Psychotherapeutic Postural Integration
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Psychotherapeutic Postural Integration (PPI), is an alternative body psychotherapy method, and is a wider development of Postural Integration (PI) .
It is an effective way to support individuals in dealing with the challenges in their lives in a more creative manner. The method helps them to change in every part of themselves, supporting them to become more aware in their bodies and empowering them to change their "bodymind" - that is - their bodies, emotions and attitudes, thus furthering their personal developement.
At a practical level, PPI is an active psychotherapy in which the patient–client and practitioner (psychotherapist) interact to guide the development of self-awareness and consciousness, enabling clients to increase their sense of well-being, their capacity to feel, their ability to emotionally express themselves with clarity in their relationships.
Psychotherapeutic Postural Integration integrates a whole process and procedure of touch into the ongoing psychotherapeutic process. This method therefore has a special place in the field of body-psychotherapy. In PPI the therapeutic touch, through stimulation of the layers of fascia, allows the opening of specific dimensions of experience and history of the body and its different parts.
In the process of the sessions, bodymind connections become apparent linking memories, physical tensions, sensations and emotions. As in every psychotherapy, the client goes deeper into their own self. The main difference to verbal therapies is the role of the body in the process. The interaction between the spoken words, the sensations experienced and the emotions felt becomes deeper. The clients therefore get a greater felt sense of themselves, their inner resources and their inner tensions. Hidden wounds and old sufferings from personal family history are consciously expressed in the body.
In the presence of a supportive therapist, the clients can release the weight of emotional charge which holds them down and often, like a keystone, links different webs of tension in the bodymind. The result can be a lightening and softening and greater sense of aliveness.
To engage aliveness is a fundamental strength of PPI:
- The client is regularly encouraged to allow movements, sounds, words to emerge, to allow the breath to come and go, to allow emotions …
- The clients are at the centre of their psychotherapeutic process; it is they who take a stand in reality, whether that reality be hopelessness, suffering, self-rejection or a sense of ease and acceptance.
- The method follows the client and adapts to each client; it is not a predefined process, nor a standard procedure.
Postural Integration (PI) was originally developed in the 1960s by Jack Painter, Ph.D., (°1933) a former Professor at the University of Miami after many years of self-exploration in the fields of humanistic psychology, deep massage, acupressure and the Five Elements system, Gestalt therapy, but especially with Reichian therapy in combination with the work and theories of Ida Rolf; it was further developed into Psychotherapeutic Postural Integration since the 1990s.
Postural Integration (PI) and Psychotherapeutic Postural Integration are taught and practiced in Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Australia and are organized within the International Council of PsychoCorporal Integration Trainers (ICPIT) .
