De Lijfprakijk
Practice for Body-oriented Psychotherapy
WELCOME
Glad that you have found De Lijfpraktijk.
My name is Sarah.​
As a body-oriented therapist in training, I am happy to guide you in your process.
Sometimes you reach a point in your life where you want to change something, but you just can't seem to get there by yourself. Or you notice that just talking about your problems is not enough to move forward.
Are you struggling with anxiety, grief, depression, or recurring, obstructive thinking patterns that you want to work on? Do you get stuck in your role as a parent, in other relationships, or in processes of trauma or loss?
Then body-oriented therapy might be something for you!
"When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.”
- Tara Brach
Body-oriented (integrative) psychotherapy
Body-oriented psychotherapy is a form of therapy in which the body is central. You experience and feel with your body. In body-oriented psychotherapy we use your body as the entrance for our research.
In the sessions that I offer, we investigate what is happening in the moment in your body.
I offer an integrative approach, designed to meet you where you are at, in the context of your own life. I believe that we are each uniquely qualified to overcome the different challenges we face on our own journeys.
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I give my sessions in my practice in the Rivierenbuurt in Amsterdam.
Embodiment: Your body as the central place where you experience life
How often do you experience the present moment?
In a world that seems to be spinning faster and faster, it can be a challenge to truly be present in the moment. Yet in that presence lies a power that helps us connect with ourselves, our bodies and the world around us. The practice of being present with what is here, goes through our body: our 'packaging' on this earth. Out body is always in the here and now.
Life happens in and through our body. Our body is the place where we experience illness, pain, loneliness, trauma and discomfort. Our body is also the place where we feel alive, where we experience joy, sensuality, connection and creativity. Unfortunately, over the course of our lives we often learn to ignore our body's signals, often out of necessity. We distance ourselves from what is painful and then discover that we have also lost part of our own aliveness.
We teach ourselves behavior that ensure connection with others around us, but that is often at the expense of connection with ourselves. We adapt, blow ourselves up, or make ourselves small, we hide our vulnerabilities. Emotions (or: energy in motion) get stuck in our bodies. We increasingly live from our heads. We merge with our beliefs and forget that we are more than our thoughts. We get stuck, caught in our thoughts. Our body becomes exhausted, sends out signals, screams louder and louder for attention.
Then it is time to gently wake yourself up up. To learn to listen again with curiosity to the subtle signals from your body: your breath, your heartbeat, the tension in your shoulders, or the contact of your feet with the ground. To learn to live again from the inside, outwards. By simply paying attention to what is happening in your body, you create space to be, without having to do. Space for everything that lives inside you. So that your body is again the central place where you can experience life, in the here and now.