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 The United States Association for Body Psychotherapy was founded in 1996 as an umbrella organization for the emerging profession of body psychotherapy. Our dual mission is to advance the field of somatic psychology and to assist our members in getting their work out into the world. Thus we represent not just individual members like you but also various institutional organizations as we advocate for our field on a national stage. And we nurture promising students through their education, training and licensing .

Body-oriented or body-centered psychotherapy is an expansive, emerging, multi-faceted field that affirms the inseparability of mind, body, and spirit. It draws from somatic psychology which sees the mind revealed not only in relational styles, dreams, and cognitions, but in neurophysiology, posture, gestures, movement, bodily tensions and more. It explores the therapeutic possibilities of somatic roads to the unconscious and healing while honoring the wisdom of general psychology and psychotherapy through expanding and contributing to it. 

Body psychotherapy and somatic psychology are currently taught in a number of modality training programs and academic settings. Some of the ones you might recognize are: Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine) California Institute of Integral Studies; Hakomi (Ron Kurtz) Pacifica Graduate Institute; Focusing (Eugene Gendlin) Naropa University; Bioenergetic Analysis (Alexander Lowen) Prescott College.

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