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My voice has been affected now for two days - raucous, hard to hear. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy concentrates so much on gait, posture and expression, but in this moment I wish the source books had acknowledged a little more just what a significant signal of inner disruption changes in vocal tone...

Today I have resolved to at least do something with my ‘dead’ arms - that, barring very bad weather or other exceptional circumstances, I will keep them out of my pockets. I have not encountered so much internal resistance to any postural change I have attempted as this one. My hands want to...

South Bank, London, a few hours later. This one is a diary entry and details the physical process from equilibrium to internal disorder, this evening, over a period of about 90-120 minutes. It includes details of the triggers and the apparent results, as well as I was able to observe them...

More non-diary notes from London’s South Bank, Sunday 19th November. I have said before that when my therapist asked me how I felt with my straighter back, I told her I was not ready to respond - that it was just an experiment which I was doing for its own sake, and whatever benefit it might...

South Bank, London, Sunday 19th November 2017 (non-diary entry) Some practical observations for those who might later find this thread and wonder about how you actually practice body observation and regulation. SURE-FOOTED If you read all through ‘Trauma and the Body’, you’ll find that severe...

Several disturbing and internally disruptive events today, and several positive ones. Stood in freezing wet weather for three hours in Trafalgar Square this afternoon with a very small handful of vegan campaigners, including the lady from whom I am renting the room in London. I’ve never done...

A problem in my London social experiments has become obvious to me this evening, and I don’t know how to tackle it, because I really don’t know if it’s physical (organic damage), psychological or cultural in nature. The venues where these social events take place all have very, very loud music...

These two months in London were kind of accidental. They came out of a desperation to ‘go home’ which has haunted me my whole life, and which is the primary work I will attempt with my T. I told her in our last session that though I am now committed to working with her on sensorimotor...

So...dear diary... About 3pm I finally decided to act, and joined an after-work drinks meet through one of the London socialising sites. It was an immense relief to have acted and decided. This was what I had not done in Bucharest when I arrived (not this specific action, but any kind of...

I almost regret writing yesterday’s post describing the experiment my T made with me in her office, because this relationship with the body under sensorimotor psychotherapy is practically impossible to put into words in a way that doesn’t seem dumb, obvious or trite. I feel that I could do more...

Will write more about my return to the UK for (at least) a couple of months later, but first I thought it might interest others who are curious about sensorimotor psychotherapy to hear my account of an actual exercise that I had in practice with my T today - the first time we have seen each...

Enough of the diary today. There are new things to report, but they can wait. I want to write about the work I have done with the back/spine in the last month, and about how biofeedback seems to function when you put sensorimotor psychotherapy into practice. (I apologize that I sometimes write...

Two hours into the date with the architect, and my feet have kept me grounded and conversational. We have had a lovely time in a great Indian restaurant in a part of Bucharest I had not seen before, near Timpuri Noi metro. What more could I do with my feet today, since they have proved...

She left, yesterday, my step-sister, happy, and talking...always talking! :) We met in 1993, but in the last few days we finally actually 'met'. I said in a text that it was nice to get to know her after all these years, and she has had a lovely time, she says. One of her many texts at and...

Someone ruffles her political feathers at the vegan dinner. My step-sister launches into the offending guest, who I met just five minutes ago for the first time, with real invective; no wit, no psychology, just straight, unprovoked abuse at hearing her core political beliefs casually challenged...

She is a wonderful person with a good heart (which is all you need for the highest epitaph); her activist passion for her humanitarian cause is something to admire (she converted me); she has so many wonderful qualities. She is spontaneous in a way I will have to work on for years with my...

Thank you so much for the support and interest, ladee :) I have much more of this coming up from Monday, in London until at least early January - and sharing a house with a woman I do not know. Also seeing my T in person again for the first time in four months; attending social events through...

First real test of what I have been practicing all these weeks. So I'm standing in the middle of freezing grey Bucharest at midday with my step-sister in tears and mounting hysteria. We're both advocates of a good cause, but I made (what I guess is) the mistake of criticizing her for (a month...

I think this kind of thing is why therapists struggle to get us to trust them, like mine did for months. Now that I have, I have to accept that another human being has a huge and central influence in my life...that they can move, die, or in some way exit my life after I struggled to make that...

Grounding is one of the earliest parts of the therapy process I'm currently going through. For me it falls into the 'boring but necessary' category most of the time. So I try and practice the techniques all the time, and it's becoming second nature (not quite there yet though), which is the...

I had a course of cognitive therapy in my late twenties which was very productive, and now am following sensory psychorimotor therapy. The cognitive therapy helped me understand a huge event that I hid from myself, and it really changed my life for the better. The current therapy is trying to...

I was wondering in these days if my life would have been a lot better if the cult of secrecy around all the mental illness in my family (particularly the maternal side), and my own destructive trauma symptoms, had been treated back in the day (I'm talking late 70s, early 80s). My schizophrenic...

So, is observing your body under stress all there is to this stage of psychorimotor therapy? Must the patient just ‘suffer and report’ to the therapist, resisting all attempts at comfort or remedy? No. The therapist, having observed you and your body use over an initial period (usually some...

At some point every trauma sufferer who starts any long-term treatment is going to have to fight a real war with a wooden rifle. I do know this. If we had control over the frequency, intensity or timing of our battles, we wouldn’t be PTSD sufferers, I guess. The episodes will come when they...

I'm writing from my apartment for the first time. It occurred to me as I wrote a previous entry in this journal that I engage in sensorimotor psychotherapy practice as soon as I leave the apartment every day. It happens literally on the threshold. Why? Most of the suffering in my life has...