Most clients come to me for somatic psychotherapy after years of “talk” therapy when they realize that they are still reviewing the same emotional dilemmas. These clients are often intelligent, creative and successful professionals who secretly struggle with low self-esteem, relationship problems, anxiety/depression and psychosomatic problems. My work involves a present-moment approach to help you to redefine how you live in your world and express yourself. With me you will learn to balance your emotional nervous system and renegotiate old patterns that no longer serve you.
My approach comes from years as a professional dancer and exercise physiologist, and from the last 18 years as a somatic psychotherapist. By learning how to become more embodied you will learn how to balance your nervous system, gain a better sense of confidence, focus, and ability to connect with others…by renegotiating how you think, feel and act.
Sometimes we feel cut off or overwhelmed by the people in our lives or feel disconnected from ourselves and others. By engaging in an embodied approach in treatment, I can help you to increase your resilience and balance your emotional nervous system right at the root of your suffering, to develop self-compassion that turns into enlivened generosity!
Dr. Jennifer Frank Tantia
Jennifer Frank Tantia, PhD, MS, BC-DMT, LCAT is a somatic psychotherapist, author and lecturer from New York City, (USA). Specializing in treating trauma and medically unexplained symptoms, she has taught somatic psychology and embodied research at several universities in the United States and guest lectures internationally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lLsso0rczY
Jennifer Frank Tantia, PhD, MS, BC-DMT, LCAT is a somatic psychologist and dance/movement therapist in New York City, (USA), specializing in trauma and medically unexplained symptoms. She has taught somatic psychology and embodied research at Adelphi University, Lesley University and Pratt Institute, and guest lectures internationally. Dr. Tantia served as a grant adjudicator for the 2018 NEA Research Artworks commission and is former research chair of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. She currently serves onthe board of the American Dance Therapy Association as chair of Research and Practice. Dr. Tantia peer-reviews for nine academic journals and has authored several publications on embodiment and psychology. Most recently, she co-edited The Routledge InternationalHandbook of Embodied Perspectives in Psychotherapy (2019) and received a Marian Chace Foundation grant for her latest book, The Art and Science of Embodied Research Design, to be published Nov, 2020. www.soma-psyche.com
Recorded Sessions
Embodied Epistemology: How do we know what we know?
What it means to access embodied knowledge and what value is may offer to personal practice, pedagogy, or research.
Jennifer Tantia
Jennifer Frank Tantia, PhD, MS, BC-DMT is a somatic psychologist and dance/movement psychotherapist in New York City. She has taught somatic psychology and embodied research at many US universities and has guest lectured internationally for the past decade. Dr. Tantia served as a grant adjudicator for the 2018 NEA Research Artworks commission and has served on the boards of both the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy and the American Dance Therapy Association. She has authored many publications in DMT and somatic psychology, and co-edited The Routledge International Handbook on Embodied Perspectives in Psychotherapy: Approaches from Dance Movement and Body Psychotherapy. She received a Marian Chace Foundation grant for her latest book, The Art and Science of Embodied Research Design: Concepts, Methods and Cases published in Nov, 2020. www.soma-psyche.com.
Click here for information on Tantia’s presentation: Looking Out and Seeing In: A Journey Through the Body. Please download a complimentary chapter from Tantia’s latest book as a companion to her presentation.
The Art and Science of Embodied Research Design:
2019: The International Handbook of Embodied Perspectives in Psychotherapy
2018 PODCAST: EMBODIED RESEARCH METHODS
By Jennifer Frank Tantia, PhD
Back in 2011 when I began to recruit participants for my doctoral dissertation on therapists’ experience of intuition in the clinical setting, I found myself up against some difficulty. Being an East Coast dweller, I was hard pressed to find somatic psychotherapists and had to resort to calling some of my favorite therapists back on the West Coast to interview them. One interviewee said she could fit me into her schedule between therapy appointments and her jazz class and took the phone call from her car. When I asked her how she felt intuition in her body, I heard her say between the beeps and swishes of passing cars, “I don’t feel intuition in my body at all”. I was dismayed . . . but determined. I called my second participant and asked her my question, to which she said, “It’s . . . energy! You know . . . energy!”
I hung up the phone and stared at the wall, as was my customary posture for “writing” my dissertation. After a while I began to imagine what my participants must have looked like while they were talking . . . how did they describe what they were saying? Realizing that I needed to know more, I decided that interviews would be in-person only and, just to make sure that I captured all data available (and not even sure what that meant yet), I video recorded them. Thinking further, I realized that using a traditional method of data collection and analysis was not enough, so I devised an original method for collecting and analyzing embodied data (Tantia, 2014). In order to stay as true to embodied data as possible, I found myself translating parts of somatic psychotherapy interventions into a method for collecting data.
Check with your breathing right now. Did you notice that when you did, your breathing changed? According to one definition of embodiment, you just experienced the process of becoming further embodied. “Mindfulness is attention to the body, whereas embodiment is the body’s enlivened response to that attention” (Tantia, 2012). Embodiment, despite its elusive definitions, is actually capable of being studied. In my newly devised method, I observed that when a topic is difficult to describe, gestures facilitate thinking.
Today, I have been humbled and elated to be editing a two-volume textbook via Routledge publishers, currently titled, “Embodied Research Methods.” Volume 1 discusses important considerations for conducting embodied research, such as the foundations of embodied awareness, ethical research practices and an in-depth discussion on what exactly are embodied data. Volume 2 is a collection of step-by-step instructions for ten methods cases (think of a case study of a methodology!) that students can browse for structure, support or even inspiration (if they need to adapt one to fit their own study). The second volume in particular includes studies from many different countries as well as several disciplines, all based in the collection and analysis of embodied data. My hope is that these books will be a useful reference for all students who wish to study embodiment. It is expected to be in print and online in 2019.
Tantia, J. F. (2013). Body-focused interviewing: Corporeal experience in phenomenological inquiry. In SAGE Research Methods Cases. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. http://srmo.sagepub.com/view/methods-case-studies-2013/n228.xml
Tantia, J. F. (2012). Mindfulness and Dance/movement Therapy for Treating Trauma, in L. Rappaport, (Ed.), Mindfulness and the Arts Therapies, London: Jessica Kingsley Publications.
*You can read the full dissertation at: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1430510485
