Approach

This is how we work together: with words and with the body.

Beginning the session

Conversation as a starting point

We look together at what you bring and what is present for you right now. A session is not only a space to talk about what is on your mind, but also to look and feel more closely. Sometimes there is a moment of quiet in which the body gets to speak. We stay with physical sensations, even when it is not yet clear what they mean. Remaining present with something vague and felt until it begins to reveal itself can bring about a felt shift. Something new can emerge that was not accessible through thinking alone. With support, it is often easier to stay with what is there.

Therapeutic conversation between Marie Kemper and a client
Marie Kemper doing body-oriented work
Where we deepen the work

Body-oriented work on the table

Most of us have learned to make ourselves smaller: certain feelings are allowed, certain roles permitted, certain wishes acceptable. But only those. This restriction lives in body and mind. Together, we work on expanding the container in which you live. That does not only mean more relaxation. It can also mean more energy, standing up for yourself more, and knowing more clearly what you want. It means being more present in the here and now, including with ambivalence, without feeling overwhelmed. It means sensing the full range of anger, desire, joy, confusion, excitement and grief without being overwhelmed or blocked. Each session is an opportunity to practise what more spaciousness might feel like. We also place what happens in the body in the context of how it appears in your life. The session becomes a laboratory: a safe place to practise staying with what you would otherwise avoid.

Important

Touch is never a requirement. In every session, you decide anew what feels right.

Also possible without touch

If you do not want touch yet, we can still work in a body-oriented way through awareness, breath and physical sensation, entirely in conversation.

Optional & flexible

An online session in between

Between regular appointments I offer shorter online sessions: a space to integrate what you experienced during the in-person work, stay with it, or talk about something current without waiting for the next session.

They do not replace in-person work, but they complement it flexibly.

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Quiet hands, symbolising an online session from home

„Freedom is a state of the body.“

Methodological background

What my work is based on

Talk therapy & Focusing

Focusing was developed by philosopher and psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin from the question of why some therapy works and other therapy does not. His answer was that the method alone is not what makes the difference, but whether a person learns to be in contact with their own body and with what he called the Felt Sense. This is not a feeling in the conventional sense, but a diffuse, physically sensed knowing of a situation before words have been found for it. In my training, I learned to accompany this contact with care.

In talk therapy, language and understanding matter. Together with the Focusing approach, they follow what the body already knows rather than racing ahead of it. This creates a way of thinking that does not happen only in the head, but stays in harmony with what is actually present. The organism, the body, wants to live and will always search for a way to do so, like a plant that grows in its own way without anyone telling it how. In therapy, we strengthen this life force.

Body psychotherapy

The Animano method, rooted in the Grinberg method, and body psychotherapy are based on the idea that the body stores patterns that are often inaccessible in conversation and, above all, not conscious to us. We tend to assume that what we experience as our character is simply who we are. In fact, we have created much of it ourselves through our bodies, actions, thoughts and focus, without noticing. This can become habitual tension, ingrained reactions, limits to our perception and limits to our imagination. These patterns were never without reason. Each of us had a reason for creating exactly what we did: these patterns once protected us or helped us manage an environment that did not always make room for our full range. In body-oriented work, what was once protection and is now experienced as a limitation becomes directly accessible through touch and work with muscles, fascia, the senses and breath. At its core, this is work with the nervous system: expanding our capacity to feel, hold and sense more without becoming overwhelmed.

As a Heilpraktikerin für Psychotherapie, I work with the methods described above, adapted to your individual situation. How this work affects you depends on many factors; a particular outcome or treatment success cannot be promised or guaranteed.

Not sure what is right for you yet?

You do not have to be. We will work that out together in the introductory call.

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