The formal study of human behavior dates back more than 2000 years to the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.  Plato conceived that the brain was the means of the mental process, where Aristotle believed that the heart was at the center of the psyche.  In the late 1700’s through the early 1900’s the study of human behavior took hold and was developed by many philosophers, academics and researchers including: Franz Mesmer (who’s form of hypnotism led to the term “being mesmerized”), Phillippe Pinel (who championed humane treatment for those with mental illness), and Sigmund Freud (who created the concept of modern clinical practice).

Throughout its history, psychology has principally been devoted to the study of human cognitive functioning and behavior.  Freud’s idea of clinical practice – working in the medical model with an expert, one on one, to solve mental and behavioral problems – has evolved into the practice of psychotherapy.  From the 1700’s, and in many forms of psychotherapy still active today, the primary focus of the work is on the “patient” as someone who needs help and the clinician/expert who provides it.

In the past 50 years, the field of understanding human behavior has undergone a transformation.  Clinical research and experience have revealed important findings.  Most importantly, analyzing “patients” and teaching them psychological theory does not reliably help people make meaningful or lasting change in their feelings of depression, anxiety, shame, anger, addiction, low self esteem, and meaning of life or spiritual issues.

In the 1950’s, Carl Rogers developed a school of therapy he called Client-Centered or Person-Centered Psychotherapy.  In his clinic, working with clients, and tapping into his own and other colleagues’ natural instincts and experience, he came to understand that people feel safe, connected and open when they are with someone who is sincere in their understanding of them and who expresses genuine unconditional positive regard toward them.  At the time Rogers’ thinking was considered truly radical.  Today more and more studies show that the quality of the relationship between client and therapist is the most important factor in creating successful outcomes in therapy.

Rogers discovered that all people have a pretty darn good radar system for detecting when others are not being genuine and unconditionally caring.  When people aren’t genuine and unconditionally caring towards us, we don’t trust in them.  And if there isn’t trust, then it makes sense that receptivity, learning new things and initiating change will be difficult or impossible.

Rogers went on to recognize that all people have problems in their lives, and at the same time, all people have an innate and natural intuition that reveals to them what they need and how they need to proceed in order to move towards healing (even though our view can be a bit clouded at times, and we may not always do, what we know we need to).

Rogers’ appreciation for human, inner wisdom was a dramatic departure from the teacher student model that dominates much of psychotherapeutic thought, even today. Patients in the hierarchical model of Freud became “clients” in Rogers’ model of deep respect for people and their natural intuition.

From these basic foundations, Rogers developed an approach to psychotherapy, which involves the therapist “participating with” or “being with” the client in their life journey, through listening, seeing and sensing.  Therapists use their knowledge and expertise to understand the client, more and more fully.  And, it is in the reflecting back of that understanding that the client hones their awareness and intuition of themselves and their own process of healing.  This non-directive type of relationship enables the client to fully experience and express themselves and to move within their process, authentically, according to how they feel. The therapist’s role is one of experienced facilitator or guide, helping clients to clarify and connect with their natural intuition of what feels right, and offering clients a safe space to discover a path that will take them towards where they need to go.

Client-Centered or Person-Centered work is a co-creative process of self-discovery, self-empowerment, and personal fulfillment.



One important way that we protect our selves from pain is to unconsciously create physical tension in our bodies.  This can sometimes be called “steeling” our selves against a situation. It works by blocking or disrupting the energy pathways that transmit pain signals to the brain.

Another way our minds attempt to protect us from overwhelming and painful situations is by engaging a sophisticated mental system of denying the experiences and feelings.  In some cases we make an attempt of outright externalization of the anxiety, through a process called dissociation.

Over time, and with repeated exposure, we tend to respond to pain and other difficult emotions in familiar ways.  And while this familiar process of protecting our selves from hurt is pretty effective, other related and troubling physical and emotional symptoms are usually left over, like depression, anxiety, stress, guilt, shame, low self-esteem, confusion, anger and frustration.  And we are left consciously unaware of most of the tension, denial or dissociation.

In the young, these coping strategies can be literally life saving.  Often we had no other option but to grapple with difficult situations, the best we could.  As we grow up, however, the consequences of these habituated, unconscious modes of behavior begin to affect our daily lives. Our minds are actively operating at cross-purposes with the truth of our experience and feelings.  Moreover, the habituated, unconscious process of creating tension, denial and dissociation, set up to block our old painful situations, also blocks our feelings of pleasure and fulfillment!  And where, as children we weren’t mature enough and didn’t realistically have the opportunity to figure this all out – as adults, the situation is different.

Through a supportive, connecting and safe therapeutic relationship, we begin to trust and honor the truth of our past and present reality experience as the pathway toward healing.  Then if someone or something is causing us pain, we are fully aware of this truth, and we possess the tools of both the desire and the power to make another self-empowering choice.  We want joy in our lives, yet if our mind is habituated and unconscious of the true present reality of our experience, we cannot move towards and enact the appropriate behavior that will lead us toward that joy.

My next post will describe a revolution in therapeutic treatment pioneered by Carl Rogers and how his work swung open a critical gateway to uncovering our truth and achieving what we really, really want in our lives.

What is Psychotherapy?

Whether you’re considering individual, couples or group psychotherapy, it is helpful to know what psychotherapy actually is.  In general terms, psychotherapy involves forming a relationship with a psychotherapist who specializes in creating a safe, respectful and caring space for you to discover new ways of being in your life that serve you better.  Feelings of depression, anxiety, guilt, fear, trauma, stress, and low self-esteem do not serve us and effectively block access to our desire for joy, peace and fulfillment.

With me, psychotherapy is a process of supported self-discovery that offers an opportunity you can count on, to find understanding, resolution, and healing for the hurts and anxieties that suppress and frustrate your access to the life you really and truly want.  It is a facilitated process that leads you, on your own terms, to deeper and more fulfilling connections with your self, partners, friends and family, and to feeling healthier, happier and more alive.

Does Psychotherapy Really Work?

Countless studies have shown that it does. The effects of therapy have been measured in terms of improved social functioning, relief from anxiety, reductions in depression, and in just about every other way that improvement and effectiveness can be defined.

The U.S. Surgeon General, a notoriously conservative source says that – “Personal anxiety and mental turmoil are treatable … the evidence for treatment being effective is overwhelming… and the inescapable point is that studies demonstrate conclusively that Psychotherapeutic treatment is effective.”

Consumer Reports magazine concluded similarly.  In their extensive study of the topic, which relied largely on self-reports from patients, 9 out of 10 North Americans reported positive benefits from psychotherapy. Consumer Reports gave psychological health care a solid endorsement, and noted that treatment by highly qualified therapists was more likely to produce benefits.

An important study done by Kaiser Permanente, a large health care organization, on 10,000 of its patients, demonstrated that patients who receive Psychotherapeutic treatment reduce their health care utilization to a degree sufficient to entirely offset the cost of therapy. Kaiser discovered that treated patients tended to be healthier, happier and use less medical care of all types.  They also found that patients spent fewer days in the hospital and visited physicians less frequently.

In my next post I will talk why therapy is a critical component in creating joy, peace and fulfillment in our everyday lives.

To start with, take your shoes off, stand and bend your knees slightly.  While you are standing, gently flex your knees, and bring your awareness to what it is like to be in your body, right now.  Scan from your head down to your feet and make little mental notes as to how parts of your body feel.   Take a slow breath or two with your attention assessing your overall level of comfort.  Feel for any areas that may be in pain or tense, as you breathe.

Now feel your feet on the floor, and notice the texture of the surface you are standing on. Do your feet perceive it as rough or smooth, soft or hard or some other sensation?  How is your weight distributed between your feet?  Take a moment to bring awareness to this.  One foot may feel like it has more pressure or feel different than the other.  Maybe you are leaning more into your toes, or your heels, or maybe there is some pain in one place or another.  All the sensations that you are feeling are ok.

Grounding isn’t any particular way that we feel.  The powerful healing and transformative quality is solely in becoming aware of how we feel, in any particular moment.  There is nothing more to do; nothing in how you feel is in any way wrong or needs to be changed.  The beauty of this technique is that there is nothing to be concerned about or fixed.  It is the awareness, only the awareness that you are looking for.  Awareness is truth and it is the truth (according to Jesus and the Buddha) that brings us into reality and sets us free.  So it is the awareness that is transformational.

There is nothing more to do.  We are standing, gently flexing our knees, breathing and becoming aware of our connection to the ground and our bodies.  Each new sense of awareness allows us to see our selves and the world, more and more, without the distortions that cause conflict and pain in our lives.  Each new awareness brings us more and more into harmony with the abundance of reality.

Here are a few other grounding techniques I’ll give you to try.  No need to do more than one at a time.  Take a few moments whenever you feel that you are not fully present to the moment, or would like to feel more present in a moment.  It is important only to breathe a bit slower and deeper than normal and to see if you can allow your awareness to open fully to your experience of your body and your world.

Grounding Techniques

• With bare feet, curl your toes up and stretch them out a few times.  Sense what this feels like.  Then work your feet kindly down into the ground and see if you can become aware of what it is like to have your feet firmly planted in the earth’s soil.
• Rub the bottom, sides, and top of your feet gently on the floor, carpet or the ground.  Then place them flat and sense how this feels in your feet and in your whole body.
• Open your eyes and calmly look around you, as you breathe slowly in and out. See if you can open your awareness to the experience in your body of reality in your midst.
• Move around a bit. Feel what it is like to be in your body, in this moment. Stretch out your arms, hands, and fingers as you take some slow breaths.
• Peel an orange or a lemon. Breathe in deeply and notice the smell. Take a bite.  Roll the fruit gently around in your mouth as you focus on the full experience of the texture, taste, smell and other senses.
• Take some time to be with a pet.  As you breathe, see if you are aware of any changes in the way your body feels when you are with them.  Can you draw any part of their essence right up into you, with your breath?
• Take an unhurried shower or a bath.  Move a little and sense how you are, being in connection with the water.
• Go for a walk, dig in the dirt in your garden, or play some of your favorite music, while you breathe and calmly sense yourself and the world around you.
  While all of these techniques are simple, safe, gentle and comfortable to do, the experience of allowing our selves to fully take in the reality of what is actually happening now, while we do these simple movements, can be truly transforming.  I encourage you to try one or all of them out.  If you have any questions or need any assistance, please feel free to email or call me.  I’d be glad to help you.

Individual Client

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Being grounded means something slightly different to everyone, but in Body-Centered Psychotherapy, being grounded means that we are aware of what is happening within us and around us, in a specific moment.  Each of our orientations in reality develops gradually as we grow.  The trouble is, certain life experiences can cause our sense of reality to become distorted, without us even knowing it.

When we are caught in emotional conflicts, for example, it can be said we are “hung up” on something.  Emotional conflict is painful and we can literally lift our selves up and out of our grounded reality to avoid the pain of a thorny or challenging situation.

This lifting up to avoid pain often rescued us, when we were young.  As children we hadn’t, as yet, become aware of other, more effective strategies to resolve conflict. At that time we had no knowledge, nor any power to advance down a more effective road.

And, as we lifted our selves up off of our ground, again and again, to avoid pain, the repetition became a pattern or a distortion in our reality.  In other words, what advances with us into adulthood, is the distortion.  We thought that by allowing our selves to become ungrounded, we could avoid the pain and the consequences of unresolved conflict.

As adults, even though we have the opportunity to discover and engage a more mature perspective and we have distance from those past situations, our distorted reality is blind to our opportunity to take action and move toward a resolution of the conflict, because it is understandably locked in our childhood illusion. Yet, without taking the step of firmly planting our feet back on the ground, and sensing what is real, we cannot begin the process of discerning truth from childhood distortions.

Grounding is an exercise that takes almost no time, and will make a significant difference in your life.  The outlay of just a few moments of awareness of how you are standing on the earth can literally expose a vast new world of positive experiences.

In my next post I’ll go into this simple and powerful process and give you some easy, safe and comfortable techniques for accessing your world in a life changing way.

Madeleine Byrnes, Supervisor

Individual Client

Couples Client

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