Somatic Psychotherapy Today

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Somatic Psychotherapy Today

Somatic Psychotherapy is an embodied experience that arises in the moment between people co-creating a dynamic dyadic energetic exchange.

SPT Magazine is a community-driven publication of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy Somatic Psychotherapy Today offers a collection of articles and insights written to explore the relational realities in body psychotherapy practices. The editor culls cutting edge theories and modalities in the somatic sciences to share with a worldwide audience while also providing a forum for sharing news and advances in clinical practice, research, resources, and policy. Information about professional activities and opportunities in the field of body psychotherapy are offered as well. SPT was founded on the belief of the power of personal presence in a community of acceptance. What we do individually has a collective impact on our world –its health and wellbeing—and on all living entities that dwell here. Voicing our truth is paramount and finding the right venue to speak is just as critical. SPT offers writers and readers the space to connect, to share thoughts, ideas, and opinions about what matters in the work we do to further our field of study and practice. While this publication cannot capture everything related to the immense field of psychotherapy and body-centered practices, we strive to provide a venue for our readers (be it therapists, students, researchers, folks in waiting rooms) to experience different perspectives in a light and lively manner—we call it, educational entertainment. SPT is an independent international publication that is validated by numerous professional organizations including the EABP, the USABP, and APPPAH as well as associations representing various modalities in the fields of body psychotherapy, somatic psychology, and prenatal and perinatal psychology.

03/05/2026

Tomorrow is the day you can learn from Ish*ta! Register Now! https://usabp.org/event-6565255

After completing this session, participants will be able to:

~ Analyze the psychological and physiological impact of shifting attention from individual identity ("I") to collective interdependence ("Us").

~ Identify defense patterns and behaviors that either facilitate or sever a culture of mutuality.

~ Develop practical strategies to turn social networks into communities with intention.

And so much more!

> This event will be recorded and available for members and non-members who register for this event. This course will not include CEs.

03/04/2026

Participants will learn to:

~ Recognize the mammalian drive for connection and how the "epidemic of loneliness" affects the mind-body-environment continuum.

~ Apply ancestral wisdom and storytelling as tools to reclaim a sense of belonging and bridge the gap between disconnection and community.

~ Cultivate psychological safety within networks to enhance mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

And so much more!

> This event will be recorded and available for members and non-members who register for this event. This course will not include CEs.

Register Now! https://usabp.org/event-6565255

03/02/2026

Meet our speaker for our first Authentic Conversations Speaker Series:

Authentic Conversations: Inclusion, Power, and the Practice of Belonging is a USABP community outreach dialogue series for practitioners committed to meaningful inclusion within our field.

Join Ish*ta Sharma on March 6, 10 - 11:30 AM PST - ONLINE & Recorded for "How are we in together? Relationscapes for healing our social nervous system"

Register Here: https://usabp.org/event-6565255

02/26/2026

Why we aren’t showing up, and how we can...!

✨ RELATIONSCAPES - healing our social nervous system. JOIN US March 6, 10am PST , hosted by w/speaker Ish*ta Sharma founder of

01/26/2026

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Steph McIsaac's review of Living Toward Justice: A Time Capsule.

Steph (PhD) is a Senior Writing Consultant at CUNY Graduate Center. His ability to read, synthesize, and shape an 'academic' review with a poetic flow created an informative and pleasurable read. He notes:

"Living Toward Justice is an archive of aliveness. From ordinary practices and dream-like reflections to transformative longings and wild imaginations of a more just world, the book’s contributors share verbatim reflections on the embodied ways they live toward social justice in their everyday lives.

The book emerged from the Living Justice Project, a global ethnographic initiative carried out in 2022 and coordinated by Sonya Pritzker, an anthropologist and somatic practitioner. The collaborative project brought together more than fifty practitioners working at the intersections of embodiment, healing, and social justice (all of whom are named as co-authors). Pritzker and the collective worked collaboratively to produce an archive of collective memory: a curated collection of reflections, observations, images, practices, dreams, poetry, and inquiries. Rather than writing a how-to guide offering new solutions or a study demonstrating the outcomes of embodied social justice approaches, Pritzker frames the book as a shared time capsule of individual practitioner entries on the embodied ways they were living toward justice at a specific historical juncture.

I deeply appreciated how Living Toward Justice asks the reader to accompany practitioners in process, centering, unfolding and emergence, responsiveness, and attunement. In a world that focuses on outcomes as a measure of the worth or effectiveness of somatic practices, the book actively resists this tendency by dwelling in the iterative, messy, challenging, and affirming process of living from the present moment with deep longing for transformative futures. Living Toward Justice is a book to read slowly, return to often, and engage with somatically. You may find, as I did, deep inspiration, much-needed reminders of the radical possibilities of embodied practice, and fierce accompaniment in the process."

To read his complete review, please visit our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday

01/12/2026

Attunement is the envelope that makes exploration with safety, trust, curiosity, openness, spontaneity, compassion, play, humor, imagination, and connection possible.
Join in for this free event. Invite colleagues and friends.

01/07/2026

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Maria Strömberg’s newest article, The Biology of Trust – and Beyond: A deepened perspective on presence, perception, and safety. In this article, she examines safety not in terms of external conditions but in terms of how it feels. She offers “an understanding of safety that is not only biological, but lived: where perception, the body and conscious seeing come together in the experience of trust.”

In earlier writings, she described a transdisciplinary model, Conscious ANS Navigation, that integrates neurobiology, perception, and existential presence (Strömberg, 2025). In this new article, she further develops that perspective by focusing on how trust grows through the body’s relationship to perception and the environment, and on why we do not have to create safety from scratch so much as reconnect to it.

“Rather than viewing the ventral state as a passive 'calm mode,' Conscious ANS Navigation characterizes it as a living gateway in which both sympathetic activation and parasympathetic rest can coexist. The key is self-bearing presence – the capacity to allow feelings, sensations, and thoughts to move through the body while some part of us can observe and hold them.”

“She notes that what “we” long for is not more control, but more contact. More real presence – where the body gets to know that it is here. Not as a concept, but as lived experience.”
“And there, in presence, trust appears – not as something we achieve, but as something that returns.”

You can read her complete article on our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

12/09/2025

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Dirk Marivoet's “lyrical essay” entitled, The Poetics of Unnamed Emotion: From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to Core Strokes®

Dirk playfully and skillfully explores the kinship between John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and the somatic language of Core Strokes®. Through the meeting of word and fascia, he reveals how both poetic naming and therapeutic touch give voice to unspoken emotion. A meditation on breath, empathy, and embodiment, Dirk invites readers to feel language as a living tissue where sorrow transforms into resonance.

You can read his essay on our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

11/18/2025

SPT Magazine is pleased to offer Volume 15, Number 1, 2025. In this issue, we delve into breath work in psychotherapy, the living language of fascia, AI on the couch, deepening couples’ therapy, and a new perspective on our nervous system. We feature insightful articles and book reviews from clinicians and researchers that explore how the body holds stories and how we can facilitate their release and transformation.

While many of these articles ran separately over the course of this year, we know not everyone sees the individual posts. We added some new articles, too!

Our goal at SPT Magazine is to offer quality content that adds new information to the literature and advances our work in somatic psychology into the mainstream of psychotherapy. SPT Magazine is an international publication, and all of our contributors are free to be their full, individual, and talented selves.

We invite you to engage with the ideas presented here, and we welcome your feedback. Tell us what you love, what inspires you, and how we can continue to make this a valuable resource for our community.

You can download the PDF at our website, www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

11/07/2025

Dirk Marivoet shared a recent interview with Hana Hniličková where he talks about "the Energetic Breath Cycle, the possibility to meet oneself on deeper level when working with fascia (connective tissue of the body) and the healing power of relational presence." He speaks slowly and softly, each word carrying meaning, making it easy to understand his words and work. We appreciate his sharing this teaching moment with our readers.

You can find his interview on our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

10/29/2025

We are pleased to announce that this event mentioned below includes an option to get 2 CEs. If you'd like to get the book to go with your study, get 20% off the price now. Use the following discount code: 25SMA4. Order here, https://www.routledge.com/Being-with-the-Body-in-Depth-Psychology-Development-Trauma-and-Transformation-in-the-Unspoken-Realm/Holifield/p/book/9781032286082

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Our Story

Somatic Psychotherapy Today was founded on the belief of the power of personal presence in a community of acceptance. What we do individually has a collective impact on our world –its health and well-being—and on all living entities that dwell here. Voicing our truth is paramount and finding the right venue to speak is just as critical.

Your subscription today supports our community's reach beyond the pages of a magazine. SPT community members belong to an international forum that extends beyond one association, one modality, one theoretical approach. We touch on all aspects of somatic psychology and body psychotherapy that impact our lives today. Our mission is to provide a safe place to share our thoughts, our intentions, our practices, and our feelings with colleagues around the world who share a clinical passion for psychology from a body-based perspective.