Unveil Podcast Episode 57: The Practice of Embodying Emotions, Working with the Subtle Bodies & Transforming Trauma – with Dr Raja Selvam PhD
Today’s episode offers a window into truly integrative healing modalities, through the lens of Integrative Somatic Psychology™, with Dr Raja Selvam, PhD.
During this episode, Victoria chats to Raja about:
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how embodying emotions has become foundational to transformational development work and healing from the imprint of trauma
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the work of embodying emotions and how Raja uses this personally to support his movement through life
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the real needs for healing
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integrating modalities and how to bridge the worlds of psychotherapy and the physiological diagnoses
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“psychosomatic” illness – what it really is and where it really comes from
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the acceleration possible when emotional embodiment and energy work is brought into the therapeutic container
And so, so much more. This episode is peppered with great insights from one of the pioneers of integrative, somatic healing modalities – and a rich source of support for anyone either training in this field, or who would like support for their own personal process.
Dr. Raja Selvam, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist from the US, is the developer of Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) (a complementary therapeutic approach based on affective neuroscience and the emerging paradigm of embodied cognition, emotion, and behavior in cognitive neuroscience and psychology) to improve cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical, energetic, relational, and spiritual outcomes in all therapy modalities. Dr. Selvam is also a senior trainer in Dr. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE) Professional Trauma Training Program. He has taught for twenty-five years in nearly as many countries in North and South Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and the Far East. His work is informed by older body psychotherapy systems of Reichian Therapy and Bioenergetic Analysis, newer body psychotherapy systems of Bodynamic Analysis and Somatic Experiencing, and bodywork systems of Postural Integration and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. His work is also inspired by Jungian and archetypal psychologies, Kleinian and intersubjective schools of psychoanalysis, affective neuroscience, quantum physics, yoga, Polarity Therapy, and Advaita Vedanta (a spiritual psychology from India). His book The Practice of Embodying Emotions: A Method for Improving Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Outcomes was published on March 22, 2022.
Dr. Selvam’s work also draws upon his clinical psychology PhD dissertation on Advaita Vedanta and Jungian psychology, based on which he has published an article titled “Jung and Consciousness,” in the international analytical psychology journal Spring in 2013. He did trauma outreach work in India in 2005–2006 with survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, based on which he has published an outcome study titled “Somatic Therapy Treatment Effects with Tsunami Survivors,” in the journal Traumatology in 2008. Dr. Selvam’s work is also inspired by the work he did in Sri Lanka in 2011–2013 with survivors of war, violence, loss, and displacement, and with mental health professionals engaged in treating them, after Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war ended in 2009.
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