The Program for
Body-Aware Psychotherapy
Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Head of Program
Integrating Somatic, Movement-Based, and Pre-Verbal Models into Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
The Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program offers a profound, innovative, and distinctive course of study, designed to deepen therapists’ bodily awareness and to strengthen their connection to zones of aliveness and vitality. Through a wide range of embodied–experiential modes of inquiry, the program refines the physical body and the spectrum of possibilities inherent in the living body, linking psyche and consciousness to the bodily unconscious and to the multiplicity of languages that dwell within it.
Beyond personal development and the intrinsic joy of embodiment, the body holds information that is not always accessible to verbal language. Within the program, participants learn to work with somatic patterns, bodily memories, and symptoms; to extract movement–linguistic expressions; and to move back and forth between physical and psychic layers of experience. Some of this material is translated into clinical content, while other aspects are absorbed into the body as residue, continuing to reverberate across the different layers of experience.
The Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program offers a profound, innovative, and distinctive course of study, designed to deepen therapists’ bodily awareness and to strengthen their connection to zones of aliveness and vitality. Through a wide range of embodied–experiential modes of inquiry, the program refines the physical body and the spectrum of possibilities inherent in the living body, linking psyche and consciousness to the bodily unconscious and to the multiplicity of languages that dwell within it. Beyond personal development and the intrinsic joy of embodiment, the body holds information that is not always accessible to verbal language. Within the program, participants learn to work with somatic patterns, bodily memories, and symptoms; to extract movement–linguistic expressions; and to move back and forth between physical and psychic layers of experience. Some of this material is translated into clinical content, while other aspects are absorbed into the body as residue, continuing to reverberate across the different layers of experience.
The program is intended for licensed therapists holding a master’s degree in a therapeutic discipline, with at least six years of clinical experience, who maintain an ongoing embodied practice (such as meditation, yoga, dance, or another awareness-based movement discipline).
Priority will be given to applicants who have completed a foundational psychotherapy training program.
Throughout the program, the group is accompanied by one or two assistants who participate in all sessions and provide continuity, containment, and additional perspectives within the learning process.
Participants are strongly encouraged to support their studies through ongoing personal therapy, appropriate to their stage of professional development and to the depth of the material studied. In addition, the program includes separate payment for individual and group supervision,selected from a carefully curated list of supervisors who combine deep psychotherapeutic training with substantial somatic and movement-based practice. This structure is intended to ensure that the clinical integration of the work is held with both emotional rigor and embodied sensitivity.
The program spans two academic years. Classes meet bi-weekly in sessions of six and a half academic hours each.
Each year includes 22 meetings, not including performances and artist talks (2–3 per year).
The total scope of study is 150 academic hours per year.
The program takes place at Kelim — Center for Contemporary Choreography, in a spacious and welcoming studio at 2 Nefaha Street, Bat Yam.
The uniqueness of the program is articulated through three central dimensions:
Theoretical–conceptual expansion
Participants are exposed to a broad spectrum of contemporary thinking about the body, including philosophical, choreographic, somatic, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The program encourages dialogue among these approaches and offers an entry point into a rich and evolving field of embodied clinical practice in Israel and internationally.
Somatic work within a psychodynamic framework
The program integrates practices, body-based clinical thinking, and somatically focused interventions within psychodynamic psychotherapy, with the aim of bringing the actual bodies of both therapist and patient into fuller presence in the analytic encounter and the therapeutic relationship.
Artistic collaboration and choreographic inquiry
The program includes artist workshops led by prominent choreographers from Israel and abroad. It is grounded in long-term, sustained research and dialogue between these artists and the program’s founder, with the aim of examining which aspects of choreographic thinking and practice can nourish, enrich, and transform clinical work.
This collaboration includes attendance at dance performances, artist talks, and embodied studio-based inquiry, opening a reflective space that links choreographic experience with clinical thinking.
The program is grounded in eight core anchors:
1.
Phenomenological anchor — with particular emphasis on the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as articulated in his seminal work Phenomenology of Perception.
2.
Clinical anchor — the evolution of the body in psychotherapy, from Freud to contemporary relational psychoanalytic perspectives.
3.
Critical perspectives — body, language, politics, and relations of power, inspired by Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Iris Marion Young, and Jessica Benjamin, and in dialogue with contemporary feminist and critical thinkers of the body, movement, and embodiment, emphasizing the multiplicity of languages and modes of experience.
4.
Body psychotherapy — from the classical traditions of body psychotherapy (Janet and Reich) to the work of Bessel van der Kolk and contemporary neuroscience research.
5.
Physiological–experiential learning — understanding bodily processes through direct, lived experience.
6.
Embodied inquiry — diverse methods of bodily and movement-based investigation.
7.
Choreographic–artistic anchor — an exploration of how creative processes, choreographic thinking, and artistic practices may generate change, transformation, and renewed movement of experience, meaning, and relationship.
8.
Performance in supervisory processes — a bodily–experiential action in which the therapist brings the therapeutic experience into live enactment, as an act of re-created making. This process enables thinking, reflection, and transformation through the body, resonance, and collective presence. Supervision thus becomes a liminal space of living learning, in which clinical knowledge emerges through enactment rather than through verbal representation alone.
Integrating Somatic, Movement-Based, and Pre-Verbal Models into Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
The Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program offers a profound, innovative, and distinctive course of study, designed to deepen therapists’ bodily awareness and to strengthen their connection to zones of aliveness and vitality. Through a wide range of embodied–experiential modes of inquiry, the program refines the physical body and the spectrum of possibilities inherent in the living body, linking psyche and consciousness to the bodily unconscious and to the multiplicity of languages that dwell within it.
Beyond personal development and the intrinsic joy of embodiment, the body holds information that is not always accessible to verbal language. Within the program, participants learn to work with somatic patterns, bodily memories, and symptoms; to extract movement–linguistic expressions; and to move back and forth between physical and psychic layers of experience. Some of this material is translated into clinical content, while other aspects are absorbed into the body as residue, continuing to reverberate across the different layers of experience.
The program is grounded in eight core anchors:
1. Phenomenological anchor — with particular emphasis on the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as articulated in his seminal work Phenomenology of Perception.
2. Clinical anchor — the evolution of the body in psychotherapy, from Freud to contemporary relational psychoanalytic perspectives.
3. Critical perspectives — body, language, politics, and relations of power, inspired by Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Iris Marion Young, and Jessica Benjamin, and in dialogue with contemporary feminist and critical thinkers of the body, movement, and embodiment, emphasizing the multiplicity of languages and modes of experience.
4. Body psychotherapy — from the classical traditions of body psychotherapy (Janet and Reich) to the work of Bessel van der Kolk and contemporary neuroscience research.
5. Physiological–experiential learning — understanding bodily processes through direct, lived experience.
6. Embodied inquiry — diverse methods of bodily and movement-based investigation.
7. Choreographic–artistic anchor — an exploration of how creative processes, choreographic thinking, and artistic practices may generate change, transformation, and renewed movement of experience, meaning, and relationship.
8. Performance in supervisory processes — a bodily–experiential action in which the therapist brings the therapeutic experience into live enactment, as an act of re-created making. This process enables thinking, reflection, and transformation through the body, resonance, and collective presence. Supervision thus becomes a liminal space of living learning, in which clinical knowledge emerges through enactment rather than through verbal representation alone.
The uniqueness of the program is articulated through three central dimensions:
Theoretical–conceptual expansion
Participants are exposed to a broad spectrum of contemporary thinking about the body, including philosophical, choreographic, somatic, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The program encourages dialogue among these approaches and offers an entry point into a rich and evolving field of embodied clinical practice in Israel and internationally.
Somatic work within a psychodynamic framework
The program integrates practices, body-based clinical thinking, and somatically focused interventions within psychodynamic psychotherapy, with the aim of bringing the actual bodies of both therapist and patient into fuller presence in the analytic encounter and the therapeutic relationship.
Artistic collaboration and choreographic inquiry
The program includes artist workshops led by prominent choreographers from Israel and abroad. It is grounded in long-term, sustained research and dialogue between these artists and the program’s founder, with the aim of examining which aspects of choreographic thinking and practice can nourish, enrich, and transform clinical work.
This collaboration includes attendance at dance performances, artist talks, and embodied studio-based inquiry, opening a reflective space that links choreographic experience with clinical thinking.
The program spans two academic years. Classes meet bi-weekly in sessions of six and a half academic hours each. Each year includes 22 meetings, not including performances and artist talks (2–3 per year). The total scope of study is 150 academic hours per year.
The program takes place at Kelim — Center for Contemporary Choreography, in a spacious and welcoming studio at 2 Nefaha Street, Bat Yam.
Throughout the program, the group is accompanied by one or two assistants who participate in all sessions and provide continuity, containment, and additional perspectives within the learning process.
Participants are strongly encouraged to support their studies through ongoing personal therapy, appropriate to their stage of professional development and to the depth of the material studied.
In addition, the program includes separate payment for individual and group supervision, selected from a carefully curated list of supervisors who combine deep psychotherapeutic training with substantial somatic and movement-based practice. This structure is intended to ensure that the clinical integration of the work is held with both emotional rigor and embodied sensitivity.
The program is intended for licensed therapists holding a master’s degree in a therapeutic discipline, with at least six years of clinical experience, who maintain an ongoing embodied practice (such as meditation, yoga, dance, or another awareness-based movement discipline).
Priority will be given to applicants who have completed a foundational psychotherapy training program.
First Year
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Ideas are not approached primarily through reflection, but are moved, sensed, and shaped through direct embodied experience. Throughout the year, we seek to quiet the interpretive mind in order to make space for bodily experience as it unfolds in the present moment. The work allows for continuous movement between pain and pleasure, anxiety and joy, and places at its center the experience of the joy of the flesh and the ongoing development of multiple capacities for aliveness.
Body–Language–Form
The evolution of the body in clinical theories, phenomenological philosophy, and critical perspectives
This course explores the evolving conceptualizations of the body across psychoanalytic, philosophical, and cultural fields, and examines how bodily experience is understood, articulated, and enacted within diverse clinical and theoretical frameworks.
The clinical anchor traces the historical positioning of the body within psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud and continuing through Melanie Klein, Winnicott, Bion, and Thomas Ogden, and extending to contemporary body-oriented psychoanalytic thinkers such as Susie Orbach, Wilma Bucci, and Antonio Ferro. Particular attention is given to the historical split between Freud and Wilhelm Reich, and to the divergent ways in which bodily life, affect, and symbolization were subsequently theorized. The course engages with analytic models of bodily language, including the expansion of psychoanalytic concepts into embodied meanings (for example, bodily reverie).
The phenomenological and critical anchor is grounded in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body as articulated in Phenomenology of Perception, and places this
perspective in dialogue with critical theories of body, language, and power. Drawing on thinkers such as Michel Foucault, alongside feminist and critical theorists including Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, and contemporary feminist writers on embodiment, the course examines the body as a site where experience, subjectivity, and relations of power are lived and negotiated. In this context, special attention is given to theories that emphasize multiplicity of languages in bodily and psychic life.
The cultural anchor engages with canonical works of dance and performance and examines their influence on broader cultural discourse and on therapeutic thinking. Through selected choreographic works, the course explores how culture is inscribed in the human body and how bodily forms reflect, transmit, and transform social, historical, and affective knowledge. The course asks how memory and knowledge are embodied and how they are transmitted in living ways from one body to another.
Embodied Inquiry in Practice: Somatic–Movement–Experiential Work
This course is dedicated to embodied inquiry as a central mode of learning, knowledge formation, and clinical sensitivity. It explores the body as a living field of experience and asks whether the body can be understood as a language—and if so, what the distinctive “linguistic” qualities of the body might be: rhythm, tone, intensity, timing, resonance, and relational responsiveness.
Through individual, dyadic, and group-based somatic and movement practices, the course examines processes of merging and differentiation, the formation of a shared bodily field, and the emergence of resonance between bodies. Particular attention is given to the notion of the bodily unconscious—how implicit memories, affective patterns, and relational histories are held, expressed, and transformed through movement and sensation.
The work invites the gradual dissolution of habitual bodily patterns and ingrained motor-emotional configurations, opening space for new possibilities of action, perception, and meaning. Participants are encouraged to cultivate a willingness to be surprised by the body, allowing movement to exceed intention and familiar self-concepts.
Central to the course is the refinement of embodied awareness and bodily intelligence—a process of somatic cultivation that supports an open, receptive mode of consciousness. Rather than directing the body, participants practice listening to it and allowing it to lead, recognizing the body’s capacity to generate insight, orientation, and change from within the lived experience itself.
Two-Day Workshop: Introduction to Authentic Movement
This two-day workshop offers an introduction to and direct experience of Authentic Movement.
Authentic Movement is a body-based awareness practice that integrates perspectives from dance/movement therapy, mindfulness, and Jungian psychology. In this workshop, we will learn the core principles of the practice and explore their relevance to therapeutic work.Participants will engage in movement and in witnessing the movement of others, while attending closely to bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts as they arise and shift across the field of awareness. The
practice is live and dynamic, revealing multiple layers of relationship—with oneself, with others, and with the continuously changing experience of the present moment.
We will become acquainted with the language of immediate experience cultivated within this method, as well as with the deeper rationale underlying the practice and the process of sharing that follows it.
Artist Workshop – Yasmeen Godder
Embodied Empathy
The workshop includes participation in a “Movement in the Community” class for people living with Parkinson’s disease, movement work with Yasmeen Godder based on the research and exercises she has developed in recent years as part of a series of embodied empathy practices, and a joint discussion with Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet on how embodied empathy practices can be integrated into therapeutic clinical work.
Dr. Tami Pollak and Yael Yaakovovitz Bloch
The course proposes a new model of the embodied roots of the transitional space. This model, The BodI, presents a meta-psychological alternative that moves beyond a rigid distinction between the bodily and the psychic, examining them instead as a functional continuum. The course will focus on the contribution of this embodied psycho-somatic space to the understanding of clinical presentations and to the expansion of therapeutic communication.
Motor Fields – Two-Day Intensive - Dr. Efrat Shaked
In the Biosynthesis approach developed by David Boadella, motor fields constitute a central therapeutic model for understanding the inner movement that shapes the self and emerges from early developmental relationships. Boadella identified four fundamental motor fields—contraction/expansion, attraction/resistance, rotation/channeling, and absorption/action—which reflect bodily, emotional, and cognitive patterns of organization that accompany the individual throughout life. Therapeutic work with motor fields enables a subtle assessment of character and relational patterns, as well as the creation of conscious movement between familiar fields and new ones, through work with body, emotion, touch, and dialogue. During the workshop, participants will engage in experiential movement-based work grounded in the motor fields, alongside learning and practicing the application of this tool in clinical settings, in ways that expand choice, strengthen vitality, and support both therapist and client in acting in the world with greater flexibility, presence, and connection.
Laying Foundational Principles for the Body-Oriented Therapist - Einat Tal
Second Year
While the first year is oriented toward the experience of the personal body, interpersonal relationships, and being-in-the-world—aimed at opening the sensory range, becoming acquainted with bodily language from within, developing a new and refined movement repertoire, and deepening bodily inquiry and diverse body–mind experiences—the second year moves toward a deeper engagement with practice and the development of embodied–clinical skills through supervision processes. In addition, participants will be introduced to additional creators with a therapeutic orientation, with the aim of weaving together therapy, language, body, choreography, and creative processes.
The highlight of the year is the artist workshops, in which we will spend extended time immersed in the bodily inquiry of leading creators from Israel and abroad, and be exposed to their working materials. Their inspiration and spirit will accompany us in our therapeutic work and within the creative processes we will undertake as an integral part of our development—as individuals, as therapists, and as human beings in the world.
Body, Movement, and the Nervous System – Dr. Ram Matzliach (MD)
An experiential–theoretical course focusing on the living body as a space of sensation, movement, and consciousness, and on the relationship between physiological, emotional, and clinical processes.
Sensation and Mobilizing the Body
Introduction to the nervous system, sensory systems (proprioception, interoception, and exteroception), and the perception of movement in space. Exploration of bodily experience, choice, and movement from within awareness.
Autonomic Defense and Emotional Touch
In-depth study of the autonomic nervous system, muscle tone, reflexes, and patterns of touch. Working with tension, energy, and emotional regulation through the body.
Shifts in Consciousness and Embodied Learning
Exploration of altered states of consciousness, emotional regulation, and their impact on movement and learning. Processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of experience and movement.
Instability, Holding, and Integration
Engagement with practices of instability and holding, psycho–somatic integration, and a deeper examination of the relationship between movement, structure, and meaning.
Artist Workshops
One-Day Workshop with Orly Portal – Primordial Tribal Movement: Pelvic Work
Dance connects the human being to their highest and deepest values, allowing one to live their essence fully and to delight in being a wondrous creature. The body is a vessel—the great container of light; the physical home, the dwelling of the human being, is a sanctuary in which one can contemplate, learn, and develop endlessly.
The workshop focuses on the method Orly has developed following in-depth research into feminine movement in general, and the pelvic girdle in particular. Orly guides women to inhabit their pelvis—to hold both vulnerability and resilience—and to grow in order to continue leading this vital energy. At the same time, she opens a gateway for men to embody softness and desire alongside healthy authority—an authority that does not misuse power.
Orly invites each participant, women and men alike, to fully inhabit their being—both physical and mental—and to practice connecting to the roots of movement and existence: to the source, to the body, and to the self.
This is a form of movement that honors the bodies and psyches of women and men, together and separately.
Our meeting will support each participant in their own pelvis. We will practice the method together and learn a series of exercises that allow access to hidden places in both body and psyche. We will converse, dance spontaneous primordial tribal movement in space, and explore relationships through movement and shared weight within the spatial field.
Masterclass by Orly Portal, first cohort of body-oriented psychotherapy, photographed by Shenar Pinkas-Samet
Two-Day Workshop with Galit Liss – The Presence of the Body in the Present
A two-day intensive workshop, preceded by a session dedicated to the shared research conducted by Galit Liss together with Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet, Dr. Daniela Eisenberg-Shafran, and Dr. Liora Bartur from the Department of Clinical Psychology of Aging at Ruppin Academic Center.
The movement workshop offers an introduction to Galit Liss’s working method, “The Language of Age,” which focuses on the presence of the body in the present moment, with particular attention to work with the aging body. We will outline the methodological language developed by Liss through work with “movement anchors,” including the use of imagination, imagery,
and the various senses, as well as the application of principles of cortical memory—encoding, storage, and retrieval—to performative artistic practice.
The workshop will include a conversation with the choreographer and participants about creative processes, and especially about what lies between them: ageism, pain, falling, libido, and the beauty of the body at every age.
On the second day, we will spend time in Galit Liss’s studio, view a rehearsal of “Blue Ones,” engage in movement practice with the women dancers, and hold a shared discussion with them.
Masterclass by Galit Liss
Experiential Anatomy / Axis Syllabus – Nitzan Lederman
The Axis Syllabus method integrates floor work and upright movement, using structured material (set movement sequences) as well as improvisation. The work takes place individually or in pairs and involves exploration of the body inwardly and in relation to the physical and human space that surrounds us. The practice draws on a comprehensive body of knowledge from the sciences related to the moving body, including anatomy, physics, and their integration through biomechanics.
Therapeutic Performance – Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Introduction:
How does one create a performance? What is the relationship between performance, supervision, and therapy? We will study the principles of performance practice and view excerpts from classic performances, from the 1960s to the present day.
Clinical Seminar:
Within the seminar framework, each student will write a case description. Together, we will explore what elements can be brought to life and presented performatively. We will move from everyday gesture toward performance and then return again, in order to examine what can be carried back into therapy and into life. The seminar will engage with various modes of supervision, including embodied re-enactment, fishbowl work, and related methods.
Creative Processes - Arie Borstein, Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet, Einat Tal
As a living culmination of the two-year program, participants will engage in an ongoing creative process based on improvisation, which will gradually develop into a final movement work—both personal and collective. The process will serve as an integrative space in which embodied knowledge, clinical experience, and movement language meet and find creative expression. The improvisation processes will be guided by Arie Borstein, with an emphasis on developing movement language, listening, and the exploration of movement materials.
Arie Burshtein, creative processes, first cohort of body-oriented psychotherapy, photographed by Shenar Pinkas-Samet
Second Year
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Answe
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Answer
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Previous BAP Photos
Masterclass by Galit Liss, part of the BAP Program, 2025. Photo: Shinar Samet Pinkas
Previous BAP photos
From a masterclass with Yasmeen Godder – Somatic Empathy: Working with People Living with Parkinson’s, 2024 photo: Shinar Samet Pinkas
Previous BAP photos
From a masterclass by Galit Liss, 2025, as part of the Body-Oriented Psychotherapy Program. Photo: Shinar Samet Pinkas
