glossary
With emerging practice comes emerging language; the glossary is here to assist and support your inquiry and exploration into somatic practices.
Bioenergetics: “Somatic practices based on the belief that emotional healing can be aided through resolution of bodily tension and systems thinking.”
Body-oriented: “Based on the concept that the body and mind are one, and should not be treated independently; grounded in movement studies and bodywork that foreground the body's internal physical sensations, perceptions, and experiences.”
Bottom-up Processing: “The idea that we begin to perceive through sensation first, instead of conceptual ideas.”
Consciousness-raising: “A form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group attempting to focus a wider group's attention on some cause or condition. Common issues include diseases, conflicts, movements, and political parties or politicians.”
Core Energetics: “A somatic psychology approach that bridges body-oriented psychotherapy and spirituality. The method integrates human life's physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects, emphasising the center of energetic wholeness (the Core) within each individual.”
Compassionate Inquiry: "Founded by Dr. Gabor Maté, the integrative approach is to drill down to the core stories people tell themselves – to get them to see what story they are telling themselves unconsciously, what those beliefs are, where they came from, and guide them to the possibility of letting go of those stories, their hold and impact."
Gestalt: “A healing approach utilising role-playing in aid of resolution over past conflicts, focused on the organised whole (the client) that is perceived as more than the sum of their parts.”
Internal Family Systems: “An integrative approach to individual healing practices combining systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete sub-personalities, each with its own view and qualities.”
Intersectional: “Relating to the interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to individuals or groups, creating overlapping and interdependent systems.”
Parts Work: “A psychological approach addressing the differences and conflicts in "agendas" between parts of the personality that are usually responsible for the gridlock in emotional healing.”
Psychosomatic Unity: “The paradigm considers human beings a multidimensional psychosomatic system. The term unitary in this context suggests that each person has their own unique self-awareness (the sense of body-mind identity or individuality).”
Relational Dynamics: “The patterns of behaviour that happen between people in how we relate, interact, and communicate. Awareness and understanding of the dynamics in our relationships put us in a position of empowerment.”
Somatic: “Relating to the body, especially distinct from the mind.”
Somatic Practice: “Describes any holistic practice that focuses on somatic (body) experience, using the mind-body connection to help survey the internal self and listen to signals the body sends about areas of pain, discomfort, or imbalance. Somatic psychology seeks to bridge the mind-body dichotomy.”
Spiritual Ecosystem: “Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia that proposes that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship.”
Systems Design: “The process of defining system elements like modules, architecture, components, interfaces, and data for a system based on specified requirements.”
Systems Thinking: “A way of making sense of the world's complexity by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than splitting it into parts. It has been used to explore and develop effective action in complex contexts, enabling systems change.”
