Empirical evidence of the embodiment awareness changes in somatic focused gestalt psychotherapy

This chapter begins with a brief explanation of Gestalt therapy, its central conceptualization of the Contacting Cycle, and concludes with the results of the empirical effectiveness study of somatically focused psychotherapy. In Gestalt psychotherapy sessions, radical attention is given to the client's somatic experience and explores embodied perception while increasing embodied awareness in order to locate areas of psychological tension. A possible explanation could be that given the focus of increasing present awareness in Gestalt treatment, clients are bringing into their conscious experiencing their acontextual contacting types thus increasing awareness of how often these resistances happen. Enhancing body awareness has been described as a key mechanism of action for somatically oriented therapeutic approaches.