*Below, I provide a basic overview of Soul Works, and how this differs from traditional psychology and psychotherapy. For a more in-depth discussion of this approach, click or tap the button below.
Psychology for Living Beings - Not Machines or Computers
Living Heart Intelligence: Soul Care and Somatics, is a theory and practice of cultivating the holistic health and intelligence of people viewed as innately competent and capable manifestations of nature's brilliance. Traditionally, psychology and psychotherapy take a mechanical, problem-oriented approach to human life. From this perspective, the job of researchers and clinicians is to find what's wrong with a person (i.e., diagnosing someone with an individual/internal problem referred to as a "mental illness," "mental disorder," or other "condition") and then bestow their special powers as a credentialed authority to fix what's wrong or faulty in a client or patient.
Soul Care and Somatics is fundamentally different. It's similar to therapy, but with a few key differences. A primary distinction is that from the perspective of Soul Care and Somatics, the undesirable experiences that typically prompt people to seek therapy (e.g., anxiety, depression, difficulties with attention/focus, lethargy, despair, dysregulated behavior, compulsive attachments/addictions, etc.) are viewed not as symptoms of a mental disorder, disease, syndrome, or pathological condition, but as manifestations of one's larger and more complete Self trying to self-heal and return to its natural state of wholeness, health, and well-being.
Given this, I engage clients as equals, as partners in a shared journey of the challenges and opportunities of striving to be as fully human as possible. I do not believe that humans are fundamentally faulty, broken, pathological, or prone to disease; rather, I believe that humans are characteristically intelligent, resilient, beautiful, weird (in a good way), and full of potential. The problems you're experiencing aren't reflective of a "defect" in you; they reflect a profound disconnect between our natural selves as members of the wild Earth community and the thoroughly artificial environments characterizing modern, tech-obsessed industrial society. The remedy to this, therefore, is not to "fix" you, like a mechanic repairs a malfunctioning car -- it is to reacquaint you with your innate strength and intelligence and then hone your abilities to embody your natural wildness within the wayward constructs of contemporary consumer-conformist society. This is Soul Care and Somatics.
Fixing problems v. actualizing potential
In the chart below, I've summarized some of the key differences between traditional psychology/psychotherapy and Soul Care and Somatics.
My approach draws from the "Nature-Based Map of the Psyche" developed by the eco-depth psychologist Bill Plotkin, PhD in his landmark work Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche. Here is a nice summary of this framework from Dr. Plotkin:
The Nature-Based Map of the Psyche highlights our positive, life-enhancing resources and perspectives and extols them as foundational to our humanity. The accent is not on our fragmented parts or wound stories, or how our psyches stall out in neurotic patterns, or how we might merely recover from trauma, pathology, or addiction; rather, the accent is on our wholeness and potential magnificence, how we can enhance our personal fulfillment and participation in our more-than-human world, and how we can become fully human and visionary artisans of cultural renaissance." (Wild Mind, p. 9)
Somatics and the Embodied Mind
What is "somatics?" In essence, I use the term somatics to indicate an approach to psychology and cognition that does away with the mind-body duality. Quite literally everything in human life is a cognitive experience, including the physical body and everything that comes along with it. In my PhD dissertation, I explored the historical roots of the theory that human existence is split between two orders of reality: mental and physical (mind=mental; body=physical). I then surveyed the best available scientific evidence amassed over the course of civilization and revealed that there is no good scientific basis for this duality. The life-mind sciences are currently in the midst of a dramatic paradigm shift away from this outdated idea, as research has undeniably shown that the "physical body" simply is "the mind" -- in other words, everything we experience is simultaneously "physical" and "mental" (and many other forms of cognition, as well).
In addition to the unfortunate pathologizing approach characteristic of modern psychology and medicine, the other major limitation of traditional therapy is that it has inherited the views of modern anatomy and 20th century psychology/neuroscience that cast the body as a machine and the mind as a computer, respectively.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We are neither machines nor computers. Living beings are something fundamentally different than material technologies, and this requires a fundamentally different approach to health and well-being. We are not "software" (mind) and "hardware" (body) -- this is a terrible and terribly unscientific (mis)understanding of the human phenomenon. We are irreducibly complex beings with multidimensional cognitive abilities and experiences that are always simultaneously "physical" and "mental." In other words, when our sense of Self and functional integration is fragmented or disrupted in the normal course of living (as happens for everyone, at some point in life, on some level), a return to wholeness and health requires working with the entirety of our being, not just ideas, thoughts, and "mental" emotions (as is centralized in talk therapy and similar techniques).
Thus, in short, somatics refers to an approach to healing and wellness that respects and leverages the embodied aspects of everything that therapists and other clinicians typically address, including thoughts, feelings, emotions, intuitions, dreams, memories, imaginations, traumas, senses, aches and pains, mobility challenges, and more.
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