Play Therapy

“Play therapy is a therapeutic approach for children.  Children love to play.  While they play they are actually learning about their world, the people in their world and themselves.  Many play therapists say "play is the language of children" and the "toys are their words."  During play therapy, children have access to a variety of toys to express themselves as they desire through dramatic and imaginary play, sand, and art.

Play advances children's thinking, motor skills and emotional development.  A child's play at home is basically the same as in the playroom, however, during play therapy the main purpose is to resolve emotional problems and lead to a better understanding of a child's needs and re-establish balance in the child's sense of well-being.

When children play, they are able to express their emotions such as anger, fear, happiness, shame and frustrations.  Adults, when stressed, need to talk through their problems and often describe in repeated detail until the problems feel less intense.  Children are often lacking the skills and developmental capacity to talk about or understand their feelings like adults, so they use play in the same way as adults use words.  They will repeatedly play out their problems in detail with decreasing detail over time until they gain understanding and comfort with their problems.”

Quotation from: www.familyconnectionsmn.com/id57.html

Gestalt

“From a Gestalt perspective, all of whom we are is present in the here and now. In other words, when a person steps out into the middle of a group of people, all of their past experiences, relationships, successes, failures, traumas, loves, etc. are present with them. So, when we "work" with a student or family, we push for contact in the present and discourage the tendency of some people to distract with stories of the past, tangential ramblings and other subconscious tricks that distract from the necessary work in the present.

"Contact" is just another way of saying "being in relationship," "being authentic" or "being in love." Much of one's health and happiness depends upon our ability to make and maintain contact with those we are in close relationships with. When people learn (or re-learn) how to make genuine contact with one another, it transforms their relationships and can sustain them through the naturally tumultuous times.

Our ability to express and feel joy and love is directly connected to our ability to feel the pain of sorrow and anger. It is impossible to truly open one's heart to one's emotion without inviting the other emotions in. This fact, while painful, is an incredible gift as it pushes us into contact with our true selves. We encourage the full expression of emotion, while remaining in contact with those around us.  When achieved, the full expression of emotion feels innately right, and when honed as a skill it has the power to bring our relationship with others and ourselves to a level that is ultimately more honest, alive, and real.”

Quotation from: http://www.monarchcentercolorado.com/monarch-core-foundations.html

Body Centered Psychotherapy

“The splitting apart of the body and the mind, where the body is the domain of physicians and the mind and emotions that of psychotherapists, has been so pronounced in Western thought in the last few centuries that the current idea of unity of the body/mind at first felt like a somewhat odd and suspicious hypothesis. Of course, in most traditional cultures, this splitting up of the human into parts is seen as laughable, and itself seen as a symptom of Western craziness. It has only been in the last twenty five years that the concept of the correspondence between physiological, psychological and even spiritual processes has been popularized, and increasingly many different forms of somatically-based psychotherapies have flourished. These forms seek to re-sensitize us to our birthright of healthy and optimal functioning by using the direct physical experience of the body as a healing tool.”

Quotation from: http://birthpsychology.com/healing/body.html#overview

EMDR

“Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a comprehensive, integrative psychotherapy approach. It contains elements of many effective psychotherapies in structured protocols that are designed to maximize treatment effects. These include psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, experiential, and body-centered therapies.

EMDR is an information processing therapy and uses an eight phase approach to address the experiential contributors of a wide range of pathologies. It attends to the past experiences that have set the groundwork for pathology, the current situations that trigger dysfunctional emotions, beliefs and sensations, and the positive experience needed to enhance future adaptive behaviors and mental health.

During treatment various procedures and protocols are used to address the entire clinical picture. One of the procedural elements is "dual stimulation" using either bilateral eye movements, tones or taps. During the reprocessing phases the client attends momentarily to past memories, present triggers, or anticipated future experiences while simultaneously focusing on a set of external stimulus. During that time, clients generally experience the emergence of insight, changes in memories, or new associations. The clinician assists the client to focus on appropriate material before initiation of each subsequent set.”

Quotation from: www.emdr.com/briefdes.htm