Listening to the Psyche Through the Wisdom of the Body

“At the still point of the turning world…
there the dance is.”

— T. S. Eliot

In my approach to psychotherapy and Jungian analysis, I bring a somatic awareness that invites attention to what is being expressed through the body. The psyche does not communicate only through thoughts and words, but also through sensation, posture, gesture, and the subtle movements of embodied experience.

At times this may involve a gentle invitation to notice what you are sensing in the body while we are in conversation. At other moments, we may bring more direct attention to bodily sensations, emotions, images, or memories that arise as awareness deepens.

The inclusion of somatic exploration always follows the interests, comfort, and intentions of each person. One practice that has deeply informed my work with embodied awareness is Authentic Movement, a contemplative practice that allows the psyche to express itself through the language of the body. This may unfold within the flow of our therapy sessions, or, if desired, we can arrange a dedicated Authentic Movement session in my office for deeper exploration.

Authentic Movement

Authentic Movement is a contemplative, embodied practice that brings awareness to the somatic unconscious—the psyche as it lives and speaks through the body.

In this practice, the mover, or client, follows impulses arising from within, allowing gestures, sensations, emotions, and images to take form through movement. The body becomes a vehicle for expression and discovery.  Your movement experience may reveal memories, symbolic experiences, or deeply felt states that have not yet found words. In this way, embodied experience becomes a form of communication from deeper layers of the psyche—expressions of the unconscious or the Self seeking recognition and integration.

Authentic Movement can be understood as a form of active imagination in the body. Rather than directing movement from the conscious mind, the practice emphasizes waiting for an inner impulse to emerge and allowing it to unfold naturally. In this process, one may experience both moving and being moved, as the body responds to impulses arising from the unconscious.

This work invites openness to the personal and collective unconscious, and at times to experiences that feel spiritual, symbolic, or deeply mysterious. Movement becomes a way of entering into relationship with aspects of the psyche that are often beyond words.

Authentic Movement was developed in the 1960s by Mary Whitehouse, a pioneering dance therapist who studied at the Jung Institute in Zurich. She described the practice as “movement in depth,” distinguishing it from movement directed by the conscious will.

“The physical condition is in some way also the psychological one. We do not know in what way the psyche is the body and the body is the psyche, but we do know that one does not exist without the other… The two are not separate entities but mysteriously a totality.”

—Mary Whitehouse

Authentic Movement offers a way to listen to the psyche through the living intelligence of the body. In this way, movement becomes another doorway into the living dialogue between body, psyche, and soul.