Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy: Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch in Practice
Sep 2020 · North Atlantic Books
Ebook
192
Pages
Tools
info
About this ebook
Somatic IFS: Bringing the body into Internal Family Systems therapy through 5 practical, embodied practices
Enhance your clinical practice and patient outcomes by skillfully uniting body and mind—endorsed by leaders in the field, including Richard Schwartz
Internal Family Systems helps clients get to know their protective parts and the vulnerable parts those protectors guard. But much of what parts carry never gets put into words: it shows up as a tight gut, a held breath, a collapsed posture, or an urge to push away. Susan McConnell wrote the first IFS training manual and brings a background in Rolfing and craniosacral therapy. Here, she shows practitioners how to work directly with that nonverbal layer of experience.
Introduced with a foreword by IFS founder Richard Schwartz, Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy weaves five interrelated practices into the IFS model: Somatic Awareness, Conscious Breathing, Radical Resonance, Mindful Movement, and Attuned Touch. Each chapter connects its practice to the anatomy and physiology behind it. It then shows the practice at work in detailed sessions with clients facing addiction, trauma, depression, eating disorders, and relational ruptures.
Inside, you’ll find:
For IFS therapists, somatic practitioners, and bodyworkers, this is a grounded guide to helping clients experience Self as something that’s not just understood in the mind, but felt in the body.
Enhance your clinical practice and patient outcomes by skillfully uniting body and mind—endorsed by leaders in the field, including Richard Schwartz
Internal Family Systems helps clients get to know their protective parts and the vulnerable parts those protectors guard. But much of what parts carry never gets put into words: it shows up as a tight gut, a held breath, a collapsed posture, or an urge to push away. Susan McConnell wrote the first IFS training manual and brings a background in Rolfing and craniosacral therapy. Here, she shows practitioners how to work directly with that nonverbal layer of experience.
Introduced with a foreword by IFS founder Richard Schwartz, Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy weaves five interrelated practices into the IFS model: Somatic Awareness, Conscious Breathing, Radical Resonance, Mindful Movement, and Attuned Touch. Each chapter connects its practice to the anatomy and physiology behind it. It then shows the practice at work in detailed sessions with clients facing addiction, trauma, depression, eating disorders, and relational ruptures.
Inside, you’ll find:
- The IFS steps for working with protectors, adapted to track sensation, posture, and tension
- Breathing techniques, informed by polyvagal theory, for helping clients shift out of fight/flight or shutdown
- How the therapist’s own embodied presence supports a client’s regulation
- Developmental movements (yield, push, reach, grasp, and pull) for completing interrupted protective responses
- Careful guidance on imaginary touch, self-touch, and consensual therapist touch
For IFS therapists, somatic practitioners, and bodyworkers, this is a grounded guide to helping clients experience Self as something that’s not just understood in the mind, but felt in the body.
Somatic IFS: Bringing the body into Internal Family Systems therapy through 5 practical, embodied practices
Enhance your clinical practice and patient outcomes by skillfully uniting body and mind—endorsed by leaders in the field, including Richard Schwartz
Internal Family Systems helps clients ...
Discover more
About the author
SUSAN MCCONNELL, senior trainer for the Center for Self Leadership, has taught Internal Family Systems (IFS) in the U.S. and internationally since 1997. Somatic IFS, which McConnell developed in 2004, is a synthesis of her forty years of study, teaching, and clinical practice with bodywork, psychotherapy, and spiritual practices. McConnell holds a Master's Degree with an emphasis on Somatic Psychology, and is a Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist and a Certified Hakomi Therapist. She was also instrumental in curriculum development for IFS trainings and, as a Hakomi faculty member, for a training for bodyworkers using the Hakomi Method to explore through touch the way mind, body, heart, and spirit weave together to form the client's experiential world. McConnell has had a private practice since 1983 in Chicago, where she offers bodymind integration and consultation.
SUSAN MCCONNELL, senior trainer for the Center for Self Leadership, has taught Internal Family Systems (IFS) in the U.S. and internationally since 1997. Somatic IFS, which McConnell developed in 2004, is a synthesis of her forty years of study, teaching, and clinical practice with bodywork, psych...
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
