Traditionally, the therapist’s orientation has been focused around a Freudian/Reichian lens, like neurotic conflicts, fixation or “stuck energy”—working by reducing the repression of mostly negatively valenced recall: i.e., trauma. Not diminishing the disorganizing effect of trauma or high ACEs, this workshop will chart a fundamentally alternate path.

A Free Association Conversation allows the biology to define for itself the “topic”. Such topics are actually states and incessantly reflect our essentially integrative nature. Absent the cultural or therapeutic bias toward exposing a neurotic conflict or trauma, positively reinforced, positively valenced states will culminate in heightened energy and insight.

Conditions for reinforcing the spontaneous states of greater biological self-organization will be briefly discussed, followed by a live sample of therapeutic FACs—in somatic terms, allowing the body to speak its mind.

Steve Hoskinson, founder of Organic Intelligence®, is an internationally recognized teacher, mentor and author in Post-Trauma Growth (PTG). Over the past 20 years, he has presented at
professional conferences globally, and trained thousands of helping professionals worldwide. Steve has served as Adjunct Faculty for JFK School of Psychology, Advisory Board Member for The Trauma Foundation, the US Association for Body Psychotherapy, International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC), and former Senior International Instructor for the SE ® Trauma Institute.

His teachings were invited to be on Dr. Mark Hyman’s Broken Brain docu-series, the 2019 Plum Village Neuroscience Retreat, and in Somatic-Oriented Therapies: Embodiment, Trauma, and Polyvagal Perspectives edited by Herbert Grassmann, Maurizio Stupiggia and Stephen Porges. Dedicated to empowering coaches and therapists worldwide, Steve has created a host of mindfulness-based programs for Post-Trauma Growth, including The End of Trauma™ Course, and The End of Trauma Podcast and the OI™ Coach Certification program.

We can find our own unique but common and universal pathway back to natural health and joy, to flow — in the vital and necessary conditions of safety, peace, respect, space, and time.

In a world shaped by polarities — activation and collapse, holding and release, reaching out and withdrawing, the impulse toward life and the pull of resignation, connection and profound isolation, the frozen edges of held experience and the pulse of the living current — Flow is not the absence of polarity. Flow is the capacity to move between polarities without becoming trapped in either.

Polarities are not problems to be solved but tensions to be lived, explored, and integrated. They create movement, and movement creates life. When two opposites can be held in awareness without premature resolution, a third possibility often emerges. This third possibility is not a compromise, nor a victory of one side over the other. It is often a new level of understanding, a deeper integration, or a creative response that was previously hidden by the apparent opposition.

Gerda Boyesen’s foundational insight was that the body itself carries the key to healing and the solutions for all polarities within its own living processes. She found the way to listen to this invisible intelligence by using a loudspeaker stethoscope placed on the abdomen of the client.

This biodynamic tradition offers something distinctive: it literally listens to the music and sound and cries and songs of the core in the soul of our being as we navigate all polarities to come to balance and homeostasis. To come to Rest. To come home to Self — in peace.

The Biodynamic practitioner is trained to use this listening technology — the loudspeaker stethoscope — to establish, to hear, and not to interrupt what Gerda called the psychoperistalsis of the client, the group, or the organisation — and to recognise and meet this intelligence with unconditional respect and non-judgemental presence. Creating the biodynamic environment where healing can begin and continue in safety and without interruption is the practitioner’s essential endeavour — and it becomes their ongoing, lifelong, evolving art and skill.

Central to this workshop is a live demonstration of this most remarkable clinical tool: the loudspeaker stethoscope. Participants will have the opportunity to witness and hear psychoperistalsis — the gut’s spontaneous discharge of emotional tension — as it sounds in real time. This visceral, often profound experience makes audible what is usually invisible: the nervous system in all its dimensions —autonomic, central, peripheral, and enteric — processing, settling, and beginning to flow again.

The 90 minutes will move between brief teaching, live demonstration, and direct experience — giving participants something to understand, something to hear, and something to experience. Gerda Boyesen was a remarkable and gifted woman, clinician, and researcher. The gentle but impeccable psychotherapeutic protocols she pioneered have been able to help many individuals and families, groups and organisations, and can be adapted in countless situations where help is needed.

Her core teaching — so vital today — Listen.

Mary Molloy is President and Founder of the Institute of Biodynamic Medicine (IOBM), an international professional training and clinical Institute rooted in the tradition of Gerda Boyesen’s Biodynamic Psychology and Psychotherapy.

Mary trained personally with Gerda Boyesen and served as Training and Clinical Director of Gerda’s organisations from 1983 until Gerda’s death in 2005. She brings to her work a deep practical grounding in the Gerda Boyesen and Wilhelm Reich traditions alongside a continuing engagement with contemporary neuroscience, the brain-gut axis, polyvagal theory, glympathic system, interstitium, epigenetics, and consciousness studies.

Mary presents and teaches and speaks internationally, and has led international Biodynamic Training and Experiential Programmes worldwide for almost fifty years. She lives in Killala, Co. Mayo on the West Coast of Ireland — where IOBM and its clinical arm, The Biodynamic Clinic, is based.

The core of this workshop is a somatic exercise called the Marriage of Duality. Rather than working through breath techniques, participants are guided to use the body itself as a vehicle for embodying the dualistic beliefs, images, and inner polarities that shape and limit their lives — and their consciousness.

By giving full somatic expression to both poles of an inner conflict simultaneously, something unexpected becomes possible: the body moves beyond the either/or structure of duality into a state of expanded awareness where opposites are no longer in opposition, but held together in a more inclusive field.

This process can work with the full range of inner polarities — limiting beliefs, conflicting self-images, existential contradictions — and can also directly address the victim-perpetrator dynamic as one of the most charged and persistent dualities carried in the body. In all cases, the destination is the same: an altered state of consciousness in which the divided self discovers a ground that was never divided.

The experience will be facilitated within a carefully structured arc that emphasizes preparation, activation, integration, and professional reflection.

This workshop is not a performance or demonstration. It is a lived experience — one that allows participants to encounter the transformative potential of somatic presence directly in their own bodies.

Daniela Zambrana Weymann is a body psychotherapist and a Core Energetics teacher based in Vienna, trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy and working with individuals, couples and groups at the intersection of somatic practice, trauma and polyvagal informed, altered states, and integration.

They believed that engaging in this dialogue could significantly enrich body-oriented psychotherapy by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the elusive concept of the “self” from a Self Psychology perspective. This dialogue might also help clarify therapeutic strategies for addressing the growing phenomenon of narcissistic personality styles, a trend that has replaced traditional psychoneuroses in contemporary times.

At the same time, a special issue of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry journal (2022) focused on “The Turn Toward Embodiment,” emphasizing the importance of embodiment in psychoanalysis. This focus on embodiment reveals a void in clinical theory and practice within self-psychology and relational psychoanalysis, where verbal expression has been favored over non-verbal, somatic experience.

Ernst and Stan, with a long-standing interest in fostering this dialogue, plan to host a conversation between both communities. In this workshop, they want to present Self Psychology to an audience of Body/Somatic Psychotherapists.

In a bid to foster dialogue between Self Psychologists and Body Psychotherapists, Ernst and Stan aim to shed light on the significance of merging somatic experience and therapy with self-psychology and psychoanalysis. This amalgamation, which is frequently overlooked in body psychotherapy and psychoanalytic treatment, can bridge the gap between these two therapeutic approaches.

Ernst Meyer is a Registered Clinical Psychotherapist and has been in private practice in Sydney/Australia since 2013. He is a board member of the “Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia” (PACFA), Convenor of PACFA’s “College of Psychotherapy”, holds a Masters Degree in Psychotherapy and Counselling, and is a full member of the “European Association for Body Psychotherapy” (EABP). Being a former police officer, he specialises in supporting former and serving first responders.

Stan Dudley, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who has been in private practice for 42 years in Cincinnati, Ohio. He provides individual treatment for adults and adolescents and couples and family therapy. Dr. Dudley has been a supervisor and taught courses in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and self-psychology. He has been a consulting psychologist completing assessments on children and adolescents for the Hamilton County Department of Children’s Services and the Juvenile Detention Center.

At the heart of this workshop is the innovative concept of the therapist as a “biological mediator.” Rather than delegating the responsibility for regulation entirely to the client—who may lack the interoceptive infrastructure to act on physiological signals—we explore how the therapist can translate real-time data into embodied, relational interventions. We will move beyond the traditional “screen-focused” model of biofeedback to show how physiological metrics, such as Pulse Volume Variability (PVV), can inform the therapist’s tactile and verbal presence, effectively bridging the gap between objective biological data and the subjective somatic experience.

Participants will learn to navigate the specific challenges posed by different interoceptive phenotypes, with a particular focus on alexisomia (difficulty perceiving bodily sensations) and alexithymia. For clients with these traits, standard self-directed biofeedback often increases cognitive load or triggers a sense of failure. We will demonstrate how a supervised, relational model allows the therapist to compensate for these interoceptive deficits by serving as an external regulatory interface, helping the client “re-read” their body in a way that bypasses perfectionistic traps and shame.

We will specifically delve into the hemodynamic justification for touch as a biofeedback tool. By reframing the therapist’s hands on the thorax and abdomen as a “respiratory pump regulator,” we demonstrate how tactile contact can be used to modulate venous return and peripheral perfusion based on live physiological indices. This approach facilitates dyadic autonomic co-regulation, where the therapist’s interventions help “entrain” the client’s respiratory and cardiac rhythms, creating the physiological substrate for felt safety and a more robust therapeutic alliance.

Finally, the workshop addresses the critical balance between interoceptive sensitivity and selectivity. Drawing on recent research, we will discuss how to distinguish genuine interoceptive precision from maladaptive sensitization or somatosensory amplification. Attendees will leave with practical scripts for three distinct clinical profiles and a “tech-light” framework designed to integrate high-precision autonomic data into the deeply human, relational space of the body-oriented psychotherapy session.

Kirill Rassomakhin is a medical doctor (neurology) and body-oriented psychotherapist. His PhD work focuses on operationalising and measuring ANS processes relevant to psychotherapy, bridging phenomenology, relational process, and physiological signals.

This experiential workshop invites participants to explore the dynamic movement between inner and outer experience through the principles of Biosynthesis, in alignment with the Congress theme “Body Psychotherapy on the Edge: Moving through Polarities.” The workshop focuses on embodied polarities such as silence and sound, tension and relaxation, structure and spontaneity, and how these are lived, regulated, and integrated through the body.

Drawing on David Boadella’s concept of motor fields—flexion and expansion, traction and opposition, rotation and channeling, activation and absorption—the workshop supports awareness of how movement, breath, and sound emerge through the body’s natural pulsation. Breath acts as a mediating rhythm, facilitating transitions between activation and rest, containment and expression, inner sensation and relational presence.

Through guided body awareness, breathing, gentle movement, humming, and vocal expression, participants explore sound as both an internal experience and an embodied, relational gesture. Inspired by the concept of audiation (Edwin Gordon), the workshop supports awareness of how inner sensations and images find expression through sound, allowing a gradual and regulated passage from silence to vocalization.

The workshop engages several therapeutic dimensions of Biosynthesis, including affective–motor regulation, breathing rhythms, emotional holding and release, relational behaviour, and expressive communication. It offers a non-pathologizing, trauma-informed space in which embodied polarities can be explored as lived experience rather than conceptual opposites.

No musical training is required – just curiosity and a willingness to listen, move, and sound. The workshop is suitable for body psychotherapists and professionals interested in somatic, embodied, and creative processes, and offers reflections relevant to both clinical and group contexts.

Learning Objectives:

• Deepen awareness of bodily sensations and emotional states through breath, movement, silence, and sound
• Explore embodied polarities and the fluid transitions between them
• Experience core principles of Biosynthesis through affective–motor, energetic, and expressive processes
• Reflect on how these experiences may inform therapeutic work in clinical and group settings

Catarina Lourenço de Carvalho is a Psychologist and Body Psychotherapist trained in Biosynthesis, and a Music Therapist, with over 15 years of experience integrating somatic awareness, breath, sound, and movement into therapeutic practice.

Her work supports emotional regulation, embodied presence, and creative expression, with a particular focus on the use of silence, sound, and voice as expressive and regulatory resources within body-based approaches. She works in both clinical and group settings, enhancing experiential connection and relational awareness.

As adults, we often forget how to be playful. We become preoccupied with efficiency, achievement and status, leaving little room for silliness, spontaneity or joyful messiness. Yet it is remarkably difficult to feel distant from someone after you have laughed together, played together and been willing to look a little ridiculous.

Play allows us to meet one another before our differences become fixed positions, creating space for curiosity where there might otherwise be division. In this experiential workshop, we will gently peel back the layers to reconnect with that place before words. Before we learned who we should or shouldn’t play with. Before the world became divided into categories of “us” and “them”.

Together, we will reconnect with our natural capacity for openness, curiosity and wonder. We will allow our bodies to sense, respond and connect with one another. Through simple, playful experiences, we will explore how shared movement, observation and experimentation soften barriers, deepen presence and create authentic connection.

If you are curious about how playful, embodied experience can become a pathway to genuine relational contact, we warmly invite you to join us.

Aleksandra Despotova (Sascha) grew up immersed in a rich blend of Bulgarian, Polish, English, German, Chinese and Soviet Russian-Uzbek cultures. Since 2011, she has lived in the United Kingdom. Her background has fostered a deep appreciation for diversity, creativity and the richness that emerges when different perspectives meet. It has also shaped her comfort in inhabiting seemingly opposing worlds. She works both as a body psychotherapist and in corporate risk management and public finance.

Sascha qualified in the Neo-Reichian Therapy of Five Movements and brings together body psychotherapy with her love of the arts and creative expression. Her work explores how embodied presence, movement, art and play can awaken our innate capacity to connect, relate and co-create the lives and communities we wish to build.

Supporting others requires attention to our own resources, boundaries and the ways we nourish ourselves.

This experiential workshop explores practical ways to support therapist wellbeing through a constellation of support: practices for pre, during and post session that foster grounding, awareness, connection and sustainable wellbeing. These include re-connection with (more-than-human) nature as well as mindful awareness of your body, mind and emotions to gain awareness of your needs.

This work can often feel lonely, and many of us find ourselves navigating it in isolation. Sustainable practice grows not only from individual resourcing, but from a sense of belonging to each other and to more-than-human nature. The workshop will offer space to share your own resources and spark ideas in the workshop’s community, while also deepening your connection with the wider web of life which can be a holding container, offering presence, grounding and belonging that reminds us we are not isolated selves, but interconnected.

This workshop offers an opportunity to experiment with practices that can be integrated into your everyday professional life, and to draw on resources that support a more sustainable, connected therapeutic practice. Expect creativity, movement, stillness, and time working both together and alone, a diverse offering for the diverse parts of you.

While the workshop focuses on the therapist, many of these practices can also be adapted for sharing with clients.

Vanessa Bear is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist working with adults and children and a certified Somatic Trauma Therapist. She has training in yoga therapy and eco-psychotherapy, and extensive experience integrating nature-connection and embodied practices into her work. Vanessa is the creator of the Wild and Wellbeing Card Deck and co-author, with Babette Rothschild, of the ‘Help for the Helper Workbook’ and the ‘8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery Workbook’.

Rather than relying on the expertise or interpretive authority of the supervisor, Four Elements taps into the creative potential of the group, recognising that we contain more experience, wisdom, imagination, and embodied knowledge than the sum of our parts.

Participants will experience a facilitated supervision process using live material brought by group members. After initial contracting and establishment of confidentiality boundaries, participants will move between different creative roles, engaging with clinical material using movement, imagery, voice, storytelling, witnessing, and relational reflection. These creative responses are offered not as interpretations, but as invitations into further reflection and meaning-making for participants.

The workshop explores supervision as a dynamic, collaborative field in which fragments of experience, affect, image, movement, memory, and relational knowing can emerge. Attention is placed not only on what is immediately figural within presented material, but on what may be implicit, peripheral, embodied, or waiting to be expressed through group process.

This is an opportunity to explore supervision not solely as a verbal or analytic practice, but as an embodied, imaginative, and relational encounter shaped through embodiment, creativity, and group process.

Theo Raymond is a body psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and psychotherapy trainer, based in London, UK. He is a trainer and training committee member at the Cambridge Body Psychotherapy Centre, UK, and tutor on The Body and Intersectionality in Psychotherapy at The Minster Centre, London, UK.