Breathing and relating: exploring a therapist’s heuristic experience
October 1, 2020 Cordelia Huxtable, Margot Solomon
A beginning psychodynamic psychotherapist with a passion for body psychotherapy spent a year exploring the subjective experience of breathing while in sessions with clients, using a heuristic self-search methodology. The therapist discovered that their own breath is recruited as a protective defence against feeling. With clients, the experience of breathing shifts from unconscious to conscious, and this shift is influenced by intersecting client and therapist histories. The work demonstrates the potential for practising conscious breathing in psychotherapy and explores the importance of breath in investigating the therapist's somatic countertransference and establishing breathing space between therapist and client.