CPD - Continuing Professional Development

A Zoom workshop for therapists

working with Body Psychotherapy



16.00-20.00 London

18.00-22.00 Israel

10.00-14.00 South America

09.00-13.00 New York

The workshop is designed for therapists with experience in various fields, who are interested in broadening their skills to work with relationship issues in individual therapy and/or to increase the individual therapy skills into working with couples. We will learn how to integrate into individual and couple therapy techniques of awareness, movement, touch, and breathing, drawn from the body psychotherapy world.

A little about working with ‘couple armour’ in body psychotherapy.

In my work in the clinic over the past 25 years in individual and couple therapy using body psychotherapy, I’ve seen how one partner’s personal armour grows and starts affecting the other partner - and becomes more complex. Just as each one of us has rigid, sealed places, so every deep encounter between two people can creates conflicts between them at all levels. It can be present as poor communication, insecurity, lack of intimacy and/or difficulties in sexuality, an encounter between wounds that create complexity, pain, distress, and more. All of these build ‘couple armour’. 

As the burden of life on a couple increases, and their personal issues grow – both natural and normal processes – they experience difficulties / conflicts that are felt at all levels: energetically, emotionally, physically, and in their breathing. It happens in both of them, and within the relationship, and this creates the couple armour. In the workshop, we’ll explore ways to identify couple armour and the therapeutic techniques we can apply to work with it and to help the partners to deal with their issues.

•  Learning about primary couple personality and the process of ‘melting couple armour’ 
• We will discuss and experience the essence of working with relationship issues in Individual therapy and couple therapy with body psychotherapy
• Obtaining therapeutic tools from the body psychotherapy world – mind-body exercises that we can use in individual and couple therapy.

Personal development and growth as therapists.

The transition from individual to couple therapy generates a personal and professional process of growth, empowerment, and development, as well as a deeper therapeutic perspective on working with couplehood, in both individual and couple therapy.

During the workshop we will experience a process of therapeutic expansion. From a therapist treating individuals, who contains and works with one patient, to a broader position, where the therapist can work freely with the issue of relationship and contain and assist two people in a state of inner- and couple-conflict. Simultaneously, the therapist observes and contains the relationship and its complexity.

The workshop price is : 70 Euro / 60 Gbp -- using PayPal or credit card.

You are welcome to read two of my articles about Body Couple Psychotherapy from January 2020 published in SPT – Somatic Psychotherapy Today.

The process of melting Couple Armour through Body Psychotherapy - https://bit.ly/2HwGA1O 

And - The primary couple personality – published in the SPT - 2015 - https://bit.ly/2ZcDl9G

Gabriel Shiraz is a trainer, lecturer, supervisor, and body psychotherapist for individuals, couples, therapists and groups. He has worked in the field about 25 years. He founded and was a director of the Body Psychotherapy program at Reidman College, from 2001 to 2008. Gabriel is currently a senior trainer at the University of Haifa, Shilov Center, Reidman College and teaches Couple Therapy and Body Psychotherapy at other institutes in Israel and Europe, including the London School for Biodynamic Psychotherapy (LSBP). He is a qualified member of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP). Gabriel studied Biodynamic psychotherapy with the late Gerda Boysen in the nineties. He works with trained psychotherapists who want to develop and expand their skillsets in couples therapy and body psychotherapy. He believes that every experienced body psychotherapist can advance to working with couples as well. He also runs workshops for couples with a focus on improving their communication and relationships.