What is Integrative Mindbody Therapy (IMT)?
Integrative-Mindbody-Therapy is a form of psychotherapy which is informed by three main disciplines of therapeutic practice:
- Relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy
- Bodywork and body-psychotherapy
- NLP and hypnosis
Body-psychotherapy and hypnosis both work closely with affective processes allowing us to deepen the clinical work and facilitate change elegantly and accurately, while still maintaining the integrity of client, therapist and the therapeutic relationship.
Body-psychotherapy, hypnosis, and relational psychotherapy may seem alienated from each other, but in fact they share a great deal of ancestry and similar principals; when practiced with integrity. Integrative-Mindbody-Therapy is not an arbitrary integration of esoteric techniques, but a platform for relational psychotherapy that wishes to work directly with intersubjective fields, and with the immense potential and magic that lies in human connection. Intimacy, safe therapeutic touch, improvisation, therapy as an art, balancing feminine and masculine styles, and recognising the place of the therapist in the dyad are among the main tools used in IMT.
What does IMT look like?
While sessions may involve a great set of tools (ranging from a conversation, to breathwork or touch, to hypnotic work), the integration manifests mostly on the level of positioning: i.e. the practitioner is curious about bodily processes (the client’s and their own) and about naturally-occuring trances. The range of clinical curiosity and understanding of somatic and trance processes in the way the readily occur in relationships opens a different level of psychotherapeutic practice. Therefore, sessions may look like ‘regular’ psychotherapy, yet the psychotherapist will be attuned to other nonverbal streams of communication and will be willing and able to engage with these directly.