Therapies

Counselling is a professional therapeutic relationship between a Counsellor who is professionally trained and a Client. The goal of counselling is to give the client an opportunity to explore, discover and clarify ways of living more resourcefully, and towards greater well being. In most cases the task of counselling is to draw out the client and enable him/her to reach a greater level of understanding, or a greater commitment to take action.

At BodySpeak we do not tell you what you should do; rather we work with you to empower you in such a way that you can feel responsible for the changes you will have to make. Together we will define and clarify problems, develop goals and then link those goals to action.

Actions are set using the SMART principle:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timebound

Psychotherapy and Counselling are both ‘talking therapies’ and it is impossible to differentiate between them. They both involve you talking to the therapist, often more than the therapist will be talking to you, and both involve helping you to discover and use your own resources to resolve your issues in the most effective way possible. Although, it is widely accepted that while counselling is usually focused on a specific problem occurring in the present or recent past, psychotherapy tends to deal with the problems that you may have encountered in the course of your life. Often the source of these issues can be traced back to early life experiences in childhood or even babyhood.

At BodySpeak we use the eclectic approach in our psycho-therapeutic sessions. This means we use whichever psycho-therapeutic techniques we have available to us that suit your particular case. All of this will be done with your full awareness, consent and involvement.

For example if you are suffering from low self esteem and mild depression  –  the first few sessions of counselling would consist of getting to know you and your case better as well as allowing for trust and a good rapport to be built up between you and the therapist. Then together we may decide to use Cognitive Behavioural Techniques (CBT) to facilitate change in your behavior along with Transactional Analysis and Age Regression to explore why and how these patterns emerged. We may decide to use Gestalt Therapy, Mirror Work, Transactional Analysis or even Hypnotherapy to heal old wounds and jump start the formation of a new synapse in your brain.

Dr. Aaron T. Beck developed the idea of CBT in the 1960’s while he was a Psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania. He noticed that depressed clients experienced specific thoughts that they were only dimly aware of unless their attention was directly focused on them. He called these “automatic thoughts”.

CBT emphasizes the role your thoughts play in making you anxious, depressed, angry or sad. The idea that the way we think about situations can affect the way we feel and behave. For example, if you interpret a situation negatively then you might experience negative emotions as a result, and those bad feelings might then lead you to behave in a certain way.

How does negative thinking start?

Negative thinking patterns can start from childhood onward. For example, if you didn’t receive much attention or praise from your parents or teachers at school, you might’ve thought “I’m useless, I’m not good enough”.

Over time you might come to believe these assumptions, until as an adult these negative thoughts become automatic. If your negative interpretation of situations goes unchallenged, then these patterns in your thoughts, feelings and behaviour can become part of a continuous cycle.

The way we think affects the way we feel, as does the way we act. So CBT is about thinking and acting in more effective ways by changing the way you think and the way you act.

In CBT you work with a therapist to identify the advantages and disadvantages of your thoughts and challenge any negative thinking patterns and behaviour which may be causing you difficulties. This effectively changes the way you feel about situations, and therefore, enable you to change your behaviour in future. As part of the therapy you can learn to look at the evidence for and against your thinking and you get to test out the thoughts as experimental exercises.

You and your therapist may focus on what is going on in your life right now, but during the course of your therapy you might also look at your past, and think about how your past experiences impact the way you see and experience the world now. You may choose to explore other psycho-therapeutic modalities to heal those past wounds.

Transactional analysis (TA) is a rational approach to understanding behaviour and is based on the assumption that all individuals can learn to trust themselves, think for themselves, make their own decisions and express their feelings. It is defined by the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) as, “TA is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change”. The principles of TA can be applied at work, home, in a classroom, in social gatherings – effectively wherever people deal with people.

TA as a method of psychotherapy, when used in a Group Sessions can be highly transformative for the members. The group serves as a setting in which people can become more aware of themselves, the structure of their individual personality, how they transact (interact) with other people, the games they play and the scripts they act out. This awareness enables people to see themselves more clearly so that they can change what they choose to change, give up things that no longer serve them and embrace new patterns of thinking and behaviour. Therefore, TA can be used as a powerful tool while conducting workshops for management and communications training and in organizational analysis, Corporate Sessions for employees and management and teachers in educational institutes as well as for social workers.

TA rests upon certain philosophical assumptions:

• People are OK
• Everyone has the capacity to think
• People decide their own destiny, and these decisions can be changed

Change begins with a contract between the therapist and the client. The contractual approach preserves the self-determination of the client and allows them to know when the terms of the contract have been fulfilled. The contract is simply a statement of the intention of the therapy, and serves as a solemn reminder of the intention and commitment of the client to the therapy and to open communication between the client and the therapist.

TA offers a frame of reference for people to define themselves and put to use to improve their lives. TA is concerned with four kinds of analysis:

Structural Analysis: the analysis of individual personality

Transactional Analysis: the analysis of what people do and say to one another

Game Analysis: the analysis of ulterior transactions that lead to a pay off

Script Analysis: the analysis of specific life dramas that people compulsively play out in their lives

The goal of TA is achieving autonomy. To be truly autonomous means being:

• Self-governing
• Determining one’s own destiny
• Taking responsibility for one’s own actions and feelings
• Throwing off patterns that are irrelevant and inappropriate to living in the here and now

According to Eric Berne (the founder of TA), a truly autonomous person is one who demonstrates, “the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy”.

He wrote, “Man is born free, but one of the first things he learns is to do as he is told, and he spends the rest of his life doing that. Thus his first enslavement is to his parents. He follows their instructions forevermore, retaining only in some cases the right to choose his own methods and consoling himself with the illusion of autonomy”.

The objective of Gestalt Therapy is to enable the client to become more fully and creatively alive and to become free from blocks and unfinished business that may be preventing you from feeling satisfied with your life, feeling unfulfilled and unable to grow – therefore “feeling stuck in life”. It is a cognitive approach which includes action, perception and meaning-making processes by which experience is formed. It relies on close contact and trust between the client and therapist.

Gestalt therapy is very effective in a group setting and using the group’s dynamics to initiate action. It relies more on experiential therapy rather than talk therapy and works more with the how rather than the what.

Gestalt therapy is a method of awareness practice, also popularly known as “mindfulness” in other clinical domains. Perceiving, feeling and acting are understood to be conducive to interpreting, explaining or conceptualizing. The distinction between direct experience and indirect interpretation is developed during the process of therapy. You learn to become aware of what you are doing and this knowledge enables you to trigger the ability to risk a shift in your thinking and behavior and therefore affect change.

At BodySpeak we use these techniques while practicing Gestalt therapy depending on the case and requirement of the client:

Empty Chair Technique: In this technique the client experiences interfacing with an empty chair. The empty chair signifies the issue, person, relationships or parts of the client’s personality that requires the client’s attention. It is a very effective method of getting you to think about your emotions and attitudes. It is a passive approach to opening up your emotions and pent up feelings so you can then let go of what you have been holding back.

Mirror Work: It has been said that the eyes are the gateway to the soul. Using the mirror to reflect your eyes is an incredibly powerful starting point of beginning a dialog with yourself. We use this technique during therapy and also as homework for you to start the journey of understanding yourself and begin to truly love yourself. When you are sad and parts of you are broken or left in the past in the beginning you will not be able to meet your eyes in the mirror, let alone hold your gaze for any significant amount of time. This technique lends itself beautifully as a benchmark of your progress as you undergo the therapeutic process.

Breathing techniques/Meditation: At BodySpeak we teach you breathing techniques, meditation and relaxation techniques as well as Self Hypnosis if you desire. These tools teach you how to live in the Now and to effectively begin to practice mindfulness on daily basis.

The term “hypnotherapy” comes from the Greek word “Hypnos”, which means “to sleep”. Since a person is put into a state of deep physical relaxation during hypnotherapy the name makes sense. But the brain is anything but sleeping, during this process. In fact hypnotherapy allows a patient’s mind to enter an extremely focused altered state of consciousness. While in this state or trance, a person will be highly responsive to suggestion. Despite funny media portrayals, this does not mean a hypnotist can control a person’s freewill or thoughts. Rather, the trance allows the hypnotherapist to make proposals that may help and/or alter certain behaviors in the hypnotized patient. For example, a person with phobias may benefit from the suggestion that his/her irrational fear is really no big deal. Or person with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder may find that a hypnotherapist’s proposals make this disorder’s all consuming rituals less necessary.

This type of hypnosis is also known as “suggestion therapy”, and it is one of the two ways in which hypnotherapy can be used to treat anxiety disorders. The other method is called analysis, and it uses hypnotic state to find the root of an anxiety disorder, in other words Age Regression. The idea behind analysis is that a person may have hidden, traumatic events in parts of his/her memory which are more likely to surface while in a trance. Once these memories are brought to light, the therapist can then address and treat them during psychotherapy.

Analysis while often very helpful, can pose a risk of creating false memories called “confabulations”. These confabulations are usually the result of unintended suggestions made by the hypnotherapist. Careful care is taken by the therapists at BodySpeak during hypnotherapy sessions to ensure that this will not happen under our care.

Hypnotherapy is internationally widely considered a valid treatment for anxiety disorders in the UK, USA and Europe.

At BodySpeak we generally do not recommend Past Life Regression as the starting point of any therapy. However, there have been cases where clients are aware of what it is and have come specifically requesting Past Life Regression Therapy. In such cases, after careful evaluation of his/her needs we do undertake Past Life Regression Therapy. In other cases, we address past life issues only if they happen to come up during the course of therapy. We firmly believe in healing first, analysis later and focusing on the Here and Now.

Past Life Regression is conducted after inducing a very deep trance state. In that state we have access to the very deep parts of the subconscious mind. This is where deeply buried traumatic memories are stored. They may be from a past life or from very early childhood or even from when we were in our mother’s womb. If these memories have been triggered by any recent events in our life they can cause extreme havoc to our everyday existence. In this case, Past Life Regression Therapy will need to be conducted to help you heal from the trauma, or resolve any karmic baggage that may be affecting you.

Conditions / Triggers of past life

• Dying thoughts
• Incomplete Life
• Undead Life – body has died but the soul has not realized that

Different Areas Where Past Life Regression Therapy Can Help

• Physical issues – eczema, asthma, congenital issues, etc
• Emotional areas – choices, mother-child, partners, karma etc.
• Mental – OCD, phobias, fears
• Spiritual aspects – religious, communal, illogical associations, visions etc

Past Life Regression Therapy can take various forms:

Re-framing: We visit the past life where the trauma took place and replace the Fear/Bad Reactions with a Good Reaction of the client’s choice by first reliving the former in complete detail; it is then released fully and completely from every level of the client’s existence. The void left by releasing the trauma is then filled with the Good Reaction and a new reality is thus formed.

Re-scripting:  This is a widely debated therapeutic practice where there is a school of thought that believes this therapy to be cleansing and empowering to the client, while the other feels that the therapist is playing “God” and that the past should remain intact and untouched.

At BodySpeak we believe that there is no time and space and that everything is taking place at the same time, as well as in parallel realities, we do not subscribe to any one way of thinking, but to all thinking. We are a part of the whole and the whole is a part of us. If the client changes his/her perspective of a past life, neither they nor the therapist is “playing God”, they are simply shifting the way they experience certain past memories in the here and now.

Parallel Reality: This is a dissociative process wherein the client visits the past life through the experience of the personality who actually lived that life instead of going through the process themselves. This is often less traumatic for the client and yields excellent results.

Breaking the Bonds of Time: This process is to bring to the client’s awareness that the past no longer holds sway over their current life.

The entire Past Life Therapy process typically takes between 6-8 sessions to complete an issue.

The philosophy of modern crystal healing is based on traditional concepts borrowed from Asian cultures, most notably the Chinese concept of life-energy (chi or qi) and the Hindu or Buddhist concept of chakras, which are vortices of this life-energy, said to connect the physical and supernatural elements of the body. However, crystals are not magical as in they don’t put a magic spell on you. Rather, they enhance the work you’re already doing, like when your astrology recommends you wear a certain stone – that is crystal healing. When you make a choice to change the way you think or stretch yourself emotionally and mentally, crystals help with that. It fits well in the spiritual and mindfulness community. Crystals are a part of the earth so they are a wonderful way to feel more connected to the balance of nature.

Crystal healing is a process in which crystals and other stones are used to cure certain ailments and protect against disease, crystals act as conduits for healing — allowing positive, healing energy to flow into the body as negative, disease-causing energy flows out. We use crystals at BodySpeak to help induce relaxation, scan the body and aura as well as balance the Chakras.

The Spirit Massage is conducted with the use of Crystals while you are in a deep, relaxed trance under hypnosis. During this treatment session, we place various stones or crystals on your body aligned with your chakra points, roughly in the regions above the head, on the forehead, on the throat, on the chest, on the stomach, on the gut, and on the genital area. The crystals will cleanse all the negative energy that may be stored in your chakras, balance them and infuse them with positive healing energy. This ensures that all your chakras are open and functioning correctly and that your Mind, Body and Spirit are aligned and in synergy with each other.