In this new podcast episode, we dive deep into the realms of somatic psychotherapy, interdisciplinary practices, and the art of embodying multi-modality in therapy with our distinguished guest, Dr. Brian Tierney. Known as the Somatic Doctor, Brian brings a unique blend of expertise in somatic psychotherapy, dance, and bodywork, shining a light on the intricate connections between the body, mind, and spirit.
Throughout our conversation, Brian shares his journey from a business student with a budding interest in somatic practices to becoming a leader in the field of integrative therapy. His eclectic approach, combining talk therapy, dance, and structural integration bodywork, offers a fresh perspective on therapeutic practices. Brian's work emphasizes the importance of navigating multiple therapeutic angles, including trauma resolution, dance and movement, and the integration of various bodywork modalities, to support human development and well-being.
A highlight of our discussion revolves around Brian's deep commitment to interdisciplinary practice and research. He challenges the trend towards excessive specialization in therapy, advocating for a broader, more holistic approach to understanding and treating the human psyche. Brian's insights into the role of dance, movement, and body awareness in therapy provide valuable lessons on the power of embodying multi-modality to foster healing and personal growth.
Listeners are invited to explore the full episode to delve into Brian's profound insights and experiences. For more information on Dr. Brian Tierney's work, visit his website at somaticdoctor.com and follow him on Instagram. Engage with his teachings and join us in exploring the vast potential of integrative and somatic therapies to enrich our lives and therapeutic practices.
Key Highlights:
For those interested in the intersection of somatic practices, dance, and psychotherapy, this episode is a must-listen. Dive into the full conversation to uncover the depths of Dr. Brian Tierney's work and the transformative potential of integrating multiple modalities into therapeutic practice.
Links and Resources Mentioned:
In this new podcast episode, we dive deep into the realms of somatic psychotherapy, interdisciplinary practices, and the art of embodying multi-modality in therapy with our distinguished guest, Dr. Brian Tierney. Known as the Somatic Doctor, Brian brings a unique blend of expertise in somatic psychotherapy, dance, and bodywork, shining a light on the intricate connections between the body, mind, and spirit.
Throughout our conversation, Brian shares his journey from a business student with a budding interest in somatic practices to becoming a leader in the field of integrative therapy. His eclectic approach, combining talk therapy, dance, and structural integration bodywork, offers a fresh perspective on therapeutic practices. Brian's work emphasizes the importance of navigating multiple therapeutic angles, including trauma resolution, dance and movement, and the integration of various bodywork modalities, to support human development and well-being.
A highlight of our discussion revolves around Brian's deep commitment to interdisciplinary practice and research. He challenges the trend towards excessive specialization in therapy, advocating for a broader, more holistic approach to understanding and treating the human psyche. Brian's insights into the role of dance, movement, and body awareness in therapy provide valuable lessons on the power of embodying multi-modality to foster healing and personal growth.
Listeners are invited to explore the full episode to delve into Brian's profound insights and experiences. For more information on Dr. Brian Tierney's work, visit his website at somaticdoctor.com and follow him on Instagram. Engage with his teachings and join us in exploring the vast potential of integrative and somatic therapies to enrich our lives and therapeutic practices.
Key Highlights:
For those interested in the intersection of somatic practices, dance, and psychotherapy, this episode is a must-listen. Dive into the full conversation to uncover the depths of Dr. Brian Tierney's work and the transformative potential of integrating multiple modalities into therapeutic practice.
Links and Resources Mentioned:
All right. Good morning, everybody. I'm sitting here today with Dr. Brian Tierney and he is known as the somatic doctor, at least his professional, his website is somatic doctor and his Instagram, work as well. And, I'm in Boulder, Colorado as always. And, Dr. Tierney is in somewhere in the Bay area, San Francisco, joining us and just a quick introduction. and then we'll. We'll jump in, but, and can I, is it okay if I call you Brian on the, show? Great. So, Brian is a, integrative therapy, somatic psychotherapist, and educator. He has a doctorate in somatic psychotherapy. He both has a private practice, doing that work as well as teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, teaching this work. Let's see. I'm going to read something from his official intro. He is an eclectic psychotherapist who uses a combination of talk therapy and education with individuals, families, couples, children, and groups. He's also a seasoned dancer with over 20 years of experience in modalities such as contact improv, capoeira, and authentic music. And I know also Brian has a background in structural integration, body work, and other body work modalities. And one of my key interests, Brian, and having you on on the show is this theme of multi modality or, and, what's, leaps out from your content online and your website and your background is that over the last 25 years or so you've been navigating multiple angles of therapeutically studying the human person for everything from body work and trauma resolution models, dance and movement. And in a way, that's really the theme of this podcast overall is how did the, how does embodiment practices in general, coincide around, supporting human development. So I'm hoping that's the conversation we can have today. Welcome, welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about interdisciplinary stuff and multi modality stuff. Because, there's the big trend and the big movement, of course, is to specialization almost to a ridiculous point, right? Where sometimes I make the joke that you can only refer somebody if they have exactly the same history or something like that. And it's, It becomes almost ridiculous how much specialization there is. And I just love interdisciplinary practice and research. Wonderful. Wonderful. could we start with, I like to do origin story. if you how did you get on this path, the path of study in the first place? Yeah. So I grew up in Minnesota and then, and which was, Me too. Me too. Me too. By the way. Minneapolis. Yeah. I'm from St. Paul. Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. So not only the same color scheme, this morning, a similar origin. It must be our Minnesotan heritage. I like to say that it's, Minnesota is a great place to grow up and a great place to leave. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. I grew up there and, not much somatic awareness there besides, clunking around our heads playing football and, everything like that. And when I went to university in Wisconsin, I was a party guy and, it just wasn't working for me. And the reason why I knew it wasn't working for me, like my career path was marketing and I just, I was in business school and things just weren't lining up for me psychologically and with my friend group and how it showed up for me as in my body. I just got anxious and the symptoms showed up in my body, in my throat in particular. And, and then it was a, if we want to go with the throat and what, the throat often means symbolically is then that catapulted me into 15 years of finding my voice. and the first modality I went to, I think, was like Reiki or something like that. And then it was, then I was, I enrolled in acupuncture school. I moved out to California, lived at an integrative healing art school for three years, which is where things really took off. for me from this integrative health standpoint. I lived with a bunch of traveling teachers had all this, all these different, experiences with different modalities, different teachers, from like Cool. What was, the name of it was What was the name of that? And they used to, it was like a, one of the only residential massage schools, in the world where you could, you went to the mountains and people live there for an entire year and we're just immersed in it, like all organic food, totally off the grid, straw bale temple and just this great, and it was founded by this wonderful man who teaches, polarity therapy. You familiar with polarity? Yeah. Yeah, so that's in my toolbox, polarity therapy, craniosacral therapy, massage, that was the origins for me and then catapulted me into a long career doing craniosacral work, which I still do to this day. And then, there's men's work thrown in there, all this stuff, right? But it was really Heartwood Institute that was the hub for my integrative study. And practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. so it sounds if I'm understanding correctly, the beginning professional work was in, in, hands on body work, acupuncture, craniosacral therapy, et cetera, et cetera. And which you're still carrying with you through today, but then, your, interest in, psychology must have been enough to, propel you through graduate studies and, going down that path as well. Do you want, can you speak to just a little bit of what kept pushing you forward in that direction? Yeah. at Heartwood, I was a yoga teacher. I started to get into dance and there's all these different folks that when they're doing body work, they were engaged in processes that, really got the emotions going. And I was super repressed. I grew up in the Midwest, and In Minnesota. Yeah. We're not known for our emotional I was super repressed. So gradually, I started to receive body work that started to get the plumbing going. And I started to then express more on the dance floor. And I really just started to open up. I went to men's groups and all that stuff. And then a picture started to emerge about, hey, it's not just about the body. It's not just about the mind and emotions. It's a, it's an integrated whole. And, I think. It was really, probably the men's work, doing like somatic work with men, doing men's work that really got me thinking about archetypal psychology, so archetypal psychology was my my passion, my way into the deep study of psychology, and then neurology was there with craniosacral therapy. and then gradually over time, my passion for neurology and archetypal psychology started to converge. especially in the men's work and the craniosacral work and the trauma resolution stuff. That all put me in the pipeline to do my doctoral studies. Got it. Cool. If somebody was listening and they, thought, I don't totally, I can't totally picture what somatic men's work would be like. I have my own experience with it, but I'm just thinking about listeners who may wonder what that is. Could you just speak a little bit to the kinds of. what, I guess maybe what impacted you, what kinds of practices, just to give just a little flavor of what the, that environment is like, yeah, I like to just keep it simple and call it like a specialized type of plumbing. it speaks to men, right? Because, like I, again, I was repressed and stuck in my emotional body and in my physical body. I was really limited in my range of expression and guys that are trained facilitators in the men's work, which I later came to be just have a way of reading bodies like a kind of like a, role. method of assessing bodies, but more from a kind of emotional plumbing standpoint. Psychoemotional what's being repressed, that sort of thing. the two biggies, of course, are grief and rage and guys just have a way of reading where the, body is clogged. and that, and it's hard to explain unless you experience it yourself, and you've experienced it yourself, so you know what I'm talking about. but, for newbies, it's, I like to just keep it simple and say it's plumbing. let's get things moving. Let's get the vitality It freeing up the emotional, but maybe even yeah, emotional plumbing makes sense to me, but also, I guess I think a little bit like almost, almost like from, from a reikian perspective, freeing the bioenergies and whatnot Yeah. And then that can look like getting, the body moving, doing breath work, touch. sometimes it's, reading poetry and things like that, that get it. get men out of the linguistic or into different linguistic centers of the brain and so on so that they think different and can feel differently. Yeah. Super cool. What for you was a lot of that in like, retreat formats, like multi day intensive kind of environments. I was involved with the Mankind Project for about 8, 10 years or something like that when I lived in New Zealand. I so I trained as a facilitator and that and just, and then it was then that I really started to, because archetypal psychology is very much, circulating in that community. This idea that there could be archetypal energies really, fascinated me, made sense, made intuitive sense to me. and that carried me into deep studies in psychology. So, this is again, I'm reading from your website, but what it what's quoted there is that your doctoral project was an integrative approach to psychology that wove together somatic psychology, sociology, anthropology, embryology, neurobiology, mythical studies, In general systems theory, which I, as a person who likes to look at how things intersect, I was like, yeah, cool. I want to read your thesis and your dissertation. could anything you can, could you share just a little bit about, we would need way more time than our hour to, to go into just that piece. But can you talk a little bit about what that folk that study was? Yeah, it my original inspiration was, to I was really curious about what we see in somatics is almost like a continuum and sometimes split groups, where we have like a catharsis oriented group that's very much about letting it rip and finding the emotions and just roaring and screaming and. primal scream and, the mankind project was very much in that camp, drama therapy, cathartic work, versus, modalities that are more, containment focused. and that's often having to do with this neurobiological frame of trauma resolution, taking it slow, Slower is faster. whole thing, craniosacral work, and SEP, and just working on, granular sequencing, and Titration. All of that. I began to see, as a craniosacral teacher and teaching trauma resolution, from that perspective, that there, there's, there was like a anti catharsis movement. Totally. A hundred percent. then not only that, an anti intellectual movement that was there in the somatics community. And that turned me off. so I wanted to, because I, was really. powerfully moved by drama therapies, they were very, meaningful to me being a repressed Minnesotan. I, yes, I needed to learn how to get grounded. I needed to learn how to contain myself and go slow and work with my own trauma and so on. But for me, it was essential that I could learn how to just let the life force move through me and to be expressive in that way. so that what inspired the dissertation was like how to bring these two together in a kind of more integrated theory. and it's, not easy to do because it's a, It's a, pretty wide continuum, right? there's a lot, there's a lot there, especially when you bring in the archetypes, and so the idea is I wanted to bring in archetypal theory, okay? Because, the idea with archetypes is, that they're, themes that cut across cultures, that really grab us. mythology. Yeah. Could you, name just a few of the, just give us three or four of some of the common archetypes that, that just, so we can relate, warrior start with the warrior, right? So the warrior is our aggressive systems, right? whereas mammals, we just have that we have aggressive aggression circuitry, and we either do aggression well, or we don't do aggression. but again, so aggression as aggression is a word, right? and there's all these words in psychodynamic theory and all these words in neurobiology, and I have those frameworks and they're interesting to me. but what's most compelling to the human imagination is story. And that's where the archetypes show up. They show up in stories. They show up in myths. They show up in dreams. They show up in psychotic process. So it was really compelling to me, to have that archetypal image of the warrior and not only have the, that archetypal image of the warrior, but to understand that is a system. It's a neuro psycho neurobiological system. Okay. That has cultural, neuro, ramifications and has impacted culture, influenced culturally, shaped culturally, is in a reciprocal tension relationship with an opposing system, okay, called the lover, okay, and the lovers are attachment systems. like attachment, neurobiology, for example, again, lots of words. But then we have Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The feeling, feeling and the narrative is what's compelling to the mind. That's what the, that's what our brains do. They are brains, socially engage in narrative, our bodies socially engaged in narrative. We are narrative organisms, Definitely. so then I got really interested in the tension between the opposites. Uh huh. And then that's what, My passion was to understand and map out, okay, if there's systems in the, how did the systems in the psyche, the, tension systems in the psyche, how did that, that, how does that map onto the body? How does that map onto family dynamics and social dynamics? Okay. And how might that be an expression of certain fundamental tensions in biology? Namely, how the body constructs itself in a tension field embryologically. Okay. And then so that, and that passion came from the field of study called biodynamic craniosacral therapy, which is very interested in, embryology. embryological development. Yep. Yep. Cool. so it's there's so much there and so much to talk about, but I guess to simplify it, is that we are a distributed tension grid, and that's where the fascial research comes in there too. the psyche is like that. It's a distributed tension grid, and it either distributes the tensions well or not well. You know what I mean? Society is a distributed tension grid, and it Tension system. that tension or not well, Harmoniously or, yeah. Yep. Yep. and so is the embryo, and so is the universe, right? I see. So is this where this is, so I was wondering where does the general systems theory come in? And I think I might be hearing it right now that, any system seems to be organized along these Yep. And, that, you can probably gather that role, that Ida Rolfe is in there, right? that idea that, there's a structural integration zone, that can occur over time when we're working directly with the distributed tension system. pension system of the myofascial system. Yeah, super. Can I just I want to just I guess Cheerlead something for a moment if it's okay Because I love the you know this, you know that central theme you presented of how do you reconcile, the value of these more expressive and dynamic and, cathartic models with sort of some of this neurobiology and that's, more focused trauma resolution models that are, focused on titration and, I, just wanted to share that that's a big interest of mine too. and it's something that I've wrestled with part of my own journey around exploring multimodally has been because I don't want to, I want to have the good of one thing, but not exclude the good of something else. And but in some of my early days, it's like, I, my most early body work training was, or body oriented training was in the martial arts. And so for me, that was my, I got thrown into the, I didn't have much of a warrior archetype, but then I got thrown into Japanese kendo fencing and I, quickly realized I better get my neurobiology in order to support aggression. or else I was going to be toast. and so for me, I had some big experiences like that. And then, my most early therapeutic work was a form of structural integration, body work. And it was in a particular lineage that was pretty cathartic. It was fairly strong work. Pretty emotive, pretty expressive. and then when I got interested in the neurobiology side and I gravitated towards somatic experiencing and things like that's when I really saw that there was now this tension within the somatic world where, people were talking about, Oh, you're an old school rolfer, I'm a new school rolfer where we, where, we don't. so you hear these things and I thought to myself, this is a false dichotomy because there's definitely value in slowing down and working with what the system can accommodate, especially when, when we get around trauma. So sensitivity is like huge and, but let's not forget that, that, we're human beings and dynamic experiences and sometimes those express in big energies. So how do we hold both? So I just wanted to quickly say that I love the theme that you explored there. So that's my piece. yeah, I'm really interested in the tingle response, Alex, the tingle, like the, goose bump response. totally. Yeah. after you. It was the first one of our interview today where I just had a whole tingle response. involuntary pillow erection is the term. I, it just sounds so good, doesn't it? I love that. Wait, involuntary pillow erection. Nice. or I can't remember the pillow muscles on the, the tiny little muscles on the pores. But, it's really interesting. And the, yeah, psychological literature shows that people that are high in openness tend to have the tingle response more. So maybe that's a pitch for my openness. Maybe I'm being slightly, arrogant or something. I don't know. But anyways, I just wanted to say, I just wanted to share that, science, share that somatic moment, share the joy, because there's bliss that goes in that tingle response for me. It tells me that something we're on the same channel or where There's a res, there's a, resonance. it feels good to me. So I just wanted to name that, Oh, thank you. And because it, it matters a lot, this tension, right? And, that it, what I like to say is that identity can be a gluey thing, because to me, what can happen is, that you have, pockets of research and practice. Let's take, for example, the interpersonal neurobiology milieu of research, Dan Siegel, it's neo buddhism, it's mindfulness based, it's inter subjectivity based, it's let's focus on, essentially slowing down, okay? And there's, identity based factors where people identify and, of course, it, stuff like this takes us on a journey. It opens us up. It's meaningful. It puts us in touch with the big, meaningful flow of life. And so obviously we would become identified with these things. like I, things that are very meaningful to us are, they just become almost like the center, central organizing principle of our life. and that's good until it's not good. You know what I mean? I think that's one of the things that are the primary thing that's at play here that I write quite a bit about in my book that I'm conjuring up. And so you got for example, the, the slow approach. To trauma resolution, which is informed by the neurobiology of trauma, informed by an interlocks with interpersonal neurobiology community, and then it shows up in clinical practice as a very specific pacing, a very specific tempo. Yeah, that is slow and, and coherent, but then there's some element of identity that comes in where this community under the umbrella and under the kind of aegis of, self regulation because that's the, that's like the mantra, right? That's the mantra. Yeah. Self regulation, the biology lines up with it. It had, there's, in terms of the attachment biology, but, there doesn't seem to be much room for it. dynamism in terms of the intellect because the intellect moves, right? It can, move at a, speed that is a different, that is a differential tempo. And, also the sorts of aggressive, potencies that are there in the martial arts, which are creative art, they can get scapegoated. and then also. That this side of the river, the self regulation side of the river can look at the other side of the river. The ones that methodologies that are, you know, more cathartic and more dynamic and then just start to this is filtered through the identity filter. That's not us. You're not one of us, right? And then over on that side of the river, that's the, bad stuff that's re traumatizing, Yeah. You guys are retraumatizing people. Yep. or disembodied, or addicts, or something like that. And it's just, It's ridiculous because there's good stuff on both sides, but the slow stuff is, it's radically important clinically with traumatized people. Of course. Yes. But sometimes I go to a workshop, and it's It becomes a huge transgression to actually move with dynamism. Do anything beyond that? totally. so like, one way to think about it is like one of the main, important, axioms of, the neurobiological work is, safety, right? What is, cultivating a sense of safety for the, nervous system that helps, shift away from defensive physiology. So that's, in some ways, that's the key ingredient of trauma resolution models is how to, restore a felt sense of safety and neuroception of safety that can then create that shift. But and like absolutely for in the domain of the delicacy of trauma resolution, what a beautiful thing to attune to. But do we live our lives pure with, does that mean we can somehow cultivate that there's safety in all moments? No, we're in human environments, competitive environments, sometimes antagonistic environments. And what do we do then? So, again, I'm just resonating with what I'm hearing from yeah. And it's not gonna, I don't think it's gonna be very safe for our daughters, our young daughters, for example, if we're constantly trying to slow them down and impose upon their nervous systems our concept of what safety means, It's you need to slow down so that you can feel safe. My little 4 year old. no, it's No, be you. Yeah. Yeah, do this thing. Let's play. Let's be dynamic, and that's why I like to say, the little thing that I like to say with somatic students is it's not just. Regulate or self regulate. It's rave and regulate or rock and roll and regulate, the, sympathetic system itself gets scapegoated by this, by, this, It's as, if I do know what you mean. As if the, as if mobilizing energy is a bad thing. Yeah. like what? I always say I don't use the term fight or flight nervous system because it, makes it sound bad, or at least that's, that, so I'm totally with you. This is, we'd be, we'd be pretty boring, leading pretty boring lives if we didn't have any sympathetic tone, to add to the Exactly. Yeah, playfulness. I think that's a big one, right? And I think that's the, one of the big ones in the trauma resolution community is, that it, it, has this, given the gravity of the work, it's understandable that this happens, but there can be a sliding into just a, like a humorlessness. and a la a lack of regard for how important play is. And play is a sympathetic system thing, right? Sure, we could find out a way to play in a parasympathetic way, it can be done, it is done. play necessitates dynamism, variability, and, Yeah, surprise. And yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. Wow. so I, so my mind is going two places at once, but what one is, I'll just share a, a comment I frequently make around the, around this whole topic of multimodalism, my word, or the word I tend to use or interdisciplinary or whatever, but I now have a little bit of a, a, litmus test when, I have explored a lot of things, everything from structural integration to Feldenkrais method to, as the things that I mentioned to you earlier, and, as soon as a teacher starts framing things as. Starts othering other modalities and saying, Oh, we have to look at it from a functional movement perspective and everything else is downstream of that. Or we have to, we have to look at it from, integration in the field of gravity. As soon as somebody makes a claim that there's some primacy there. Now, yeah. it's, you do need to articulate the philosophy of your modality, but any, but as soon as people start bad mouthing, the efficacy of other things is when my attention starts to drop, because my own experience is that these various modalities from dance to martial arts to, different trauma models to, to all kinds of things, body work. They wouldn't perpetuate if they weren't providing some significant value to, some of the people. Now they may, no one might not be the whole story, but, anyway, it's just a little bit of a, kind of a soapbox thing for me is that I hate it when there's this attitude of, of, my thing is the best and I'm just going to start to dismiss these other things. I don't know if, for you who's been very eclectic, I wonder if you've seen that? If you sense that yeah. You gave me another pillow erection, Alex. Okay, so yeah. And because we're in this, this field, this multimodal field that is, I think that it makes us partners in thought and practice in that way. So when I found somebody that's tuned into that channel, it makes my body thrilled and excited. because yeah, for sure. when I was in, I taught in the biodynamic craniosacral community for, for quite some time, and there's very much this thing in the community, which is one of the things that really turned me off. And it's so prevalent that I ended up doing the thing myself and noticing as I was doing it, I was noticing as I was doing it, I'm doing it. Ah, I'm doing it. I'm doing that thing. Yeah. Yeah. And then and the primary tension or one of the big tensions, because this is a very slow, a community. It's like their, biodynamics is very proud about being neutral. And so the, the, other modality is specifically usually biomechanical, craniosacral work, up ledger, style. Yeah. Those folks who, then get othered. Okay. They are not neutral. They are not the way. Okay, they are not the way. And, as somebody that was very, touched in the early days by shamanic based up ledger person. it didn't, it was always in the background, even as I found myself doing the narrative a bit. It didn't line up, and I knew I wasn't being inauthentic. I was, I knew I was doing that othering thing, and this is where actually my studies in psychology really helped a bit, specifically Jungian studies, because the Jungians are super fierce about grandiosity. They, that is like the Jungian approach I would, I could say could be generalized and narrowed to this, the study basically of how, humans have this horrible habit of being grandiose. Okay. Interesting. that's 1 way of understanding the whole Jungian apparatus is that it's deeply attuned to how we do grandiosity. And And so that helped me to summary. understand okay, there's grandiosity in this community, and it's organized in this way. And there's grandiosity in this community and it's organized in this way. And that is not creating structural integration between the communities. It's not creating that tensegrity system where there's actual crosstalk and interdisciplinary, research and practice like there should be. And that's what the body does, right? It distributes tensions. Like we should learn from the body because that's, because it does it, better than how we do society and identity, right? Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Oh, I'm going to do a big sigh of relief hearing, hearing somebody else, put it much more beautiful and sophisticated language to something that I've been, thinking a lot about. So very cool to hear all of this. I wonder if we could pivot a little bit. there's, a bunch of parts of your story that are really interesting. for a part of me isn't I want to hear about your dance and all of that. but I think what's more pressing is, could you talk a little bit about your, prac, your clinical practice these days? Because I'm trying to imagine for myself, so I'm, I'm wanting to work with you. am I doing touch modalities? Am I doing talk modalities? Am I doing all of those things? Is all my work in person with you. I'm just really curious about how you're practicing if you're willing to share. Yeah, so I do, I would say 40 to 60 percent in person work. and there's most definitely a talk therapy, meaning making component. there's, a percentage of my client base that wants more of that. And a percentage of my client base that wants less of that. it's being an interdisciplinary, multimodal guy, I'm still going to be on some level following what a person's imperatives are, so if they're, for example, if they're really interested and doing work with the imagination and they want to make meaning, and that is what floats their boat and they find a lot of healing in that, in that angle, then we'll go there. But even if, but one of the things that one of the things that does cut across my work, no matter what the approach is, whether it's a lot of talking, or it's mainly kind of tracking body sensations and doing, for example, memory, traumatic memory work. as, folks are generally on my table, okay, and I'm generally doing it, touching them. And I'm generally using still, even despite the critical appreciation that we've shared about the slow stuff, I'm generally doing things quite slow. Yeah. Yeah. in terms of, it's a craniosacral touch, so I'm just essentially touching the autonomic nerve plexi, System. Yeah. And then just tracking, with them, sensation, but also basically doing talk therapy with touch. that's one kind of approach, and then another approach is I'm doing my own unique, approach to trauma resolution. A lot of people, of course, come in, because somatics, the buzzword is, glued together with trauma, right? So that, I would say that most people come in through my website. having research trauma and then so they'll come in for the trauma resolution work and that's a distinctive, operating mode, treatment mode, that, but how it's similar is that the person is still on my table. They're still relaxed. I'm still touching their, autonomic plexi and, but their eyes are closed. I, for example, I use EMDR tappers with people on the table. I put, Is that those, the actually put them on Is that what they ankles. I find that, that it's less intrusive to have the tappers be on the ankles, but I do the work with the eyes closed. So I have my own unique approach to it. EMDR, that involves touch and, my own style of regression work. So there's that. And then there's, I do also breath work, which is, this is where the dynamic element comes in, where I get people just, Doing intense breathing and getting the vitality going, and we're breathing hard, we're breathing hard and we're getting the affect flowing. And then I also do, a drama therapy approach, which is like a projected, internal family system approach that's informed by my, Like with chair work and stuff like that, up in gravity and I get them to, like I support them expressing and moving their body acting things out, speaking. Yeah. So I would say that those are the main pillars right there. Yeah. Yeah. I do bring in some of the, deeper connective tissue work. not a whole heck of a lot, but I do, I bring that stuff in there. Yeah, I like rolfing faces still. I think faces are really where the rubber hits the road. in terms of our identity complexes. so I like to still, I, really, I do like to work on faces from a connective tissue perspective because I think the face is really where. psyche and social dynamics meet is, Meet. Cool. Interesting. Interesting. Super cool. What, percentage of your work is, so I know your private practice is a big piece and then in a minute here, I want to ask about your writing project, but on the teaching side, is that, tell me just a little bit about what the education you're doing for other therapists. yeah, I teach in the somatics program at CIIS, and I teach neuroscience, which has been a passion of mine since, since I started to, since craniosacral, right? So that's been 25 years. I've been studying the brain and the nervous system for 25 years now. quite deeply. And so it really afforded me in creating that curriculum. I could really dive deeply into things that I love, like the, for example, the evolution of the neuron. I just love to nerd out on stuff like that. Like just, like the research problem is how did the neuron evolve? And then I'm in the literature for I'm still in the literature of how the neuron evolved. after after probably 15, 15 years, of asking that question. Wow. Oh so I love to nerd out on that stuff and in the background and I'm an interdisciplinary researcher, right? So I'll go from embryo, molecular biology to embryology to sociology. And then back to archaeology, for example, and and you can see that my practice of research is very much like what we've been talking about. it's all connected, right? So it's just like a node in the network that I'm picking up. And I'm already assuming that node in the network is connected. I just need to figure out and find connector points and use my imagination and my research mind to make the connection. So I bring that to the students and I've been, really interested in the default mode network. For example, we talk a lot about the default mode network in the class, talk a lot about interpersonal neuro, all the classic stuff with kind of a, flair for what I like to call, re enchanting science. I love to do, because it's like, there's something about science that can be, yeah, there's something about science that can be, grandiose. Oh, I mean? Because even in, for example, polyvagal theory is a great example of how grandiose science can get. I love Porges work. I was a joiner for a long time with that stuff. I was like, yeah, polyvagal. That's I'm going to teach this stuff. I know this stuff like great. But then the more and more that I researched the nervous system, the more and more I realized this is just a model and we know so little. Yeah. It's just, it's the beginning of a story, but there's, it's, there's, yeah, What, I like about Porges is that, I, it's funny you mentioned that cause I was just going to bring up polyvagal theory and, ask you about that because what I was going to say is, I'm pretty, steeped in those communities through SC, which is pretty, we use the polyvagal theory. I do TRE that, tension and trauma. We use polyvagal theory as our model. I do the safe and sound listening protocol. So these are all sort of polyvagal specific, interventions, but I was going to ask you that exact question, which is, now the few times that I've heard him speak, I actually do detect. Humility that, I've heard Porges himself say, Hey, this is a way of organizing some things. This is telling a particular story. This is, science is something that evolves. so I actually picked up a bit of, flexibility in his model, but we can see these tensions where there's people who are, you know, polyvagal theory is the end all and be all and then people saying, oh, but this thing doesn't work and this thing doesn't work. So I was going to ask you about that. So I'm glad you brought it up and anything else you would share about that tension, yeah, I think it's, it can be the case right where you have the founding egghead or the founding genius that really is a real scientist and real scientists know, for example, the, I can't remember his name right now, but he runs the research lab at Harvard Lichtman is his name. he said, if, if, knowing everything there is to know about the nervous system is a mile, we're at three and so like the greats have that humility, and, that's one of the reasons why they're, they keep on getting driven into the literature. And because the literature is constantly changing and evolving, and if you keep on being dynamic in that way, the, one of the only responses is humility. You know what I mean? Because it's you just, it's it's, it just keeps on changing and then you're faced with the complexity of life and at some point, so it's you almost have to be a mystic that, that's why I like embryology because things get, because more and more that you study embryology, the nervous system is one thing, but then putting it all together, the embryo. a whole nother thing. Unbelievable. and that was pillow erection number three of the call for me. Oh you're going for it. and yeah, with polyvagal, it's, and I'm really glad to hear that about Porges. I think it's really solid research. I want to get trained in the safe and sound model myself. I think it's, I think it's great neurology. But again, often. Yeah. What happens is you get this, brilliant founder, and then the trickle down effect, the, grandiose, the grandiosity starts to take root in the followers who then start to other, modalities. And these aren't the folks that are deep in the literature. That same othering Yeah, that same other dynamic and the people, they just take the model, which is an oversimplification. Polyvagal theory is, and any model has to be an oversimplification because otherwise our brains would just break because, 85 billion neurons, like, how do, you even, come on? I like to, play with this idea that, there's, there's branding in neuroscience, just like there's branding everywhere else. And scientists, what they do is they dedicate their entire career to just one or two nodes in the network. And, of course, Porges node is the Vegas, and it's a radically important node. But for example, the periaqueductal gray, which is, which has been my passion and my love for decades now, it. my books, of course, and this is how, in my judgment, this is how neuroscience works. you have to get passionate about a structure in the brain. And you can study that for literally 30 years and it'll still keep on opening up. But what it starts to look like is it starts to look almost like religion. it's but it's like a neural structure in the brain instead of a deity. You know what I mean? And it's like The almighty Vegas. Yeah, let's bow down. All the Vegas. And then of course, and then like Bud Craig, he's an, he's the insula guy. You know what I mean? And it's the insula and interoception and it's all about interoception and, safety from an insular standpoint as opposed to a, Vegas standpoint, right, then you have Alan Shore and his orbital front, the orbital frontal cortex. It's the orbital frontal cortex, and, Okay. Brain religion. I'm liking this. This is a good framework. Yeah. yeah. So I think a bit of that is happening, right? Which is that you see, you can see that my Jungian thinking is, it is now moving into the neuroscience domain here, and that doesn't mean that this, that these models and maps aren't useful, but let's try to differentiate function from, the actual science, like for example, the McLean, the triune brain model, is. is a timelessly useful model. it's just I still work with this model with couples, but it's it's essentially wrong. Yeah, it's just a, it's a convenient story that is not that's, so that's the thing. and, this goes back to the narrative mind that we're primarily narrative organisms. And, given the enormity of complexity in the brain, I think it is wise to hold it that way, that, that polyvagal theory is a, it's a heuristic, it's a useful narrative that has clinical utility, but it is just a tiny, of parts of it that probably aren't true. of parts of it that aren't true. Yeah. And like for example, the Periaqueductal Gray should very much be in that model for it to be more whole. it's if I, in the Visionary Somatics book, I am deeply in ensconced in, pink SEPs theory, basic emotions, theory, and which really centers the periaqueductal gray as the center. Now of course, I'm. bringing thought like what I'm bringing to the book. I'm saying, basically what I just said, Hey, the, my style of teaching is let's out myself as I'm doing the thing that I'm doing, and be critical of the thing that I'm teaching about while I'm teaching it, which has confused students in the past, right? To be critical of the thing that you're teaching. But you're, it's here's my thesis and here's the antithesis at the same time. It's but, to me that's more, There, it's something, there's honest, it's an honest approach. Yeah. Yeah. it's funny one example, and I'm going to, I'm going to butcher the, I'm going to butcher the details because I only intermittently review my, neurophysiology, but like a few years back. And I wonder if you tracked this, but a few years back, they you may recall. This was, I think it was around 2020, 2021 and some kind of, neuroscience study came out that said, Hey, we took mice and we, so there's when we come to the stress model and HBA access is a longstanding understanding of the neuro hormonal. what mounts the stress response hormonally in a, nervous system. And then there was this sort of study that where they, I forget what it was, they cut, the connection to the pituitary gland or something like that. And then, they, saw that the role of, osteocalcin, which is a hormone coming from the bones. And that even if they severed the. The main, pathway of the HPA axis that, osteocalcin alone was totally sufficient to raise heart rate and to mount the stress response. And so basically it was like saying this, model that everybody thinks of is, how it works. If we cut, the mechanism. This other mechanism does the exact same thing, which to me was just like this revelation around that kind of to your point about, we're three inches of the way to a mile that are neural, that are neuroscientific constructs are super duper useful. We know a lot. We should be proud of that. And we should be pretty aware that even tried and true physiological principles can get modified or adjusted at any time. But, so that was just one example that stands out that's brilliant. Yeah. To really challenge this. reductionism that's trying to narrow things into bottom, up, and top, down. It is all in the middle. It's all in the middle. Everything's in the middle, right? and that proves it. like neuropeptides are just not well understood. They're, more ancient. They do, they do a broader range of things. You mentioned basically a calci, calcitonin, the calcitonin peptide, which I'm basically right in the middle of studying peptides right now and coming up with an integrated, mishmash of, hopefully it's not a mishmash hope. Hopefully it's coherent, but like how, coming from this perspective that we know so little. Okay, what are some things that we do know about peptides, okay? Peptides like oxytocin. Now peptides, they do basically hormonal things and neurotransmitter things. And what you've just, described is, hang on, so you're telling me that peptide stuff happens in bones and does a bottom, quote unquote, bottom up. stress thing. And that, what that does is that balances this idea where there can be this obsession regarding top down. Let's snip the top and wait, hang on, now there's a bottom up. Like it can go. the reason why I'm saying that it's always in the middle. Is that everything is an integrated whole, right? Like you, there are integration hubs in the brain. For example, the cerebellum is like the bee's knees. To me, like to me, the cerebellum is like understanding the cerebellum and cerebellar computation is where it's at in terms of the future of somatic psychotherapy. Interesting. to me, like watching a master like Levine in my, books with where I'm at in the neuroscience literature is, that he's a master of the cerebellum. He's a master of working with the cerebellum clinically. and that is counter to this kind of classical framework of kind of top down versus bottom up psychotherapy. And this is 1 of the grandiose things about a somatic, therapist sometimes is where the bottom up people, Yeah. We're the bottom up guys. Yeah. Yeah. people that focus on, on, on teaching people how to do top down regulation. Uh But, and then the thing is, that the structures that are often prioritized, of course, are these ones here, the frontal lobe structures. Right. Right. more and more, the literature is showing how crucial the cerebellum is, which is a subcortical structure, and has 80 percent of the volume of the brain, 80 percent of the volume of the brain is in the cerebellum. Okay, and it is. And so then we have this discourse that is back, front and front back. and not only that, of course, we have core to the periphery and periphery to the core. So thinking that nature is working in lines is just wrong headed, right? it's just, Working as an integrated as an integrated whole. Yeah. Super cool. Wow. I'm so loving this. can we talk about your book? What's, the title? What's the, theme? When's it being released? what's, happening with it? yeah, so it's called Visionary Somatics I'm under contract with Inner Traditions. and it's, I'm shooting to be done with it by June. I've been at it for about three and a half years now. and really what, originally it was going to be like a manual, for somatic therapists beginners. But then I started to write it and I was like, this isn't me, I need to go complex because to me, that's what biology and psychology is. It's, the study of complexity and it's learning how to elegantly and usefully dance with complexity. and then it's ended up being a complex philosophical and biological work. That is, is, trying to do what we're doing. You and I, we're doing this multimodal thing, this interdisciplinary thing. it is within that tradition. It's very much in an interdisciplinary tradition. I move from concepts like the racialized body. And talking about how oppression impacts bodies, to immunology, to embryology, and then into, just full blown philosophy, and then back into, the neurobiology of trauma. So it's like a, it's me, right? It's who I am. I'm an interdisciplinary guy. There's weirdly enough, there's still a little part in me that wants to apologize for not being a specialist. You know what I mean? Even though I have to play that, game because we're in, of course, we're in capitalism, right? So I still have to say, oh, I'm a trauma resolution specialist. Yeah, I feel like I have to say, and then somehow, Yeah. You still have to claim your yeah, But the thing is, that it's as Michael Shea used to say, it's like an obstacle course for mystics. The book is like an obstacle course for mystics that are really interested in science and really interested in living on the cutting edge of life. Oh, very cool. So if, your release date is June ish, that's, so that makes me think that probably that at least the main body and bones of the manuscript are there. And are you, in an editing phase yeah, I'm hammering down the last hardest part, which is the cutting edge science. I've done the hard yards with the philosophy. I've done the hard yards with the science. I'm hammering that down. Then the rest will be easy for me, which is a bit about archetypes and a bit about clinical practice, and then I'll send it into the editors and I'm saying that like it's easy, but it sounds like you're closer to the finish line than the, entry point. So that's probably good. Yeah. That's cool. maybe like you, and you've already alluded to this, but I, would love to hear you unpacking it. and it might, it's probably relates to your book, but, if I, if we look at the last 30 years, I sometimes say, my interest was first, I got interested in modalities like rolfing that were rooted in, I don't know, 1950s, 60s, 70s era frameworks around the human experience. And then, and then I got swept in with a term I use is the neurobiological revolution. I don't know exactly when it started, but maybe around the turn of the millennium or something, it doesn't have a clear beginning, as a big phase where, and so that's, I needed to, I really wanted to study that, that side of things, the trauma resolution models and how does that fit in to the, work that I do. but in terms of like where we're heading, like what's, your perspective on, the field, of some, maybe, somatic psychotherapy, but maybe we could include, touch, frameworks as well. Where, do you see us heading in the next 10, 20, 30 years? a great question. I feel drawn in the direction of the science first, and then maybe we can go from there, one of the linchpins for, at the cutting edge of science, let's put it this way, is the astrocyte. Okay. An astrocyte is a glial cell and it is the, the linchpin to a new paradigm called the tripartite synapse model, the tripartite synapse model, which is a fairly new model. and basically what the astrocyte, teaches as astrocytes, basically hold the integrity of the blood brain barrier together. Okay, but they're also basically, because they're an immune sensitive cell, they're the glue between the nervous system and the immune system. and so astrocyte research, and not only that, what's important to note. About astrocytes is their essential part of the core metabolism of the brain from a molecular perspective. So glutamate and GABA, glutamate's an upper. GABA is a downer or inhibitory, and they're just like pistons, like parasympathetic, sympathetic on a molecular level. and astrocytes are essential and, like the core metabolism of the central nervous system runs on glutamate and GABA. Astrocytes are primary to this, this, metabolic workhorse in the central nervous system. and what's important about that, of course, is, that it. It's the bridge, the astrocyte is the bridge between the nervous system and the immune system. And so all this talk about the microbiome Yep. Yep. and inflammation, there's this huge discourse about inflammation, right? Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. crazy. Yeah. Huge. Yep. Yep. Yep. a neurobiological perspective is the astrocyte. Which is, and so, astrocyte research is like, if I had some money, I'd put, it, I'd put it down and I'd find some astrocyte researchers that are, research. That's, where you'd invest. but functionally, so then the reason why I've gone to science in that regard is. Like, how can we let biology teach us about where biology is that sociology and clinical practice needs to go? Because, to me, bio, biology is already ahead of us, like way ahead of us. So we need to learn from biology rather than the other way around, trying to teach our biology about how it could be, yeah. to a sociological model or something. we should be learning from the biology. I'm with network computing, right? It's supposed to be modeled or inspired off of neural networks, but it is way behind what neural networks actually do. You know what I mean? So, so then from that perspective, what can the astrocyte teach us about where we should be going or where we could be going, which is integration. Okay. Which is integration. it's I think where we're headed is we're going to be moving out of neurocentric paradigms, okay? Paradigms that, and models that are, that centered just on the nervous system. and models that take us into the complexity of what biology actually is, rather than try to reduce things Reduce it to the models and identities that can be replicated. Models and identities that can be replicated, and then we, just get end up being in a fractured field. just like science is a fractured Just looking at looking in a narrow, looking, carefully at a narrow perspective, and I think, an AI is gonna, it's the good, the bad, and the ugly with this stuff. But the good part is, that me personally, I think AI is good at doing interdisciplinary, weaving, It can it. seeing connections that a human might not see. So I think that the future has something to do, or I let's put it this way. I hope that the future has something to do with what we've been talking about throughout this whole episode that and it does, carry forward the vision of people like Ida Rolfe and then general systems theory that there's something in biology. There's something in the cosmos that is in integrative in ways that our identities and our opinions need to learn from, and. And so I just think, I just hope that we can continue to be more integrative in that way. And that, and to me, that means just walking around going, holy shit, we don't know what's happening. And that's a good thing. And that can make us come alive. with the mystery of life, right? And we can be celebrating life a little bit more. Yeah, Yeah. I'm liking that. So to me, there's this meta theme of, the humility and as opposed to grandiosity. That's when you make the shift from into an integrative model and recognize that there's so much, there's so much that's working intrinsically, that our understanding has not even come close, made some great, amazing starts and models, but it, but if we can keep, staying humble in the face of the integrated whole there's there's much more for us to learn and embody My paraphrasing of what I think I hear from you. That way. Why can't biology what biology does in its enormous integrative complexity? Why shouldn't it be our primary teacher? our teacher. and that means that it's not it. We are far from saying, Oh, yeah. it's ridiculous, right? That I heard a scientist once say that a liver cell is just basically a simple machine. what? no, we're talking just radical elegance and complexity at a molecular scale. And that's magical. It's magical. and it could, really be our teacher. We've got it the wrong way around. yeah Very rich. Brian, I just 1, 000, 000 percent appreciate, this time to hear your thinking and thoughts and explorations. And yeah, I just feel a huge resonance with the, paradigm that you're, bringing Alex. Really appreciate the opportunity. Very cool.