Bodynamic Psychology.
Lisbeth Marcher’s developmental-resource tradition, organised around three broad ego strengths: Presence, Energy Regulation, and Contact/Connection. Its exercises are meant to be treated as experiments — sensing a state before, during, and after a movement, and exploring its psychological impact, not simply performing it.
Where this tradition comes from
Bodynamic Psychology grew out of research led by Lisbeth Marcher and colleagues into the connection between specific muscles, developmental stages, and psychological function — mapping particular movements and postures onto the psychological capacities they’re thought to develop or express. It sits alongside Biodynamic Psychotherapy as a major body-psychotherapy tradition, but the two are genuinely distinct: Boyesen’s Biodynamic work centres on self-regulation, touch, and “emotional digestion,” while Bodynamic work is built around structured movement experiments organised into developmental “resource” categories.
Exercise or experiment? Bodynamic work asks what a movement means, not just what it does.
Three ego strengths.
Presence
- Grounding
- Centering
- Balance
- Boundaries
Energy Regulation
- Containment
- Saying STOP
- Anger
- Increasing/decreasing activation
Contact & Connection
- Pulling & Pushing
- Reaching & Receiving
- Attachment
- Relational contact
The core reframe this section holds throughout
The Bodynamic book’s own exercises lean heavily on standing, walking, stomping, balancing, spine, hip, jaw, and resisted-movement work — though it does include seated variations and repeatedly encourages finding an “optimal” position rather than a fixed one. The question this site adds to every single one of these: what psychological capacity is this exercise actually trying to develop — not what movement does it require? See Exercise or Experiment? for the full reasoning behind this.
If the function is grounding, it doesn’t require feet. If the function is a boundary, it doesn’t require an arm. If the function is saying no, it doesn’t require speech. If the function is mobilising anger, it doesn’t require hitting anything. That distinction — function over form — is the whole reconstruction, applied consistently across every process page below.
The ten process families.
Each of the book’s major exercise families gets its own page here — explaining the psychological process, citing the source, then building a disability-informed reflective adaptation rather than reproducing the original exercises verbatim.
Reaching, Receiving, Pushing Away
Contact and its refusal, without requiring a specific arm movement.
From: CenteringFinding Your Centre
A felt sense of “home base,” wherever it’s actually found.
From: GroundingGrounding in the Body You Have
Orientation and stability, without a normative standing posture.
From: BoundariesSensing My Space
Where you end and someone else begins — felt, not demonstrated.
From: ContainmentHolding Energy Without Disappearing
Containing intensity without needing to shrink to do it.
From: Saying STOPEmbodied No
A limit that can be registered and communicated, in any form.
From: SpineSupport, Flexibility & Uprightness — Without a Normative Spine
What “upright” means when the spine itself doesn’t match the model.
From: AngerEmbodied Anger & Protective Force
Anger as a real, mobilisable force — not something requiring a fist.
From: ShouldersBurden, Effort & Mobilisation
What the shoulders carry, symbolically and literally, and what that means here.
From: JawVoice, Holding & Expression
Expression that doesn’t require speech to be real expression.