What does it mean to provide a somatically attuned and integrated style of psychotherapy?
How can attunement to the innate organic wisdom of the body help us guide our clients to discover and use the healing resources within?
Questions like these often guide the essential aspects of our clinical work. We leave our graduate programs, our modality trainings, our seminars and workshops and then consider, how do I bring it all in?
When I published my first book, Soul Mothers’ Wisdom: Seven Insights for the Single Mother (2015), I presented ideas about Self-wholeness and the psychic dimension of mind that I wish I’d had during the 17 years I was a single parent with two young daughters. Single motherhood was a hard journey, not as hard as it may be for some, but hard enough. It was also a blessed path to Self-Wholeness. Those difficult and precious years inspired me to develop my career, grow stronger as a person, and discover, rediscover and uncover my own Soul Wisdom, and write this new blog.
Today, I am a clinical social worker, a wife, mother, grandmother, author and teacher. For the past five years my second husband Ray, a licensed MFT, and I have studied hypnotherapy with Jeffrey Zeig, PhD, founder and director of the Milton Erickson Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona. I’m a certified group psychotherapist and hypnotherapist and a bonafide member of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH). My foray into the world of hypnosis has introduced a powerful new dimension into my practice of psychotherapy and to my belief in the creative and healing energy of the Mind/Body/Soul.
In addition to my private practice in southern Maine, I teach stress management and problem-solving skills, and I write and present on a variety of topics dear to my heart, especially those related to intuition, Self-wholeness, and the holistic integration of Body, Mind, and Soul. I conceptualize “Soul” as the essential authentic resources of the “psychic dimension” of mind and the wise guidance of the inner spirit.
My monthly blog for SPT will cover topics about the power of the body to hold information, promote physical, emotional and mental health, and serve as a vehicle for accessing the power-filled resources of Soul Wisdom. My intention is to offer my thoughts and clinical experiences as a starting point for more detailed conversations about the body and psyche and healing. I encourage you to respond, to offer your comments and your ideas. You can find me at bettefreedson.com, or email me at bjfreedson@gmail.com.
“Soul Wisdom” is reprinted with permission from Somatic Psychotherapy Today, www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com and Bette Freedson, www.BetteFreedson.com.
