Episode 9: How to Work with Clients Who Cannot Access Their Body with Harmony Kwiker

Kayla: Welcome back to your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das.

In today’s episode, Harmony Kwiker, licensed professional counselor and clinical supervisor, will discuss how to work with clients who cannot access their body.

Hi, Harmony. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Harmony: Thank you so much, Kayla, for having me.

Kayla: Harmony, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice and clinical supervision journey.

Harmony: Yeah, I have a private practice in Boulder, Colorado, and I’ve been in practice for about, 12 years now. I’ve been a counselor for a lot longer but I started off working actually in public health working with alcohol diversion.

And, when I first became a counselor, I really wanted to discover how to find a way to authentically engage in the therapeutic process and honor a more transpersonal lens of how to work with a client and how to honor my client’s innate spirituality and the wisdom that they had within themselves as essential for their therapeutic process.

I’m trained in Gestalt therapy and I teach at Naropa University. And I teach Gestalt therapy and as a clinical supervisor I am so passionate about empowering my supervisees of how to listen to their own innate wisdom as they engage authentically in the therapeutic process. And so, it’s been this sort of full circle experience for me, partly because when I first became a counselor, it was almost 20 years ago. People weren’t talking as much about innate spirituality and gestalt therapy was still very fringe. It’s having a comeback; it’s having its moment right now. So, it was hard for me to find a supervisor who worked in the way that I worked. And so, to have these supervisees who align with my approach and are excited to have a supervisor who has a different language to use with therapy has been really satisfying and exciting for me.

Kayla: You mentioned transpersonal therapy. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is?

Harmony: Transpersonal counseling is an approach to counseling that meets our clients beyond personal identity. So trans means beyond, and then personal, meaning personal identity. And so, in order to hold a transpersonal container as a transpersonal counselor. We ourselves are engaging in the therapeutic process beyond our personal identity, which means that we aren’t approaching counseling from a preconceived notion of what it means to be an expert, a counselor. We leave our personality outside of the room. Any part of us that wants our client to like us, any sort of social ideals that we have of what it means to be a person or a counselor, we leave outside of the room and we open up into awareness based knowing.

And in that we are engaging with our clients beyond their personality too. And this is really unique to transpersonal counseling. And it’s not that we are ignoring personal identity. There’s so much information and insight to be gathered in the way a person identifies and orients as a human in this world. But we are looking at the wholeness of their being.

Kayla: That’s helpful. As the topic of today’s episode is how to work with clients who cannot access their body. What do we mean by that? And how can listeners determine or assess if a client is not attuned to their body?

Harmony: Yeah, in Gestalt therapy and in transpersonal counseling, somatic based awareness is a way to access the present moment and a way to shift states of consciousness from clinging to the mind to direct experience. When we attune to sensations in the body, we are coming into a direct experience with the here and now. And we’re also honoring the way that the body relates to a particular situation or content of what the client is talking about.

Layered on top of that nervous system regulation happens in and through the body. And so somatic based approaches, I think at this point in time, the paradigm of where we’re at with psychotherapy and counseling is getting more interest and research. So, when a client does not have access to their body, they present as clinging to their mind, like talking about themselves and really trying to come up with a narrative that has them make sense of their life.

And there’s a desensitization that happens in the body and with Gestalt, we use something called the awareness continuum. And so, this is how we know if a client doesn’t have access to their body. We’re asking them as you share that with me, what do you notice in your body right now? And if the client’s response is to continue talking about themselves and staying in their narrative, or simply saying, I don’t know, we now have insight that the client is disconnected from their body.  

Kayla: Are there specific therapeutic interventions or modalities that are best suited for working with clients who cannot access their bodies? Maybe even just as important, are there specific interventions or modalities that should be avoided when working with these types of clients?

Harmony: Yeah, I love that you added that piece in at the end. When a client doesn’t have access to their body, it’s really important that we don’t try to change them, that we’re not trying to pull them into their body. We’re not trying to get them grounded or deeper into their body. I think this is a common misstep with new therapists or clinicians who are new to somatic based interventions.

What we really want is to increase awareness. So, if there is a disconnection from the body, we just want to bring more awareness to that disconnection and honor the wisdom of that disconnection. That’s an adaptive strategy that the client has created because they didn’t have the inner resources or the relational resources to process the experience that they felt in their body. And so really increasing awareness is the intervention without trying to change the client.

One way to increase awareness is through our attuned reflection. So, in Gestalt therapy, we’re paying more attention to how a client expresses than what they say. So, if a client is clinging to their mind and we’re following their narratives, we’re staying in thought based reality with them. But if as a client is talking, we sort of zoom out and we notice how they express as they’re talking, we can reflect that in the most nonjudgmental, welcoming, attuned way possible.

So, a simple reflection, as you know, as you’re talking, you seem frustrated. What do you notice in your body? Or as you’re talking, your shoulders seem tight. So just really gentle invitations into the body. That’s a collaboration. So this is how you seem to me. What do you notice? And to really stay away from you seem like you’re in your head and efforting to try to get the client in the body. That’s not our work to do. We want to honor that they have organismic self-regulation where they can use their own awareness to find their way back into a regulated aware state in their own way and in their own time. It might not happen in one session, it might not happen right now, but to just continue to stay present with the client.

Kayla: I love that. In addition to the interventions and modalities that you’ve previously mentioned, are there any actionable, say, strategies, activities, or even just statements that listeners can incorporate in the therapy session with clients who cannot access their body? Even if they may not have an in-depth knowledge or training base in somatic therapy training.

Harmony: Yeah. So, what neuroscience has really taught us is that when a client’s eyes are open, they have less access to their body. But when we invite our client to close our eyes, they have an opportunity to optimize their interoceptive senses. And so, a simple invitation, like if you’re open to it, I’d like to invite you to close your eyes and really being consensual with the client is always important.

But if the client does decide that they’re willing to close their eyes, we can ask them what they notice now with their eyes closed, because a different aspect of their mind sort of activates and they can start to see themselves and to see the water that they’re swimming in a little bit more clearly.

And if when they close their eyes, they still have a lot of mental chatter and narrative creation that’s happening. We can invite them to attune to that because thoughts actually hold a concentrated energy, and that exists in our head, which is part of our body. It doesn’t need to be from the neck down.

We can actually start here in the mind, just noticing that there’s a lot of thoughts moving through your mind. And what do you notice as you bring attention to your mind? And so now they’re becoming more present and we’re meeting them as they are without trying to change them.

This is really important because the amygdala is always scanning the environment for threats to safety. And if our client’s amygdala perceives our intervention as a judgment, that the way that they are is wrong we actually become a threat to their safety. And so, by meeting the client as they are, welcoming them as they are, and really inviting them to do the same, we can begin to co regulate.

Kayla: You know, I appreciate that because when we think of just humans in general, one of the things that happens if we’re feeling judged in any way we’re shutting down. We’re not listening to anything that’s happening after, whether it’s therapeutic, whether it’s conversational, doesn’t even matter what it is. We’re just like, no, that’s it. So, working where the client is at and in that non-judgmental way is going to be really supportive in the therapeutic process.

Harmony: The other piece to this is that the nervous system loves congruence. And so, if we are asking the client to be anything other than they are there’s a moment of incongruence that’s happening that prevents co-regulation.

And so, when we are inviting the client to notice their thoughts and to contact themselves at their thoughts, it’s a moment of congruence and the nervous system regulation and the softening that happens in the body it’s so beautiful to me. It’s one of my favorite moments, especially with working with a new client where they’re really learning how to accept themselves as they are.

And in Gestalt therapy, we work within the paradoxical theory of change, which essentially states that the more we resist who we are, the harder it is to change. The more we’re able to accept ourselves as we are, the more able we are to become who we really want to be.

Kayla: That’s amazing. So, for any listeners who might be new therapists, do you have any advice, insights, or tips how to navigate situations where clients may not have access to their body?

Harmony: The first thing that I’d want new therapists to know is to remember to have access to your own body. So, you work synergistically with your client and in transpersonal counseling, this is really important that it’s not about the client accessing their body. It’s having the energy of body welcome in the therapeutic field.

And so taking a scan of how you feel in your own body will give you a lot of intuitive insight and wisdom and take a breath, sit back in your seat, stay connected to yourself and really trust what you see in your client. Like really trust your attuned, seeing with your client, and that is all happening in the here and now.

There’s a lot of content that clients want to process and that’s important to them and relevant to who they’re becoming and what’s happening in the here and now, offers more insight and wisdom than any figuring out or analysis that you might think is important.

Kayla: That’s great tips. So, harmony, you have a signature course. Can you tell us a little bit about what it is and how it can help listeners?

Harmony: The Awaken Therapist Signature Course, is a really comprehensive course that incorporates Gestalt therapy and transpersonal counseling to really support you in cultivating the skills of the arts of therapy. I think when I was in graduate school and what I hear from students all the time is that training programs sometimes miss this opportunity to really teach the nuance of the art of how to really be in the room in the present moment with our clients.

And so, I’ve created this comprehensive course where I include demos of me doing therapy, which is a really wonderful way to learn by seeing it in real time and over 15 plus hours of content to really learn how to explore transpersonal Gestalt counseling. And you can find that on my website, the spirituallyaligned.com. And yeah, you can start today.

Kayla: So, to sign up for Harmony’s signature course, The Awakened Therapist, head to canadianclinicalsupervision.ca/harmonykwikercourse

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link. Her website will also be in the show notes.

Harmony, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss how to work with clients who cannot access their body.

Harmony: Thank you so much for having me, Kayla.

Kayla: And thank you everyone for tuning into today’s episode, and I hope you join me again soon on Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch Podcast.

Until next time. Bye for now.