Welcome to ioēs
This is a really exciting announcement; a bridging of two very different yet highly complementary disciplines. A labour of shared love. Lots of work… And a commitment to be of service.
We are Esther, Somatic Therapist, and Nate, Philosophical counsellor.
Together we are the founders of ioēs, an organisation that has brought together somatic therapy and philosophical counselling into one coherent, flexible framework.
We decided to create ioēs because we saw, so clearly, the impact the two disciplines we practiced were having on our lives and on the lives of the people we were supporting through our individual practice. However, neither approach individually seemed capable of engaging with the whole-of-organism, process-relational philosophy that grounds our practice.
For example, somatic therapy helps people heal emotional wounds, evolve nervous system patterns, build the capacity to meet life’s difficulties, and exercise greater freedom. Whereas philosophical counselling helps clarify values, clearly articulate a life purpose, and develop coherent strategies for living a truly meaningful existence. Philosophical counselling cannot support the re-organisation of the nervous system. Somatic therapy can. Somatic therapy doesn’t clarify meaning, purpose and values that can be acted up. Philosophical counselling does. Together, we believe these approaches can help people navigate life’s beauty and difficulty with patience, kindness, courage, resilience and coherence.
That’s exactly what this has done for us.
Although we will publish regularly, this first post is an attempt to share a reasonable overview of what we do and why.
To start with, here’s some information about us. It’ll help give you a sense of who we are and what we do.
And here’s a fairly detailed breakdown of the why, what and how of both Somatic Therapy and Philosophical Counselling.
On our home page, towards the bottom, we also have an FAQs section. Here’s an example a common question we receive:
What’s the difference between somatic therapy and psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is an evidence-based approach to therapy, often called ’talk therapy’. There are many different kinds of psychotherapy, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), interpersonal therapy (IPT), dialectical behaviour therapy, psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalysis and supportive therapy. Psychiatrists and psychologists both rely on these techniques when supporting patients in diverse clinical contexts. The main difference between the various forms of psychotherapy and somatic therapy is that psychotherapy is a top down approach, whereas somatic therapy is a bottom up approach. This means that psychotherapy works predominantly with the mind; verbally expressing and processing to better understand and evolve past, present and future psychological dynamics. Somatic therapy works predominately with the body; creating safe conditions for a person to go towards difficult sensations, emotions, or memories. Through effective, evidence-based techniques, professional guidance and co-regulation, the necessary conditions for the body are created. Through this, suppressed emotions can be released, traumatic events can be processed, and fragmented or abandoned ‘parts’ of the psyche can be integrated. This bottom up approach has a neurophysiological basis in the structure of the vagus nerve. 80% of signals are sensory ones that travel from the inner organs ‘up’ to the brain, supporting parasympathetic activation (the system that is responsible for calming the body), while 20% of the signals travel from the brain ‘down’ to the rest of the body.
If any of what we’re sharing resonates, please contact us. We’d love to hear from you. We’d love to explore the possibility of working together.
With φιλία (philía),
Esther and Nate
