Somatic Psychotherapy Today

01/26/2026

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Steph McIsaac's review of Living Toward Justice: A Time Capsule.

Steph (PhD) is a Senior Writing Consultant at CUNY Graduate Center. His ability to read, synthesize, and shape an 'academic' review with a poetic flow created an informative and pleasurable read. He notes:

"Living Toward Justice is an archive of aliveness. From ordinary practices and dream-like reflections to transformative longings and wild imaginations of a more just world, the book’s contributors share verbatim reflections on the embodied ways they live toward social justice in their everyday lives.

The book emerged from the Living Justice Project, a global ethnographic initiative carried out in 2022 and coordinated by Sonya Pritzker, an anthropologist and somatic practitioner. The collaborative project brought together more than fifty practitioners working at the intersections of embodiment, healing, and social justice (all of whom are named as co-authors). Pritzker and the collective worked collaboratively to produce an archive of collective memory: a curated collection of reflections, observations, images, practices, dreams, poetry, and inquiries. Rather than writing a how-to guide offering new solutions or a study demonstrating the outcomes of embodied social justice approaches, Pritzker frames the book as a shared time capsule of individual practitioner entries on the embodied ways they were living toward justice at a specific historical juncture.

I deeply appreciated how Living Toward Justice asks the reader to accompany practitioners in process, centering, unfolding and emergence, responsiveness, and attunement. In a world that focuses on outcomes as a measure of the worth or effectiveness of somatic practices, the book actively resists this tendency by dwelling in the iterative, messy, challenging, and affirming process of living from the present moment with deep longing for transformative futures. Living Toward Justice is a book to read slowly, return to often, and engage with somatically. You may find, as I did, deep inspiration, much-needed reminders of the radical possibilities of embodied practice, and fierce accompaniment in the process."

To read his complete review, please visit our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday

01/12/2026

Attunement is the envelope that makes exploration with safety, trust, curiosity, openness, spontaneity, compassion, play, humor, imagination, and connection possible.
Join in for this free event. Invite colleagues and friends.

01/07/2026

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Maria Strömberg’s newest article, The Biology of Trust – and Beyond: A deepened perspective on presence, perception, and safety. In this article, she examines safety not in terms of external conditions but in terms of how it feels. She offers “an understanding of safety that is not only biological, but lived: where perception, the body and conscious seeing come together in the experience of trust.”

In earlier writings, she described a transdisciplinary model, Conscious ANS Navigation, that integrates neurobiology, perception, and existential presence (Strömberg, 2025). In this new article, she further develops that perspective by focusing on how trust grows through the body’s relationship to perception and the environment, and on why we do not have to create safety from scratch so much as reconnect to it.

“Rather than viewing the ventral state as a passive 'calm mode,' Conscious ANS Navigation characterizes it as a living gateway in which both sympathetic activation and parasympathetic rest can coexist. The key is self-bearing presence – the capacity to allow feelings, sensations, and thoughts to move through the body while some part of us can observe and hold them.”

“She notes that what “we” long for is not more control, but more contact. More real presence – where the body gets to know that it is here. Not as a concept, but as lived experience.”
“And there, in presence, trust appears – not as something we achieve, but as something that returns.”

You can read her complete article on our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

12/09/2025

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Dirk Marivoet's “lyrical essay” entitled, The Poetics of Unnamed Emotion: From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to Core Strokes®

Dirk playfully and skillfully explores the kinship between John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and the somatic language of Core Strokes®. Through the meeting of word and fascia, he reveals how both poetic naming and therapeutic touch give voice to unspoken emotion. A meditation on breath, empathy, and embodiment, Dirk invites readers to feel language as a living tissue where sorrow transforms into resonance.

You can read his essay on our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

11/18/2025

SPT Magazine is pleased to offer Volume 15, Number 1, 2025. In this issue, we delve into breath work in psychotherapy, the living language of fascia, AI on the couch, deepening couples’ therapy, and a new perspective on our nervous system. We feature insightful articles and book reviews from clinicians and researchers that explore how the body holds stories and how we can facilitate their release and transformation.

While many of these articles ran separately over the course of this year, we know not everyone sees the individual posts. We added some new articles, too!

Our goal at SPT Magazine is to offer quality content that adds new information to the literature and advances our work in somatic psychology into the mainstream of psychotherapy. SPT Magazine is an international publication, and all of our contributors are free to be their full, individual, and talented selves.

We invite you to engage with the ideas presented here, and we welcome your feedback. Tell us what you love, what inspires you, and how we can continue to make this a valuable resource for our community.

You can download the PDF at our website, www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

11/07/2025

Dirk Marivoet shared a recent interview with Hana Hniličková where he talks about "the Energetic Breath Cycle, the possibility to meet oneself on deeper level when working with fascia (connective tissue of the body) and the healing power of relational presence." He speaks slowly and softly, each word carrying meaning, making it easy to understand his words and work. We appreciate his sharing this teaching moment with our readers.

You can find his interview on our website at www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday.com

10/29/2025

We are pleased to announce that this event mentioned below includes an option to get 2 CEs. If you'd like to get the book to go with your study, get 20% off the price now. Use the following discount code: 25SMA4. Order here, https://www.routledge.com/Being-with-the-Body-in-Depth-Psychology-Development-Trauma-and-Transformation-in-the-Unspoken-Realm/Holifield/p/book/9781032286082

10/26/2025

Breathing, something everyone does who's alive, is coming to the forefront in psychotherapeutic settings. Colleagues are offering workshops and presentations on breathwork, and Norton Publications sent me Jessica Dibb's new book, Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation.

When I started reading Jessica’s book, I had no idea of the depth and breadth of conscious breathwork, or the practical and essential skills and tools that Therapist-Breathworkers acquired during their training. Jessica’s personal practices, extensive studies, life experiences, and teaching history span decades, cross oceans, and dive into the inner reaches of science/neuroscience, spirituality, and psychotherapy. She offers a comprehensive compendium that’s part textbook, part training guide, part personal memoir, and part invitation to experience the life-altering existence we can achieve when we incorporate breathwork into our daily lives.

To read our review, please visit www.SomaticPsychotherapyToday

10/02/2025

Stephen W. Porges recently shared his latest paper, updating his work on the Polyvagal Theory, on LinkedIn.

For those who missed the announcement, we wanted to share his post here:

"Pleased to share my most recent paper, an update of Polyvagal Theory that covers more than 55 years of my research.
Published 'open access' in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience:"
https://lnkd.in/ggSMdE8c

Many thanks to Dr. Porges for his dedication and profound work, which has impacted so many people in myriad ways.

Polyvagal theory (PVT) offers an integrative model of autonomic regulation that accounts for the evolution, neuroanatomy, and functional organization of the ...

10/01/2025

SPT Magazine offers our remembrances of Dr. Marti Glenn.

Her amazing energy and love touched many lives, helping babies to heal and thrive, and caregivers to learn more about our entire life process.

Per AI: "She was the co-founder and Clinical Director of Ryzio Institute, and the founding president of Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. She holds degrees in prenatal, perinatal, somatic, and clinical psychology. Glenn served on the board of directors for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) and chaired several of their conferences. She co-produced the documentary Trauma, Brain, and Relationship: Helping Children Heal; and has appeared in What Babies Want; What Babies Know; and Reducing Infant Mortality and Improving the Health of Babies."

I met Marti when I started my studies at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Her presence, her gentle nudges, her clear questions and expectations guided me deeper into myself, enriching my life and my studies.

Thank you, Marti, for everything you created and for being so strong and grounded in what you believed to be right and true.

09/18/2025

Something essential emerges as people begin to feel their breath again, rather than controlling or manipulating it. Dirk Marivoet’s “The Energetic Breath Cycle™: Phenomenological Layers of Respiratory Experience” moves beyond static techniques, offering a pathway of being, of deep listening, of attunement.

SPT Magazine is pleased to share Dirk’s work with the Energetic Breath Cycle™. This article builds upon his earlier work on the Fascia Texture Typology™ (2025), where tissue qualities were described as diagnostic and therapeutic signposts. In a similar spirit, the Energetic Breath Cycle™ expands Reich’s or**sm formula into a more differentiated map of respiratory phases, each linked with developmental tasks, character adaptations, and relational dynamics. While empirical research in respiratory psychophysiology, polyvagal theory (Porges, 2011), and affect regulation (Schore, 2012) provides critical foundations, the clinical dimension presented in this article emphasizes what therapists directly observe and engage with in real-time.

09/12/2025

SPT Magazine honors the passing of Franklyn Sills.

Cherionna Menzam-Sills is holding a Memorial Ceremony for Franklyn on Sunday, October 5th, at 2pm - Karuna Dartmoor.

Colleagues are invited to join them. There will be time to share memories of him, offer poems and songs, spend time together, and share food.

Please RSVP by early to mid-September by emailing Katherine at admin@karunadartmoor.co.uk

If you are not able to join us in person, there will be a livestream and recording available at: https://www.youtube.com/live/1MrRhgOrL4E

The Family will be having a private funeral in September.