About Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute

"Only one therapy I know of reaches as deeply into the body as it does into the mind, and by reaching for both, touches the soul ."

— Ron Kurtz, Founder of the Hakomi Method

The Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI) is an educational organization dedicated to the study and teaching of a somatic approach to clinical psychotherapy practice. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented talking therapy that integrates verbal techniques with body-centered interventions in the treatment of trauma, attachment, and developmental issues.

SPI offers trainings and workshops for psychotherapists and allied professionals in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and courses for body therapists on somatic resources. The courses taught by SPI are based on principles of mindfulness and mind/body/spirit holism and informed by contemporary research in neuroscience, attachment theory, trauma, and related fields.

History of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

In the 1970's, Pat Ogden became interested in the correlation between her clients' disconnection from their bodies, their physical patterns and their psychological issues. As both a psychotherapist and body therapist, she was inspired to join somatic therapy and psychotherapy into a comprehensive method for healing this disconnection. SPI offered its first course in the early 1980's under the name Hakomi Bodywork. Influenced by leaders such as Emilie Conrad, Ruth Lanius , Peter Levine, Peter Melchior, Ellert Nijenhuis, Stephen Porges, Allan Schore, Dan Siegel, Martha Stark, Kathy Steele, Onno van der Hart, Bessel van der Kolk, and Ken Wilber, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy draws from somatic therapies, neuroscience, attachment theory, and cognitive approaches, as well as from the Hakomi Method, a gentle psychotherapeutic approach pioneered by Ron Kurtz. SPI conducts trainings throughout the world, and has gained international acclaim over the past twenty-five years.