Janis Briedis explores core emotional needs, schemas, and coping styles, highlighting the crucial role of the body in therapy—especially for trauma. He demonstrates techniques to interpret body signals, connect emotions with physical sensations, and integrate somatic awareness into treatment. With an emphasis on humor and playfulness, this approach helps clients access their healthy adult state and enhance self-care.

The session includes exploration of barriers (coping modes) to the Young One (Vulnerable Child mode), leading to a rapid shift to (or breaking into) a vigorous, life-filled Healthy Adult state full of vitality and feeling of expansiveness. Topics of grounding, co-regulation and object permanence are touched upon in the session.

In this session a somatic sense of boundaries is explored through movement between the client and therapist. Movement towards each other allows the client to tap into the sense of their ’no’ or ’stop’ , as well as ‘yes’ in the body. As part of the exercise feelings about boundaries being set by the therapist are explored, and repair of mini-rupture in the therapeutic relationship is demonstrated.

The session demonstrates working with chair distance and using the space in the room, accessing embodied Healthy Adult state as a precursor to inviting the Young One (Vulnerable Child mode) into the room. Movement, voice and verbal experiments are used to enhance the connection between the client and the therapist, as well as Ines’ Healthy Adult state and her Vulnerable Child mode. The session also demonstrates a way to deal with modes that interfere in the work with the Vulnerable Child mode, as well as the use of somatic flashcards.

The session demonstrates the process of conceptualising client’s difficulties managing anxiety as the Demanding/Blaming Critic mode that is squashing the Vulnerable Child mode, moderated by the Catastrophizer coping mode. The chair work leads to an in-depth understanding and softening of the Demanding Critic, ability to somatically soothe the Vulnerable Child mode and the appearance of the Playful Child mode and the importance of self-compassion.

The session begins with the use of a cushion to access a deeper emotional and somatic state of anger, allowing the client to more clearly articulate the underlying unmet need, the role of the anger, and process the affect deeply buried in the body. The anger exercise leads to the emergence of the Vulnerable Child state, which requires a different approach and intervention. A scarf technique is used to experiment with different forms of connection, expression, and experimentation, which helps the client access the Playful Child state. The session demonstrates a shift in Thomas' relationship with his needs and their expression, moving towards releasing the Hypervigilant mode (tension), softening the body, and using verbal experiments to deepen the sense of safety within the body.

The session focuses on Thomas’ feelings of shame, lack of safety around others, and anxiety in the presence of others, fueled by the underlying Punitive Critic voice inducing fear and shame for the Vulnerable Child part. Through dialoguing with the Punitive Critic part, Thomas arrives at a point where a need for more self-compassion is identified. Verbal experiments and somatic self-soothing are used as a way of deepening the limited parenting stance toward the Vulnerable Child.

The session demonstrates an imagery rescripting exercise with a somatic element, focusing on a shame-based memory. Pushing a cushion in the middle of rescripting is used to enhance the client’s affective state and facilitate the effective processing of the memory. The act of pushing helps Thomas shift from an immobilizing state of shame and helplessness to a more mobilized defense, leading to a new sense of empowerment and a safe reconnection with the Vulnerable Child state. Somatic resourcing and verbal experiments are used to further activate Thomas’ soothing system.

In schema therapy we work with emotions, cognitions and behaviours, but only touch the subject of the body tangentially. However, many clients, particularly with complex histories, present with somatic symptoms. Sometimes client’s story is told more by the body than words. There may be modes that express themselves primarily somatically, sometimes the Vulnerable Child or Infant Mode is pre-verbal. Clinicians can feel quite stuck and at a loss when there is a need to go beyond words and client’s narrative, or where the client appears to be trapped in a strong coping or critic mode. This presentation will give a brief outline of integrating the body more directly in schema therapy work. It will address questions such as why we need to work with the body at all and look at the benefits as well as the risks. It will give a brief outline of the basic steps that can be taken to create a structure to work with the body, and also learn to access the body as a place of comfort, particularly where the body has been the site of trauma in the past. The aim of the presentation is to give clinicians ideas and confidence about bringing more body focus into their usual schema therapy interventions, and also use their own body as a place of guidance and resourcefulness.

Janis Briedis explores core emotional needs, schemas, and coping styles, highlighting the crucial role of the body in therapy—especially for trauma. He demonstrates techniques to interpret body signals, connect emotions with physical sensations, and integrate somatic awareness into treatment. With an emphasis on humor and playfulness, this approach helps clients access their healthy adult state and enhance self-care.

The session includes exploration of barriers (coping modes) to the Young One (Vulnerable Child mode), leading to a rapid shift to (or breaking into) a vigorous, life-filled Healthy Adult state full of vitality and feeling of expansiveness. Topics of grounding, co-regulation and object permanence are touched upon in the session.

In this session a somatic sense of boundaries is explored through movement between the client and therapist. Movement towards each other allows the client to tap into the sense of their ’no’ or ’stop’ , as well as ‘yes’ in the body. As part of the exercise feelings about boundaries being set by the therapist are explored, and repair of mini-rupture in the therapeutic relationship is demonstrated.

The session demonstrates working with chair distance and using the space in the room, accessing embodied Healthy Adult state as a precursor to inviting the Young One (Vulnerable Child mode) into the room. Movement, voice and verbal experiments are used to enhance the connection between the client and the therapist, as well as Ines’ Healthy Adult state and her Vulnerable Child mode. The session also demonstrates a way to deal with modes that interfere in the work with the Vulnerable Child mode, as well as the use of somatic flashcards.

The session demonstrates the process of conceptualising client’s difficulties managing anxiety as the Demanding/Blaming Critic mode that is squashing the Vulnerable Child mode, moderated by the Catastrophizer coping mode. The chair work leads to an in-depth understanding and softening of the Demanding Critic, ability to somatically soothe the Vulnerable Child mode and the appearance of the Playful Child mode and the importance of self-compassion.

The session begins with the use of a cushion to access a deeper emotional and somatic state of anger, allowing the client to more clearly articulate the underlying unmet need, the role of the anger, and process the affect deeply buried in the body. The anger exercise leads to the emergence of the Vulnerable Child state, which requires a different approach and intervention. A scarf technique is used to experiment with different forms of connection, expression, and experimentation, which helps the client access the Playful Child state. The session demonstrates a shift in Thomas' relationship with his needs and their expression, moving towards releasing the Hypervigilant mode (tension), softening the body, and using verbal experiments to deepen the sense of safety within the body.

The session focuses on Thomas’ feelings of shame, lack of safety around others, and anxiety in the presence of others, fueled by the underlying Punitive Critic voice inducing fear and shame for the Vulnerable Child part. Through dialoguing with the Punitive Critic part, Thomas arrives at a point where a need for more self-compassion is identified. Verbal experiments and somatic self-soothing are used as a way of deepening the limited parenting stance toward the Vulnerable Child.

The session demonstrates an imagery rescripting exercise with a somatic element, focusing on a shame-based memory. Pushing a cushion in the middle of rescripting is used to enhance the client’s affective state and facilitate the effective processing of the memory. The act of pushing helps Thomas shift from an immobilizing state of shame and helplessness to a more mobilized defense, leading to a new sense of empowerment and a safe reconnection with the Vulnerable Child state. Somatic resourcing and verbal experiments are used to further activate Thomas’ soothing system.