CORE ORGANIZERS + SENSORIMOTOR PSYCHOTHERAPY

AN INTERVIEW WITH CLINICAL THERAPIST BRIAN GOLDSTEIN, MA, LMFT

RETURNING TO MINDFULNESS

By bringing awareness to the body, I’m going to help one, because I’m gonna notice things on somebody’s body and I’m gonna kinda comment that. First, I’m normally gonna contact the narrative, like what they’re saying, because contacting the body and pointing out like, “Hey, I noticed I know when you say this, “your shoulder kinda raises, huh?” That might be too intense for someone at the beginning, so I kinda work that in and kinda see how they’re responding. I’ll ask for feedback, and then, if I do notice something that starts to come up in the body, I’m gonna track that and bring awareness to it and that’s where we start to kind of bring in the mindfulness. 

CHECKING IN WITH THE BODY

I might have them check in with it. I might say something like, “Yeah, as you say that, I notice this.” Or, “I’m wondering where might you “feel a sensation in your body?” Let’s say they’re like, “Oh, I feel this kind of tingliness this all over my body.” “Oh, so you feel this tingliness when…”, you talk about that. 

CORE ORGANIZERS + AWARENESS

They slowly start to use what are called the core organizers and it’s the different senses. So there might be an emotion attached to that. There might be words attached to that or an image or a past belief, whatever it might be and kind of start to work with those things. Now the sensations, everything can start to move, but really bringing it back to that checking in and that present moment awareness because a lot of times we will just jump from thing to thing ’cause it is really hard to stay present and mindful.