Somatic psychology lineage and gratitude

One of the challenges in somatic psychology is giving full due homage to our forebears – the people who carried the torch forward.

In my own experience, my lineage comes from decades of training centered at the Esalen Institute, the University of Tennessee, and elsewhere. My primary teachers were John Soper, John Heider, Christine Stewart Price, Dorothy Charles, Eric Erickson, Dorothy Thomas, Stephen Harper, the Los Angeles Gestalt Awareness Practice Group, Seymour Carter, Will Schutz, Michael Nash, Kristina Coop Gordon, Alla Vollovich, Mark Goldstein, Crystallin Dillon, and the Bay Area T-Group. These people were (are are) essential in forming me as a clinician.

I also had the good fortune to study with Ron Kurtz (Hakomi), Morgan Goodlander (Gestalt), Eleanor Criswell Hanna (Hanna Somatics), Emilie Conrad Daoud (Continuum), Mark Reese (Feldenkrais), Harriet Goslins (Cortical Field Reeducation), Fritz Smith (Zero Balancing), Suzanne Scurlock-Durana (Somato-Emotional Release), Heinz Stark (Family Constellations), Michael Meade and James Hillman (Men's work), Gordon Wheeler (Gestalt Field Theory),Ilana Rubenfeld (Rubenfeld Synergy Method), Zuza Engler and Vinn Marti (Soul Motion), Dean Juhan (Trager Work), Paula Shaw (Psychodrama), Nina Wise (Motion Theater) and countless others.

This curriculum is deeply influenced by the work of everyone listed above, and also Wilheim Reich, Alexander Lowen, Pat Ogden, Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre, Eugene Gendlin, Ann Weiser Cornell, Susan Aposhyan, Daniel Siegel, Stephen Porges and many others. 

Thank you for laying down so much work so that we could all begin to walk down the path.

Photo credit Aaron Burden @ Unsplash