Postural Integration Sessions
Postural Integration is a powerful tool for enabling you to increase your sense of well-being, your capacity to feel, your ability to express, your self-awareness and consciousness.
The heart of this is deep tissue manipulation to release body-armouring. To help you become more aware of what you hold in both your mind and your body
and the connection between them, sessions will involve a holistic blend of breathwork, movement and reflective body focusing to increase your bodily self-awareness and felt
sense of issues.
The Postural Integration method is structured around a series of 10 systematic 'bodyfocus' steps. These are progressive, so certain stages may need to be
worked through more than once before you feel ready for the next step. We develop body armour as a defence against situations that we feel unable to handle;
simply breaking these defences down can leave us shocked and overwhelmed. For that reason I do not practice forced de-armouring. My approach is one of a
controlled softening that allows mind and body to change and adjust together in an organic process.
What happens in a Postural Integration session?
Some of the flavour of a Postural Integration session is captured by Jack Painter, who developed and refined the practice over a period of 35 years:
"The extraordinary power of Postural Integration lies in the willingness of client and practitioner to work on many levels at the same time. As I encounter the body with
my hands, loosening the deep muscular tensions, I look into my client's eyes. And as I apply pressure, I ask the person to share through sound, movement and words
what is happening - what is sensed, felt and thought. By maintaining this contact, this open sharing, the practitioner can be flexible enough to change the emphasis of
the work to meet the changing demands of the whole person. The practitioner and client together, now work with tissue, now with sounds - all the time recognizing the
unity of the process." (Jack Painter, Postural Integration, 1989)
This illustrates what makes Postural Integration a therapy rather than a treatment, and how it differs in quality to other approaches. The client is not passive - not simply lying
down to be massaged - but is actively involved. And the therapist, too, is engaged at level beyond that which a counsellor would be: he is working the muscles,
searching for areas of deep tension, while encouraging the client to breathe, speak, make connections, move, feel. Postural Integration is a creative shared dialogue
between client and therapist, a human experience aiming to bring mind, body and soul into harmony.
Session length and cost
Sessions last 60 minutes. I also offer an extended 2 hour session of body psychotherapy (an integrative approach combining PI with psychotherapy techniques). Sessions usually take place on a weekly or fortnightly basis.
A 1 hour session costs £45. The extended 120 minute session is £80. Prices are negotiable for those on lower incomes.
For more information on my Body Psychotherapy services, visit the following website:
Richard Lawton - body psychotherapy.