Ronen Stilman Psychotherapy

12/08/2026

The next Certificate in Somatic TA cohort begins in Edinburgh this September and if you've been thinking about how to integrate the somatic into your work with clients, this may be the answer.

The course runs over three weekends across the autumn: 19–20 September, 17–18 October, and 28–29 November 2026 and is designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches and mental health practitioners who want to bring a more embodied dimension into their clinical work.
Six days. Three modules. Plenty of space for experiential learning, skills practice, and supervision.

Full details and the application form are at the link below.
https://ronenstilman.com/somaticta/

08/08/2026

What really changes when a practitioner starts paying attention to the body?

We're trained to develop our practice by adding new models, new interventions, new ways of conceptualising what's happening. Somatic awareness is a different approach.

It doesn't ask you to set aside what you already know. It changes your relationship to that knowledge - how you hold it, how you access it, how it moves through you in the room.

Practitioners often describe small but significant shifts. Staying with something a moment longer instead of reaching for an intervention. Registering a change in the space before it becomes words. More confidence in their own body signals that open up something different in the therapeutic relationship.

Details and booking via the link in first comment.

05/08/2026

There was a time when working with the body in psychotherapy was considered niche - something a small group of practitioners found compelling, while much of the field kept its distance.

Trauma research has now fundamentally reshaped how we think about where experience lives - not just in narrative or cognition, but in the tissue of the body itself. Neuroscience has added weight to this, particularly work on threat response, implicit memory, and autonomic regulation. It's become increasingly difficult to maintain that therapy is essentially a cognitive undertaking that happens to take place in a body.

Alongside this, trauma-informed practice has moved from aspiration to expectation across most therapeutic settings. And meaningful trauma-informed work is, by its nature, body-aware. It encourages us to attend to regulation, to how safety is experienced rather than simply understood, to the ways threat registers before language catches up.

Somatic approaches have long histories - in body psychotherapy, in early analytic thinking, in relational and humanistic traditions. What's happened is that the broader therapeutic field has begun to recognise what body-oriented practitioners have understood for decades: the body isn't a passive context for psychological work. It's the ground from which change actually arises.

The Certificate in Somatic TA integrates somatic awareness with Transactional Analysis theory across three weekends in Edinburgh. The 2026/27 course begins in September. Book now to reserve your place. Link for more details in first comment.

01/08/2026

Every practitioner knows stuckness. That particular quality in the room when the work feels effortful but nothing is quite moving. The client returns to the same ground. The same loops. We stay present, we reflect, we interpret - and still, something remains untouched.

What I've come to notice is that stuckness often persists when we meet it on its own terms. If the impasse is cognitive, we think our way around it. If it's narrative, we search for a different story. But sometimes the thing that holds the pattern in place isn't available at that level at all.

The body carries what the mind has found ways to manage. And it's often still in motion, and still signalling, even when everything else feels frozen.

This is where somatic awareness has become most valuable in my own practice. Not as an intervention, but as a additional channel. When I invite a client to notice what's happening physically - a held breath, tension they hadn't registered, a sensation they can't quite name - the room can shift.

It doesn't replace the relational or verbal work. It sits alongside it. And in those stuck places, it can open something that thinking alone won't reach.

The Certificate in Somatic TA runs over three weekends in Edinburgh. The 2026/27 cohort begins in September. More at link in comments.

29/07/2026

What may not have words..... the body often knows before language does.

Somatic TA is about becoming aware of how you and the person in front of you are using the body to say things words haven't caught up to yet.

You don't need to abandon anything you already do to start integrating the somatic in your work, it sits alongside whatever model you're trained in.

It starts with beginning to widen your attention a little, to the space as well as the words.

If this is the kind of thing you'd like to spend three weekends getting properly hands-on with, the next Certificate in Somatic TA cohort starts in Edinburgh this September - apply now to reserve your place. Details are on my website if you're curious. ronenstilman.com/somaticta/

28/07/2026

Great quote from the brilliant mind of Berne 🤣

“Despair is a concern of the Adult, while in depression it is the Child who has the executive power. Hopefulness, enthusiasm or a lively interest in one's surroundings is the opposite of depression; laughter is the opposite of despair.”

Eric Berne

15/06/2026

The next Certificate in Somatic TA cohort begins in Edinburgh this September and if you've been thinking about it, early bird places are available until the at the end of this month.

The course runs over three weekends across the autumn: 19–20 September, 17–18 October, and 28–29 November 2026 and is designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches and mental health practitioners who want to bring a more embodied dimension into their clinical work.
Six days. Three modules. Plenty of space for experiential learning, skills practice, and supervision.

Full details and the application form are at the link below.
ronenstilman.com/somaticta

12/06/2026

How do you describe the way that you work? What support do you need in developing your practice, supervision or teaching?
If learning in conversation and community is your thing, check out our learning circles below 👇

Enrolling now to commence September 2026

Designed for trainers and supervisors to help you develop the theory, philosophy, and skills to become a confident practitioner.

At the heart of our work is a passion for lifelong learning and professional growth. Our Teaching and Supervision Learning Circle caters to those wanting to refine their philosophy, knowledge, and skills as supervisors and trainers.

The unique architecture of our collective—comprising Beren, Bev, Helen, and Ronen—offers a dynamic learning environment. The learning circle is a unique way to learn: you and your peers provide the steady, closed-group continuity, whilst we facilitate in rotating pairs. Because each of us brings a distinct set of clinical interests, lived experiences, and ways of working, every meeting delivers a fresh combination of therapeutic influences. We will begin each of the eight annual sessions with a structured "teach" from the hosting pair to kickstart the day, but from there, the canvas belongs to the group. The agenda is co-created in real-time: you might choose to lead a session, request live observation or supervision, unpack a complex piece of theory, or simply tap into our collective experience. Because we never quite know what we will be called upon to facilitate or teach, there is a wonderfully lively, spontaneous edge to every meeting.

Ultimately, our participants tell us that what sets these learning experiences apart is the vital balance of being developmental and stretching, but deeply connecting. We believe that professional growth shouldn't happen in a vacuum. Beyond the academic rigour and the unique opportunity to work with four different facilitators, the true anchor of these circles is the profound sense of contact, connection, and relationship they provide. It is a shared, safe, yet challenging space where you can show up authentically, refine your craft, and be sustained by a community of peers who are as invested in your growth as you are.

Each group meets over 8 Fridays per year on zoom, and there is also the option of an in-person weekend in June each year.

Link in first comment.

10/06/2026

We spend a lot of time learning to listen to our clients, to track what they say, how they say it, what they leave out. But the other source of information in the room that often goes unexamined is our own bodies.

Noticing our own bodies reactions; maybe a slight tension that arrives in your chest or a heaviness when discussing a particular area or possibly a restless feeling.

Somatic practitioners talk about kinaesthetic response - the way the therapist's body picks up and reflects something of the client's internal state. It's related to what we understand about parallel process, but more immediate. More physical. It happens in real time, often before our thinking minds have caught up.

What changes when we start to pay deliberate attention to it is the quality of presence we can offer. Not louder interpretations or more precise reflections, but something more fundamental, at a level that the client's nervous system can register.

The Certificate in Somatic TA explores this territory in depth, including how to develop the therapist's somatic awareness as a clinical tool. A six-day experiential training in Edinburgh, the next cohort starts September 2026. ronenstilman.com/somaticta

16/04/2026

When I'm working with a client, I notice things that aren’t picked up by hearing in the conventional sense.

The body - mine and the client's - is processing the relational field in ways that precede language. What we call countertransference often has a somatic dimension that gets translated into thought after the fact, if it gets noticed at all. Learning to notice it earlier, to stay curious about what it might be pointing to, opens up a different kind of clinical awareness.

This is about widening the channel through which we receive what a client is bringing. Sometimes the most important thing happening in a session isn't in the spoken word at all.

If this kind of embodied clinical awareness interests you, the Certificate in Somatic TA runs over three weekends in Edinburgh. The 2026/27 cohort begins in September. Find out more at ronenstilman.com/somaticta