Somatic therapies, which include EMDR, have been around for well over 20 years. They rely on mindfulness (think "compassionate awareness") of body sensations (both gross and subtle) to access emotions, experiences, and beliefs that have not yet been fully processed and/or made conscious.

Used alone or in conjunction with more traditional talk-therapy approaches, somatic therapy can be an excellent catalyst for progress in therapy. In the same way that music or poetry might quickly access emotions you didn't know you had, somatic therapies by-pass cumbersome words and get directly at the source.

Well-known developers of these therapies include Ron Kurtz (Hakomi Therapy), Babette Rothchild (The Body Remembers), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Arnold Mindell (Process-oriented Psychology) Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy), and Francine Shapiro (Eye Movement Dessentization and Reprocessing).

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