B O D Y P O E M

I L L U M I N A T I N G U N T H O U G H T K N O W N S

T H E I N S T I T U T E F O R R E L A T I O N A L H A R M O N Y S T U D I E S

P R O F E S S I O N A L T R A I N I N G & R E S E A R C H

3 Month Professional Training in Body Poem

- Online Study with access to a Library of lifetime study that gets regularly updated and enriched with live Research Explorations and Practice - followed by three months of Supervised Practicum for Certification.

You are welcome to be individually enrolled and join the thriving International Community of Body Poets. Please book a discovery call with Katie Sarra to apply.

BODY POEM DOCUMENTARY

This documentary was filmed by Pure Productions in October 2022 during the first in-person Body Poem retreat held in the Esconhais retreat in the mountain town of Castanheira de Pera in Portugal. A group of dedicated Body Poets came together to deepen practice after months of learning online. We were joined by practitioners living in the mountains who were curious to discover what this is.

The Professional Training in Body Poem

This comprehensive program, carefully structured over six months, dedicates the first three months to a balanced blend of theoretical training and practical research. The following three months are devoted to a Supervised Practicum, ensuring a well-rounded learning experience as you develop your fluency as a Body Poet working with clients. This is where the training pays off as you use Body Poem as part of your professional practice. You will be certified as a Body Poet upon completion, equipped with knowledge, practical skills and emotional fluency. To start your training, and join the community of Body Poets at any time that suits your schedule. The first intake is this September.

The 3-Month Body Poem Training - comprehensive training and Research in the theory and practice of BODY POEM.

This includes 1-1 monthly supervision and a place in the monthly group supervision calls

The 3-Months of Supervised Practicum - The three months of Supervised Practicum towards Certification to practice professionally as a Body Poet

This includes one-on-one supervision every five sessions, listening to your recorded sessions (20 to complete), Monthly group supervision calls (maximum of 6 per group call)

The six months combined three months of training plus three Months of Supervised practicum -6-month BODY POEM training. This comprehensive program combines 3 Months of training and research with 3 Months of Supervised Practicum towards Certification as a Body Poet.

Katie Sarra - Founder and Director of training

is the founder of the Institute of Relational Harmony Studies, where she choreographs and teaches professional certification in Body Poem, Sexological Intimacy, Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Bodywork, training in the UK, Ireland, Europe & Kenya with an international team of leading-edge educators. She is an ACSB Ethics Committee and Grievance Council member and follows the Code of Ethics of the Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers (ACSB).

Katie Sarra has devoted 35 years of clinical practice to exploring and studying, through research and working with hundreds of people, what supports a person to discover becoming indigenously integrated with exiled aspects of the self, bypassing (often painful self-harming or harming others) defences and harvesting the psychic drives for creative self-expression and integration through the function of ‘projection’ and ‘projective identification’. She specialises in facilitating radical acceptance and integration of exiled aspects of ourselves.  She is an Art Psychotherapist, Founder of Body Poem, Artist, Certified Wheel of Consent and Right Use of Power facilitator, Certified Somatic Sex Educator, Certified Sexological Bodyworker, Playback Theatre Practitioner and member of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society.

Katie Sarra believes in the transformative power of self-acceptance and kindness. She believes that every human being has gifts to share, often grown from where we have suffered the most. Our self-acceptance and kindness, when we feel acknowledged and witnessed, can create a ripple effect that supports ease with others.

Body Poem is a practice facilitating radical acceptance. This can be understood as central to honouring and trusting the self-organising intelligence inherent in every human being. It is a skilled synthesis of Body Focusing*, Clean Language*, and Dream Form* illuminating unknown and unspoken parts of the self in spontaneously emerging poetry.

GoldFish Monthly Body Poem Community Webinars

REGISTER HERE

“Body Poem has been a priceless resource for me. It has enabled me to access, accept, and integrate parts of myself that I didn’t know existed, through providing a safe container for that process. I have seen it do the same for my clients. It is truly an honour for me to guide others through this powerfully gentle process.”

- Rosi Lalor ~ Certified Body Poet

MEET OUR CERTIFIED BODY POETS

  • Abi Denyer - Certified Body Poet

    Abi is a passionate advocate for cyclical living, a sea creature and a lover of the seasonal changes in nature and in ourselves.

    She works using Body Poem, Menstrual Medicine Circles, Yoga, Grief Rituals, Sensual Kink, Eating Psychology Coaching and Functional Medicine to design personalised programmes to facilitate deep healing.

    She brings her embodied intuitive wisdom to her work with people, gently inspiring them to move towards greater intimacy with themselves and their quiet longings.

    Abi also works with young people around body autonomy, menstruality, consent and pleasure, initiating them into the wisdom that is held in their bodies and what supports them to listen more deeply.

    Becoming a body poet brought Abi back to the simplicity of her essence, holding a space for people that is kind and welcoming of whatever is present, even when sometimes what is present might feel full of paradox, confusion and fogginess. Everything is welcome.

    Abi remains convinced that everything we do in life can be improved by slowing down, breathing and listening to the wisdom held in the body

  • Karen Yendal - Certified Body Poet

    For the past 20 years, I’ve walked (sometimes ran, sometimes crawled) my own path of healing from early developmental trauma. I have a deep personal understanding and intimate experience of the complex facets that form our human condition.

    Body Poem has been a crucial part of my journey, it came into my life at exactly the right time, as an act of grace.

    It is gentle, intelligent, nature-based, and in alignment with indigenous teachings that have supported me in my desire to heal, learn and accompany others. I find it comparable to soul retrieval while being grounded in sound nervous system theory and trauma awareness.

    Body Poem supports me to hold a safe space and work with professional responsibility.

  • Julian Marcus - Certified Body Poet

    Julian has passionately immersed himself in somatics for over two decades training, practicing and teaching bodywork and embodiment.

    He is the founder of Lucid Learning teaching Relational Bodywork and supporting practitioners and the public find their embodied felt-sense clarity in choice, relationships and life. The focus of this work follows his main passions which include combining Body Poem and Bodywork as one of the core practices. This is a powerful alchemy of client-lead coaching and touch.

    Katie and Julian have collaborated for some 11 years now providing each other an ongoing source of inspiration for each other’s artistic and therapeutic practices and teaching offerings.

    Julian’s practice specialism is relational bodywork and somatic sexology which he uses together as an alchemy so support others find their embodied health.

    East meets West deeply in this work, integrating ancient Chi Kung and Taoist alchemy practices with modern neuroscience, Wheel of Consent® and embodiment practices to foster fuller personal life leadership and symbiotic win-win community creation.

At the end of each session, there is an option for recording the Dreamer’s Body Poem

This reading back serves similarly to how a caregiver attunes and recognises the affect communications of the infant and vocalises these back transforming upset into regular harmony. This can be understood to be an adult version of this transformational process of affect finding home through the chords of the heart and voice of the practitioner embodying the client’s unique symbols and metaphor.

Here is an example of a recorded Body Poem from a session. There are no recognisable aspects of this and the person’s privacy is preserved.

A gift that I have been experimenting with is collaborating with a filmmaker here in the remote mountains in Portugal who intuitively takes this creative metaphorical process to another level by adding images and music to the poem. This further transforms unthought knowns into a mini film - in the language of video.

“Body Poem has been a crucial part of my journey, it came into my life at exactly the right time, as an act of grace.

It is gentle, intelligent, nature-based, and in alignment with indigenous teachings that have supported me in my desire to heal, learn, and accompany others. I find it comparable to soul retrieval while being grounded in sound nervous system theory and trauma awareness.”

- Karen Yendal ~ Certified Body Poet

“I have deep gratitude towards myself for being able to be in connection with my body and being able to listen to parts of my body. It was such a relief to allow myself to sense and speak out the sensations I was noticing but most importantly that I did not have to do anything to change what I am noticing.

I had a deep relaxation and I felt grounded, present, and energised. I find the process so powerful, witnessing yourself and being witnessed without any judgment or expectation is healing and soothing.”

~ Armand Botha ~ Certified Body Poet

Interview with Katie Sarra ~ by Julian Marcus sharing an introduction to Body Poem

  • Armand Botha - Certified Body Poet

    I have deep gratitude towards myself for being able to be in connection with my body and being able to listen to parts of my body. During the session I found a deep relaxation and contentment. It was such a relief to allow myself to sense and speak out the sensations I was noticing but most importantly that I did not have to do anything to change what I am noticing. When the dream scribe read back the noticing, I had a deep relaxation and I felt grounded, present, and energised. I find the process so powerful, witnessing yourself and being witnessed with out any judgement or expectation is healing and soothing.

  • Rosi Lalor - Certified Body Poet

    My name is Rosi Lalor I am a Body Poet based in Cork, Ireland. Back in 2004, I trained as a Holistic Therapist (Massage, Aromatherapy and Reflexology). For nine years I taught young adults with a broad range of special educational needs. I have been writing and performing songs for the past fifteen years and recently recorded my second album of original songs. In 2006 I completed an MA in Creative Writing for Personal Development at the University of Sussex. After moving from the UK to Ireland in 2014 I trained to become a Reiki Master and a Magnified Healing practitioner and teacher. I now offer in-person treatments at The Natural Clinic in Cork City, as well as distance healing and Body Poem sessions online.

    I have always been drawn to somatic/ embodiment practices, largely because I needed to learn to regulate my highly sensitive (and often overwhelmed) nervous system. My journey from feeling unsafe in my body and disconnected from its messages, to being in a deep loving connection with it, has been a slow one, and my greatest teacher.

    Body Poem has been a priceless resource for me in creating this shift. It has enabled me to access, accept, and integrate parts of myself that I didn’t know existed, through providing a safe container for that process. I have seen it do the same for my clients. It is truly an honour for me to guide others through this powerfully gentle process.

  • Cat Stevens - Certified Body Poet

    As the dream scribe I was aware of my attunement to my partner. I found myself adjusting my tone of voice and speed I was speaking to accommodate them. I am always really taken by how this process is so quick and takes the dreamer straight to those places within that are calling for attention and acknowledgement. Its an honour to hold space for someone in this way and fully hand their process over to them, offering them a safe space to explore.

  • Deborah Hood - Certified Body Poet

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  • Kat Malowsky - Certified Body Poet

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  • Rebecca Thompson ~Certified Body Poet

  • Kate Orson - Certified Body Poet

  • Jackie Scott - Certified Body Poet

  • Suzi Lister - Certified Body Poet

  • Simone Silverpath - Certified Body Poet

  • Briar Rose Kai Cheng - Certified Body Poet

  • Grete Hilde - Certified Body Poet

  • The essential use of Symbols

    Our ability to come into a relationship with ourselves requires finding ways of connecting to, feeling and expressing what is happening inside our body. Embodiment can be understood to be this symbolic relationship with our feeling states, senses and how we create meaning from these experiences.

  • Symbol Formation

    Discovering, and gaining access to symbols and language can help us self-reflect, communicate and integrate the visceral responses from our bodies and embody these. This work guides us into an exploration of embodied states, enhancing our capacity to be intimate with ourselves and with each other. This supports co creating relationship agreements with conscious awareness and integrity.

Facilitating the basic Structure of Body Poem

  • ... and what are you noticing?

  • ... and what is the mood of ..... that you are noticing?

  • ... and if this ... had a voice and could speak, what might they say?

  • ... and what else are you noticing?

  • and what is the mood of .... that you are noticing?

  • ... and if .... had a voice and could speak, what might .... be saying?

  • ... and what is that like to notice?

Harvesting Projections in Feng Shui Body Poem

Here is an example of a recorded Feng Shui Body Poem from a session.

I held my tears reading back this “Feng Shui” poem recognising the significance of what the objects in her environment were representing. Feng Shui Body Poem facilitates our collective consciousness and the timeless unconscious to speak to us through our surroundings illuminating unthought knowns. 

The communications from this Dreamer’s environment brought alive her lost sister reuniting them together and embedding their togetherness back in her heart

  • What is Radical acceptance?

    To love is to accept, receive and digest. Humans are alchemical ecosystems in the process of digesting our life experiences in symbiotic union with the colonies of bacteria and viruses that live in us and around us.

  • Self Acceptance

    Radical acceptance begins with our own ecosystem. 

    Before we can integrate, we need to see the forms within us differentiated out of the blind soup of our beings.

  • Justice is being with the Just is

    Radical acceptance includes our rejections and the harm we have caused and the harm we have been impacted with. The pain of this acceptance is an understandable withdrawal from love and unity.

  • Self Expression

    Finding words that come close to describing these emotional, sensual, and physical multidimensional aspects of ourselves literally activates receptors of self-acceptance when we are witnessed with radical acceptance.

  • Kindness with our inner critics

    Radical includes acceptance with our internal self-referencing inner dialogue. For example to self-evaluating aspects of ourselves that are maintaining our adaptive belonging.

  • Easing the pain

    Reframes, advice and affirmations may feel comforting like a bandage for our wounds to feel protected and cared for but when the time is right to be freed from these, it is radical acceptance that will ease the pain

  • Courage to be seen

    Under the bandage, wounds from our dark nights of the soul remain unseen and these exiled aspects of ourselves are sent back into the unseen bowels of humanity to endure continued separation until we are supported with courage to be seen with radical acceptance

  • Repair

    Cycles of undigested exiled aspects of humanity are ultimately seeking to be seen from underneath the shame bandages that have been nursing them.

    Being seen requires acknowledgement and understanding so we can repair and allow our remorse to teach us to learn not to harm again. 

“memory channels from this lifetime and lifetimes that have gone before us - generations of unintegrated aspects of humanity emerge out of the soup of the collective conscious to be witnessed and accepted.”