Body Psychotherapy A–Z.
A plain-language guide to the ideas, methods and questions used across this section. Body psychotherapy contains many different traditions: some terms come from Reichian body psychotherapy; others belong to Biodynamic, Bodynamic, trauma-informed, movement or contemporary somatic approaches; some are broader psychotherapy ideas; and some have been developed here to ask what changes when body psychotherapy meets disability, chronic illness and bodily difference.
This A–Z tells you what a term means, where it comes from, how strongly the claim should be taken, and, where relevant, what disability changes about the question.
You do not need to agree with a concept because it appears here. This is a map of the field, not a list of things your body is supposed to do.
The short version
A plain-language guide to the terms used across body psychotherapy, from Reichian, Biodynamic and Bodynamic traditions to trauma-informed and somatic approaches, plus some terms developed on this site. Each entry says what the term means, where it comes from, how strongly the claim should be taken, and what disability changes about it. The important distinction: appearing here doesn’t mean a concept is established or that you have to agree with it. Some terms are well supported; others are traditions’ own ideas or this site’s proposals. Next step: look up one term you’ve met and check how strong the claim behind it is.
Start from what’s actually happening.
Find the language below that helps you explore what is happening.
“I struggle to know what my body is telling me.”
“Grounding exercises don’t work for my body.”
“I’m tired of my body being interpreted.”
“I need help from other people and don’t think that makes me less autonomous.”
“I want to understand anger without being told to hit or push something.”
“I’m a therapist wondering what my own body is doing in the room.”
Five small questions to carry through any entry.
A description of experience, a therapeutic concept, a clinical hypothesis, a historical theory and an established physiological claim are not the same kind of thing, even when they sit in the same paragraph. And a concept should create more understanding or choice: if it makes somebody’s body less believable, the concept needs questioning, not the body.
Three different kinds of tag.
Where it comes from
What kind of page it is
How certain the claim is
Most entries only need the first kind of tag. The third only appears where a claim genuinely needs qualifying — for example, Energy Distribution is a historical claim, and Polyvagal Theory is contested. A concept can be clinically interesting without being established biological fact.
Before interpreting any body on this page
- Describe before interpreting.
- Ask before deciding.
- Pain deserves belief before symbolism.
- Impairment is not automatically defence.
- Stillness is not automatically shutdown.
- Dependence is not failed autonomy.
- More movement is not automatically more health.
- The person living in the body remains an important source of knowledge about it.
Every term in this glossary eventually returns to one question: who gets to decide what this body means? Not only the client, because therapists, doctors and physiotherapists may genuinely notice something useful. But equally not the therapist, because they know the theory. Knowledge should be negotiated rather than imposed.
No entries match that search.
A
The body’s interrupted impulse to act — to flee, push away, or reach — during an overwhelming experience. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy asks what the organism wanted to do, what stopped it, and what form of completion is actually appropriate now.
The felt sense of having real choice over one’s own body and actions. One of this site’s core outcome measures for what body psychotherapy is actually trying to build toward.Glossary entry only
How repeated social experience — not just individual history — can become embodied.
Wilhelm Reich’s term for chronic muscular patterns organised around danger, shame, or forbidden feeling. Genuinely useful as clinical formulation; dangerous if applied to disability without discrimination. See Disability Is Not Armour.
A wheelchair, prosthetic, or device can be part of a person’s lived body-world — or experienced as a tool they use. Both are valid; neither is assumed.
A therapist’s felt attraction to a client — not a failure by itself, but something that needs naming and bringing to supervision, never acted on.
Touch as an ongoing, responsive conversation, informed by the practitioner’s observation and the client’s own felt sense — which raises the question of whose interpretation of a sensation actually counts.
B
Alexander Lowen’s extension of Reichian ideas into structured postures and grounding exercises, often held under physical strain.
Gerda Boyesen’s tradition — self-regulation, the organism’s own timing, and “emotional digestion,” developed as a gentler alternative to Reich’s more forceful armour-breaking model.
A hands-on technique using varying pressure and strokes informed by ongoing feedback from the client’s autonomic responses.
The release of held tension or emotional charge — sighing, warmth, a felt sense of letting go. Doesn’t require a visible physical release to count as real.
David Boadella’s integration of motor, emotional, and perceptual streams of experience.
A physical pattern organised to protect against something — fear, shame, overwhelm. See Resistance for this site’s core stance on when to soften a defence and when to respect it.
A person’s internal sense of their own body’s shape, size, and appearance — shaped by lived experience, culture, and disability-specific messaging alike.Glossary entry only
Lisbeth Marcher’s developmental-resource tradition, organised around Presence, Energy Regulation, and Contact/Connection — genuinely distinct from Biodynamic Psychotherapy.
What the shoulders are thought to carry, symbolically and literally — connects directly to the Burden Complex.
C
What happens to anger when expressing it might cost you the care you need.
The release of pent-up emotion, often through intense expression. This site is deliberately sceptical of simple catharsis models — anger doesn’t necessarily need screaming or hitting to be real; it needs recognition, language, and a genuine outlet.Glossary entry only
Yes — regulation can be relational, technological, and assisted, and still be genuine self-regulation.
A felt sense of “home base” to act from. See Finding Your Centre — doesn’t require a specific physical location in the torso.
Holding intensity without needing to shrink or disappear. See Holding Energy Without Disappearing.
One of Bodynamic Psychology’s three core ego strengths — the capacity for genuine relational connection, explored through reaching, receiving, and pushing away.Glossary entry only
What happens in a therapist’s own body while sitting with a client — tension, an urge to rescue, discomfort. Real information about the relational field, never automatic proof of anything about the client.
D
Movement itself as the primary therapeutic medium.
Real, ongoing need held without developmental shame — needing help is not failed autonomy.
A therapist’s felt unease in session — sometimes genuine relational information, sometimes simply unfamiliarity, especially around disability.
The release of built-up nervous-system charge. Treated across this site as one possible outcome among several, not the required marker of successful work.Glossary entry only
Gentle, rhythmic movement and awareness practices releasing tension gradually rather than through confrontation.
E
Anger as a real, mobilisable protective force — not something requiring a fist to be legitimate.
A non-disabled therapist’s own bodily reactions to disability — flinching, pity, an urge to compensate — examined directly even when the therapist’s stated values are genuinely inclusive.
The idea that past experience can be held in the body, not only in narrative memory. Treated across this site as a useful clinical metaphor, not settled physiological fact.Glossary entry only
A limit that can be registered and communicated in any form — speech, AAC, gesture, or a quiet internal knowing.
Psychological life lived and expressed through the body. This site’s central caution: embodiment doesn’t require a specific range of movement, sensation, or physical capacity to be genuine.
A Reichian-derived concept describing how vitality is thought to move through the body. Clinical metaphor, not a physiological measurement.
This section’s honest evidence-labelling system across every major concept covered.
Bodynamic’s own instruction: treat a movement as a genuine question, not a performance with a correct answer.
F
Rest as embodied agency, not automatic withdrawal or failure.
What genuine completion means for a nervous system with a limited daily energy budget.
When a therapist’s own tiredness is genuine countertransference — and when it’s simply tiredness.
A therapist’s own fear in session — of saying the wrong thing, of a client’s pain, of a medical situation they feel unprepared for.
See Centering.
Eugene Gendlin’s practice of attending to the body’s “felt sense” of a situation. “I don’t have a felt sense right now” is a complete, valid answer.
G
Developer of Biodynamic Psychotherapy; trained in the Reichian tradition before building a gentler, self-regulation-based alternative.
Grounding is a psychological function — orientation, support, present-time awareness — not a requirement to stand on two feet.
The Bodynamic process version of grounding, including the important caution that grounding is an invitation, not a compulsory route to regulation.
I
The sense of what’s happening inside one’s own body. Can be unreliable, absent, or overwhelmed by pain for some disabled people — “I don’t know” is legitimate data, not a failed exercise.Glossary entry only
The moment a hunch about a client’s body stops feeling like a hypothesis and starts feeling like an established fact.
K
A therapist’s practice of sensing bodily resonance with a client as part of formulation. Information about the relational field, never proof about the client.
M
Reclaiming bodily authorship after a body has spent years being managed rather than inhabited.
More movement is not automatically more health; a small, available movement can carry the same weight as a large one.
O
See Self-Regulation — and Can a Body Self-Regulate With Assistance? for this site’s key correction to it.
P
Pain deserves to be believed first, and explored second — not automatically read as psychological holding.
Bodily experience that feels enjoyable, satisfying, comforting, exciting or simply good. Disabled bodies are often discussed through pain, function and risk; pleasure deserves psychological attention without being turned into another therapeutic task.Full page planned
Stephen Porges’s autonomic nervous system model. Widely used clinical vocabulary; specific mechanistic claims are directly disputed by physiologists.
Ending emotionally charged work well, with genuine time to settle before leaving — the stakes are higher for a body with a limited energy budget.
Boyesen’s term for a spontaneous, relationally alive core. This site’s key correction: core does not mean less disabled.
Boyesen’s proposal that audible gut activity reflects emotional processing. A historical clinical construct, not established physiology — and gut activity has many purely physical causes worth ruling out first.
R
Contact and its refusal, explored without requiring a specific arm movement.
The Biodynamic tradition’s own principle: respect resistance as protection rather than push through it. One of the most disability-compatible ideas in the whole field, largely unchanged.
The urge to help, fix, or protect a client — worth asking whose discomfort is actually being resolved.
Deliberate, chosen rest as sophisticated self-regulation in its own right, not a pause before “real” regulation resumes.
S
The protective organisation built through adaptation. This site’s key correction: not every disabled bodily pattern is protective adaptation — some is simply impairment. See Secondary Personality or Survival Adaptation?
The organism’s capacity to manage arousal and return to balance. Corrected on this site: regulation can be relational, technological, and assisted.
Boundary work exploring where you end and someone else begins — felt internally, never requiring a physical demonstration.
Pat Ogden’s trauma-informed approach working with the body’s action tendencies.
Collapse, wanting to disappear, making oneself smaller. This site’s key addition: shame can be socially installed, not only intrapsychic — installed by being shamed for needing help, moving slowly, or being visibly different.Glossary entry only
Peter Levine’s nervous-system-focused trauma work, using titration and pendulation between activation and calm.
A felt sense of warmth, tingling, or flow during bodywork. A real subjective experience; its absence doesn’t mean nothing happened.
Regular, structured reflection on the therapist’s own bodily responses — the main reliable check against interpretive certainty and unexamined countertransference.
T
What being stared at, assessed, and medicalised does to a body over time.
Every therapist has a body; disability just makes that impossible to politely ignore.
The full section on what happens in a therapist’s own body during a session, and how to work with that information responsibly.
See Attuned Touch, Biodynamic Massage, and Touch, Pain & Sensory Difference. Body psychotherapy does not require touch.
V
Reich’s original technique working directly with the autonomic nervous system through breath and forced movement. One of the riskier concepts on this site if applied to a disabled body without real adaptation.
Cycles of expansion and contraction in bodily arousal. A historical theoretical model, not an established mechanism.
Expression that doesn’t require speech to be real — AAC, writing, and gesture carry the same weight.
W
Epistemic authority — whose account of a body actually counts, when a therapist’s read conflicts with the client’s own.
One question worth carrying: does this concept help me understand this body more accurately, or is it asking the body to fit the theory?
The body does not fail a theory. A theory can fail to understand a body.
Last reviewed: October 2026.
How to cite this page: Donaghey, C. (2026). Body Psychotherapy A–Z. Disability in Psychotherapy. Available at: https://disabilityinpsychotherapy.online/what-is-psychotherapy/body-psychotherapy-disability-lens/body-psychotherapy-a-z/ (Accessed: [date]).
Shared under CC BY-NC 4.0, with extra permissions for teaching, supervision and therapy. Credit the site. See Reusing This Material.