Healing Sessions

Body Poem &
Dream Poem

Body Poem and Dream Poem: Illuminating Unthought Knowns

Body Poem creates space for you to have a new kind of conversation with your body, where it speaks and you listen deeply. The process often brings insight, revelation and epiphany, as well as moments of deep self-connection, care and tenderness.
The structure of a session unfolds as a guided meditation, where I support you to travel into the waters of sensation. I will then guide you in a somatic inquiry to let these sensations speak. Having harvested your body’s statements, I offer your own words back to you in the form of a poem. Afterwards, I gently guide you back out of the waters and onto the shore to digest the experience.
As the body poet or dream scribe, my core intention is to model total acceptance and honouring of you and your experience. In contrast to many other therapeutic methods and healing modalities, there is no analysis, interpretation or advice, only your own words reflected back to you with deep presence and profound respect.

What are the benefits of a Body Poem session?

Body Poem is primarily designed to support integration through acceptance. It achieves this through providing a safe way for ALL parts of you to be seen, heard and met with complete acceptance (as opposed to being subjected to analysis, interpretation or subtle judgments).

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”. From On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy by Carl Rogers.

Parts of you that may have previously been pushed out of your awareness might show up, wanting to be heard and included. Parts of you that have felt misunderstood or ignored may receive attention and understanding for the first time. When this happens, a movement towards integration occurs, which is viscerally felt in the body – often as a sense of peace and wholeness.

“Kindness is the manifestation of integration.” Daniel Siegel

What are the benefits of a Dream Poem session?

Our dreams are treasure troves of information, letting us know where we are as well as showing us the best way forward. If we learn how to listen to them they can act as a guiding light in our lives. As Marion Woodman said, if we ignore our dreams, we ‘miss the gold.’

Dream Poem provides a structure for working somatically with your dreams. It supports a process of embodying the dream’s messages. This is different to other approaches that may emphasis the interpretation of the dream or seek a more conceptually based understanding. With Dream Poem the emphasis is on integrating the energy of the dream’s message through your felt sense. This slow, detailed, process of paying close attention to the elements in the dream, lays the ground for insights and revelations to occur spontaneously. 

It takes some courage to really pay attention to your dreams, and even more to share your dream with another human being. The reason is that a dream is like a personal letter from your subconscious mind – it is an attempt to bring something to your attention that you had previously been unaware of. 

If we ignore these messages, the subconscious issue may seek to get our attention in other ways e.g. through creating conflicts in relationships, or even physical symptoms and illnesses. When we have a ‘big dream’ (which could be only one sentence long but carries potent energy), it is extra important to pay attention to it. Our dreams not only tell us where the real problem is, they also direct us to the solution.

There is an inherent vulnerability in exploring a dream, since it means entering the unknown with a willingness to learn something new about yourself. As a dream scribe I am sensitive to this, and treat every element in your dream as though it were a sacred object. 

I am as passionate about helping people learn to honour their dreams as I am about teaching people to listen to their bodies. Body Poem and Dream Poem both access the subconscious mind through the felt sense. It is hard to describe how empowering it is to develop this skill of deep self-attunement, it has to be experienced directly . . . then you will understand!

If you are not sure whether to go for Body Poem or Dream Poem feel free to get in touch so we can have a chat about it.

Body Poem and Dream Poem can help if :

  • You want to learn how to listen to and befriend your body.
  • You are in a grieving process.
  • You need support digesting a difficult experience.
  • You need to resolve an inner or outer conflict.
  • You have difficulty knowing how you feel, or knowing what is true for you.
  • You want to learn how to access and express your needs and desires.
  • You are going through, or recovering from an illness, injury, or operation.
  • You are in the process of making a decision or need to gain clarity on a specific issue.
  • You have a strong inner critic.
  • You want to access, or deepen your creative expression.
  • You are longing to be held/witnessed with compassion, without evaluation or analysis.
  • You are going through a transition or find yourself at a crossroads.
    You want to come out of your head and back to your senses.
    Body Poem sounds fun/ interesting and you are curious.

The Origins of Body Poem and Dream Poem

Katie Sarra is the creator of Body Poem and founder of the Institute for Relational Harmony Studies, which facilitates leading-edge professional and personal development trainings in embodiment. Her specialism is affective neuroscience and its application with the Wheel of Consent®

You can read more about Katie and Body Poem here: https://www.katiesarra.com and here https://www.relationalharmony.institute/

‘Body Poem is a revolutionary therapeutic tool illuminating unknown and unspoken parts of the self from spontaneously emerging poetry.” Katie Sarra

 

Body Poem/Dream Poem is a skilful weaving together of the following elements:
  • Body Focusing techniques developed by Eugene Gendlin.
  • The use of Clean Language (non-evaluative language) developed by David Grove.
  • A Playback Theatre technique called ‘Dream Form’.

The structure of Body Poem/Dream Poem is informed by Jakk Panksepp’s research on The Emotional Command Systems, Daniel Seigal’s work on mindfulness and interpersonal neurobiology, Betty Martin’s work on Wheel of Consent®, and Stephen Porges’ polyvagel theory.

The structure of a Body Poem session

  • We begin with a chat where I talk you through the ‘body focusing’ technique. You can ask me any questions you have about the process.
  • When you’re ready you can lie down on the plinth (most people choose this option as it supports relaxation, but you can also choose to remain seated, with freedom to move if that suits you better).
  • I will guide you through a brief relaxation process to help you connect with your breath and begin focusing your attention onto the sensations arising in your body.
  • I lead us in a somatic enquiry, eliciting communication from different parts of your body and writing these statements down.
  • I read your body poem back to you. You receive your poem while staying attuned to your ‘felt sense’ i.e. the sensations in your body.
  • We return to ‘the beach’, where I ask you what the experience was like. This is an opportunity to digest the experience.

The Structure of a Dream Poem Session

  • We begin with a chat where you tell me your dream and I write down each element that appears in it. You can also ask me any questions you have about the process.
  • When you’re ready you can ether lie down on the plinth or decide to stay seated.
  • I will guide you through a brief relaxation process to help you connect with your breath and begin focusing your attention onto the sensations arising in your body.
  • I will lead a somatic enquiry based on the elements (e.g. characters, objects, landscapes, sounds) from your dream, giving each element a voice and writing down what it says.
  • I read your ‘dream poem’ back to you and you listen whilst staying attuned to your felt sense.
  • We open up the space for you to tell me what the experience was like for you.

Listening to the Unspeakable: Body Poem/ Dream Poem and Trauma

All of us have survived difficult or overwhelming experiences in one form or another . . . but surviving the experience is not the same as having fully processed and digested it. The psyche naturally seeking wholeness and integration.  The sense of safety and relaxation created during a Body/Dream Poem session may connect you to feelings, sensations or parts of yourself that had previously been outside of your awareness. For example, you might connect with a part of you that had been left out in the cold. The Body Poem process allows this part to be met with compassionate warmth and total acceptance.

It is delicate work, since if we have previously kept something outside of our awareness, we have done so for a reason. As a body poet/dream scribe, I’m sensitive to this. 

Body Poem can uncover profound insights, yet it is actually a very gentle process. You are always the one in choice as to which sensations you explore (how deep you want to swim). The entire structure of the session has been designed with your emotional safety in mind. I have tools and techniques I can use to guide you back into a more regulated state, should you begin to feel overwhelmed.

If you know that you have experienced severe trauma, and haven’t yet received any therapeutic support to begin processing it, I would suggest booking a free discovery call before booking your body poem session, and together we can decide if it would be right for you at this time. Contact me and we can arrange a time to do that.

Coming back to our senses as a species: why I think our world needs Body Poem/Dream Poem

There are many hopeful signs of positive change in our culture, with many people looking to reclaim a sense of authority over their own lives and health. However, I think it’s fair to say that mainstream culture still shames and devalues the body’s needs and desires, as well as negating the body’s wisdom. We are encouraged to focus on how our bodies (and our lives) look as opposed to how they feel. Media images consistently remind us of how inadequate we are if we don’t measure up, in order to sell us things we don’t really need.

We are taught to view our bodies as machines that can just keep going forever on adrenalin, and to feel guilty about needing rest. Many people find unhealthy ways to self-medicate and self-soothe, not knowing any other way. Many are afraid to feel the more tender emotions that lurk underneath their stress, because they have been taught to suppress them.

My intention as a Body Poet and Dream Scribe is to reconnect my clients with the deep, instinctual wisdom available in their blood and bones. I believe that a visceral, felt sense of inner authority, connection and belonging is needed in our collective human body, and our collective human nervous system. 

This work is important to me because I have experienced its beauty and power. It continues to be an invaluable resource on my own journey from fragmentation to wholeness. I have learnt that my heart and gut know essential things that my rational mind often doesn’t – such as what is needed? What really matters? Where does joy Live? What’s true in this moment?   

“The mind has no answers. The heart has no questions.” Jack Kakakaway

Testinomials

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For more information about Dream Poem or Body Poem contact me or book a discovery call.

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