The body psychotherapist works directly or indirectly with the person as an essential embodiment of mental, emotional, social and spiritual life. He/she encourages and facilitates both internal self-regulation and the accurate perception of external reality.

Through his/her work, the body-psychotherapist makes it possible for alienated aspects of the person to become conscious, acknowledged and integrated parts of the self.

In order to facilitate this transition from alienation to wholeness, the body psychotherapist should have the following qualities:

1. Intuitive awareness and a reflective understanding of healthy human development.

2. Knowledge of different patterns of unresolved conflicts from childhood, corresponding with their specific chronic splits in mind and body.

3. The ability to maintain a consistent frame of reference and a differentiated sensitivity to the interrelatedness of:

(a) Signs in the organism indicating vegetative flow, muscular hypertension and hypotension, energetic blockage, energetic integration, pulsation, and the stages of increasing natural self regulative functioning, and

(b) The phenomena of psychodynamic processes of transference, countertransference, projection, defensive regression, creative regression, and various kinds of resistance.

-Adapted from the EABP definition of Body Psychotherapy.