEW DATE AND VENUE!

A 3 day workshop 1 - 3 NOVEMBER - on Sydfyn, Denmark
with Bodynamic Analyst Lene Wisbom & trauma therapist Ivan Raphael

---

- Do you often feel drained in your professional or personal caring work?
- Do you desire a deeper understanding and hands on techniques to sustain your connection to yourself in interaction with others?

---

With the understanding that deep structures in our body determines our ability to stay connected to ourselves while taking care of others without being drained enables change.
Based on the holistic understanding of body psychotherapy, we work with the psychological aspects of our muscular system. In this workshop you will learn how to establish the necessary changes for yourself and activate internal personal resources.
During these 3 days we will talk about the skills: energy management, grounding and boundaries - and how to take things less personal as well as learning to activate specific muscle groups through movement.

The muscle groups that support self-care skills in interactions are found in the abdomen, chest, neck and legs, enabling us to stand our ground and keep our boundaries in order to avoid compassion fatigue.

---

In this workshop you will learn about:

- What specific challenges arises in you when you take care of someone
- What story are you possibly telling yourself of what you can or cannot do
- How to build and maintain interpersonal resilience
- How to stay connected to someone with a need and maintain healthy boundaries

Warmly welcome🍀
For further information and practicalities:
www.wisbom.dk or
www.livingcounselling.dk

Ivan Raphael certificeret traumeterapeut og familiebehandler Bestil tid terapi med kroppen som anker Jeg tilbyder traumeterapi og vejledning, hvor kroppen inddrages i terapien for at skabe en større følelse af helhed. Arbejdet med kroppen, somatisk terapi, er terapeutiske samtaler sammen med let u...

07/08/2024

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” - e.e. Cummings

24/07/2024

---CLINIC OPEN FOR BOOKINGS---

I hope you are enjoying the scandinavian summer🌞

From the 5th of August I open up the clinic again for trauma therapy and personal counselling. New aspect on offer is pain management (A common ingrediens in trauma work that I am now offering separately)

If you haven't met me before and curious about my work, send me a msg or mail. Or book me for a discovery call.

Sessions in Swedish or English

Warmly welcome!

Ivan Raphael certificeret traumeterapeut og familiebehandler Bestil tid terapi med kroppen som anker Jeg tilbyder traumeterapi og vejledning, hvor kroppen inddrages i terapien for at skabe en større følelse af helhed. Arbejdet med kroppen, somatisk terapi, er terapeutiske samtaler sammen med let u...

02/07/2024

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF WHILE TAKING CARE OF OTHERS!

A 3 day workshop 30 AUGUST – 1 SEPTEMBER - in Copenhagen
with Bodynamic Analyst Lene Wisbom & trauma therapist Ivan Raphael

- Do you often feel drained in your professional or personal caring work?
- Do you desire a deeper understanding and hands on techniques to sustain your connection to yourself in interaction with others?

With the understanding that deep structures in our body determines our ability to stay connected to ourselves while taking care of others without being drained enables change.

Based on the holistic understanding of body psychotherapy, we work with the psychological aspects of our muscular system. In this workshop you will learn how to establish the necessary changes for yourself and activate internal personal resources.

During these 3 days we will talk about the skills: energy management, grounding and boundaries - and how to take things less personal as well as learning to activate specific muscle groups through movement.
The muscle groups that support self-care skills in interactions are found in the abdomen, chest, neck and legs, enabling us to stand our ground and keep our boundaries in order to avoid compassion fatigue.

In this workshop you will learn about:

- What specific challenges arises in you when you take care of someone
- What story are you possibly telling yourself of what you can or cannot do
- How to build and maintain interpersonal resilience
- How to stay connected to someone with a need and maintain healthy boundaries

Warmly welcome😊

For further information and practicalities:

www.wisbom.dk or
www.livingcounselling.dk

Ivan Raphael certificeret traumeterapeut og familiebehandler Bestil tid terapi med kroppen som anker Jeg tilbyder traumeterapi og vejledning, hvor kroppen inddrages i terapien for at skabe en større følelse af helhed. Arbejdet med kroppen, somatisk terapi, er terapeutiske samtaler sammen med let u...

19/05/2024

🌞Workshop in Fyn, Denmark, maj 31 to June 2 🌞

The state of belonging to both oneself and the other
We rarely think about it or take into consideration that in order to make contact with another we need to have a felt sense of connectedness to ourselves.

Sensing ourselves in interacting with another or to the world around us is crucial for the ability to establish and maintain healthy and lasting relationships. Relationships are the core of our lives.

In this deepening workshop we will pass on the experiences of a long tradition of body psychotherapy of how our bodies and specific muscles are deeply linked to the ability to create togetherness without losing sense of our own felt dignity in the contact. Dignity is inextricably linked to how we make contact.
Dignity is gradually developed through early stages of our psychological development. We grow from being fully dependent on to experiencing a stronger sense of independence into interdependence.

That’s where we can experience the ‘WE’ which can be described as two dependent and independent beings both experiencing togetherness and belonging while maintaining contact to one’s own worth and values.

You are welcome!🙂

Link to event:

with Bodynamic Analyst Lene Wisbom + Ivan Raphael A deepening into using the functional anatomy as a ther

03/04/2024

⭐️LIFE IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS⭐️

Our resources in how to build, maintain and repair relationships originate from how we were met, or not met, in our early life by our care givers. These resources can be to our disposal if we are lucky enough to have received the contact and bonding, we needed.
Some of us didn’t get these resources and we end up struggling with our near and dear ones later on.
During these 3 days we will explore muscles groups which directly corresponds to our ability to stay connected to ourselves in the contact with others.
We can learn what once was forgotten and get to experience a greater richness in our relationships.

You are most welcome!🙏

Link to event: 👉http://wisbom.dk/?page_id=290

12/03/2024

LIFE IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

Our resources in how to build, maintain and repair relationships originate from how we were met, or not met, in our early life by our care givers. These resources can be to our disposal if we are lucky enough to have received the contact and bonding, we needed.
Some of us didn’t get these resources and we end up struggling with our near and dear ones later on.
During these 3 days we will explore muscles groups which directly corresponds to our ability to stay connected to ourselves in the contact with others.
We can learn what once was forgotten and get to experience a greater richness in our relationships.

You are welcome!🙏

Link to event:

23/02/2024

WE BREAK WITHOUT SUPPORT

It's storming hard. Trees sway violently from side to side. Last summer, a small clearing was created in the forest below my balcony and some slender trees were left standing, which would otherwise have survived the strong gusts of wind. But today they snapped in half. They no longer had the support they once had. It's the same with us humans. We break easily without support around us.

Some of us break early in life if we don't have enough support around us. We quickly learn to hide the pain and not to feel it. A lonely journey begins. We take loneliness with us into our close relationships. We opt out of the support we need, not because we want to, but because that's what we've been taught. We often end up fighting the world - and ourselves.

We can learn to be supported by the body's ability to show us other ways when we listen to it. And we can learn to be cared for by the loved ones around us. Change happens when we begin to go against a lifelong belief, a core decision that was once rooted in early neglect.

Some of us need to learn what we missed out on earlier - that we need each other for support and to find the valuable support within ourselves that is available in our bodies.
Trauma occurs when we go through painful and life-threatening events without being held by caring hands. But it's not too late to be held. We can teach our bodies to accommodate what once happened, and we can learn to open up to our loved ones and no longer feel alone in ourselves. We discover that we can grow through our trauma.

Somatic Trauma Therapy is about getting the much-needed support during transitions and difficult periods of life. Through the sessions, we can experience access to dormant resources and develop skills to stand stronger in difficult situations and overcome inner pain. We begin to live instead of survive.

www.livingcounselling.dk

20/02/2024

Attachment work in Somatic Therapy

In my work as a somatic trauma therapist attachment issues seem to be the very core of the therapeutical work. Life is all about relationships – and at its base, the relationship to ourselves.
Therefore, it’s my passion to practice, research and provide support into creating healthy relationships.

Our resources in how to build, maintain and repair relationships originate from how we were met, or not met, in our early life by our care givers. These resources can be to our disposal if we are lucky enough to have received the contact and bonding, we needed.
Some of us didn’t get these resources and end up struggling with our near and dear ones later on.

The work I do is about creating the space where we can get access to the underdeveloped skills of bonding, connectedness and to learn how to move into contact with a well-balanced autonomy.

In body psychotherapy these psychological resources in attachment are related to a set of muscles that represent and directly correspond to these resources.
For that reason, the sessions are therapeutical conversations mixed with light physical exercises mindfully performed with the themes of attachment in mind and heart for changes and development to take place.

www.livingcounselling.dk