Research

Work with the body during an emotional experience has to able to undo the body’s defenses against emotions and make them easier to access for processing. It also has to be able to manage the extreme stress and dysregulation in the body so that the emotional experience is more bearable. At the same time, it has to ensure that the body is not excessively regulated so that the very emotional experience one is working with is not destroyed.

Trauma impacts much more than just our thoughts and actions. Trauma is far-reaching and systemic—it cuts us to our bones.

Somatic psychotherapy—also called body psychotherapy—focuses on the complex and profoundly powerful connections between body and mind and how those connections affect how we process and recover from trauma and other emotional distress.

The function of the nervous system is to process information, and the brain is constantly changing – both functionally and structurally – due to the information coursing through it.

Queering/querying the body provides a means for disrupting social norms of the body; not by expanding the repertoire of socially acceptable bodily expressions, but by working to disable the act of body norming itself.  

PTSD is a body/mind illness diagnosed in military and civilian populations worldwide.

What should our work be, here and now, as producers of knowledge?

The scholar-practitioner approaches her object of study by privileging the synergy of knowledge and experience.