Somatic Psychotherapy Today

“ . . . I often felt quiet anxious as they created worlds of sand
and clay, paper and ink. Was my role just to watch or could I
be more active? . . . ”
with the need to function in this world” (pg.
105). She depicts her use of Jungian
sandplay therapy, Soulcollage, expressive
arts, and a variety of mindfulness based
practices to work on the body-mind-spirit
level via guided visualizations and
meditation. Dennis McCarthy, Neal Brodsky,
Alan Spivack (who had a stroke in 2013 and
continued to write his chapter as he
healed), and Rob Greene share case studies
detailing the need for long term therapy, for
deepening and improving family
connections, and body-centered,
imaginative play as well as the integration
of Core Energetics (pioneered by John
Pierrakos, MD, who blended body
psychotherapy with spiritual development).
Brodsky’s chapter offered an insightful
look into a therapist authentically struggling
with how to work with two clients, one
young man he called Victor and another
named Kenny (all identifying information in
this anthology has been changed to protect
the clients’ identities). Brodsky writes, “This
chapter focuses on two cases where a
combination of body-centered Core
Energetics including expressive arts and
sandplay allowed two boys to find their own
channels for concrete achievement and
growing independence in the context of
complex and often challenging family
lives.” (pg. 143).
I was fascinated by the adaptation of
Core Energetics (CE) for use with children
and adolescents. The use of bodily
movements such as standing with the knees
unlocked and softening to create a posture
known as the bow in CE to increase
grounding and presence. Bringing the body
in, taking time to connect and sense and
feel what is happening during the play. “The
goal,” Brodsky writes, “was to complement
the ‘big energy work’ he’d just done
through an energetic ‘pulsation’ or
‘vibration’ he could feel through his entire
body, as the partially exhausted
musculature of his legs shook and vibrated
gently” (pg. 161).
I appreciated Brodsky’s honesty when
he writes about connecting with his
supervisor, (Dennis McCarthy) for
assistance. It felt gratifying to know that a
practiced therapist easily reached out for
help, didn’t have to take on the process in
isolation, letting community—colleagues—
offer insight into the current situation and
thoughts about where to go next.
Brodsky also offered his outlet for
dealing with the intensity of the deep play.
As he writes, “Helping ‘depth work’ to
happen with children like Victor was not
easy for me at first, especially in the arena
of expressive arts that went beyond words.
I often felt quiet anxious as they created
worlds of sand and clay, paper and ink. Was
my role just to watch or could I be more
active? To soothe my own restlessness, I
had taken on a parallel practice where I
wrote my responses in poetry as children
expressed themselves through images and
structure, reaching for my own inner depth
in service of the children who were sharing
their worlds with me” (pg.148).
He then shared the poems he wrote as
Victor delved into his own process. For
instance, when Victor filled a globe with
water to dump into a sandtray world,
Brodsky wrote (pg. 148):
“Water contained in layers of multi-colored
sand.
Deep box smoothing the creative urge,
magnifying my own clear growth.
Lights dance in crystal round-ness.
My own hands pressing into the mountain.”
Somatic Psychotherapy Today | Fall 2015 | Volume 5 Number 4 | page 55