We welcome veteran somatic psychotherapist and educator Rae Johnson,  as the new Chair of Somatic Psychology at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute.  She comes to SBGI from the University of Toronto, where she was the Coordinator of the Student Crisis Response Programs, serving a community of nearly 80,000 people across three campuses.  Her work there involved consultation on student crisis situations, as well as training and education on issues of mental health and wellness, diversity and equity, and crisis intervention.  Rae explains that her doctoral research “focuses on the politics of embodiment and the somatic effects of oppression - specifically, the ways in which modern discourses work to inhibit experiences of the body as self.” Rae holds a Master’s in Holistic and Aesthetic Education from the University of Toronto and a second MA in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Specialization in Somatic Education from Lesley University.  She has been a somatic psychotherapist and educator since 1988 and is a Registered Social Worker and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapistâ. In 2004-2005,  Rae served as Core Faculty and Director of the Body Psychotherapy Program at Naropa University and has continued to teach in the Somatic Counseling Psychology Department.

TDR:  How did you first become involved in the study of somatic psychology?

It probably goes back to my initial training in Gestalt Therapy about 20 years ago.  The professional training that I did at the Institute here in Toronto emphasized the role of the body in psychotherapy our entire first year.  Because I had a background in dance, I used my therapy training  as an opportunity  to investigate dance movement therapy. There was a small dance movement therapy community here in Toronto at that time and I got involved in organizing some of their alternate route accreditation training. I began studying with dance movement therapists through that program and  was exposed to a variety of dance movement therapy approaches, such as authentic movement.  I found that the way I wanted to practice Gestalt therapy was very much in line with a somatic approach.

That was how I started.  Where I subsequently took that initial training was quite strongly influenced by exposure to feminist therapy and trauma work.  Through my clinical work with survivors of trauma and abuse, I became increasingly convinced that the body played a significant role in issues of difference and power and in mediating traumatic experience.  Helping clients reconnect with the subjective felt experience of their body often had profound implications on their capacity to heal from the trauma. 

TDR:  How would you describe your research?

My doctoral research investigates the somatic impact of oppression.  What I found in my research was what non-verbal researchers have actually been saying for years, which is that oppressive social systems are perpetuated as much through non-verbal  communication as by social institutions.  It is not to say that social institutions don’t play a role in perpetuating oppression, but there is an almost invisible dimension that no one talks about, and that’s what the body is doing - both in terms of the non-verbal communication, and in terms of the impact of oppression on the felt experience of the body (whether we feel connected to our somatic experience or disconnected from it, and how we’re able to use our somatic experience as a resource).

TDR: What was, to you, the highlight of your doctoral research?

My research feels to me like it’s helping to connect the dots between what we know about the somatic effects of trauma, The traumatology literature that suggests that oppression is “traumatic, and the literature in non-verbal communication that suggests that we actually learn and perpetuate oppression through our bodies.  What somatic psychology is able to offer is a mechanism for transforming the felt experience of the body in a way that is healing and empowering. The tools and insights of somatic psychology have not yet been systematically applied to issues of oppression, and my research suggests some ways this might be accomplished.

TDR:  How does your background in dance movement therapy play a role? 

I did part of my graduate internship at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, in Washington, D.C., where Marion Chace (one of the pioneers of dance therapy) developed her work.  I had an opportunity there to work with individuals in the chronic wards and in the maximum security forensic unit, and was able to witness first hand the transformative power of collective movement on relationship.  While I was there, I had the most amazing experience of  dancing to Prince’s “Purple Rain” with convicted rapists and serial killers.  What that experience taught me was that there was a shared humanity that dance allowed us to get to that these individuals weren’t accessing in any other way.  While I’m not a registered dance therapist, I have a real appreciation for it and its potential for accessing the implicit knowledge of the body .  So, I’ve done some serious dabbling in dance therapy, might be the best way to put it. 

TDR:  How would you describe your teaching style?  What are your passions that shape your work with students?

I actually think that learning occurs through a process of engagement and that each student brings to the learning experience not just their previous knowledge of the material, but all of their life experience.  I understand life experience as significantly an embodied experience and a social experience, so what I try to do in my teaching is model the quality of relationship that supports students to bring as much of themselves to the learning experience as they can.  I try to support them to integrate new material in ways that are unique to that individual student, even though the content we’re covering in a particular class is consistent for all students..  I try to take up teaching and learning in a way that encourages students to reflect, to chew over, to be critical, to ask questions, and to  apply  new information to the lived experience they’re already bringing, so that it makes real integrated sense to them. This approach has been called various things.  Some people call it “engaged pedagogy” and others use the term “critical pedagogy”.  I like to think of it as “embodied critical pedagogy”.  By that, I mean a way of teaching and learning that includes the body and is attentive to how  diversity, equity, and social power affect somatic experience. It’s an approach that encourages both students and teachers to look at the world with a capacity for asking hard questions about what we are doing and what is important to us as human beings. 

TDR: What is the most exciting aspect of your new role at SBGI?

I’m really looking forward to a couple of things.  First off, I think that the field of somatic psychology is on the brink of being able to make some very significant, very transformative contributions to higher education in settings beyond the small graduate programs where it is currently housed.  I am very interested in working with students, faculty and staff at SBGI to see how we might take some leadership in that area, to help infuse the knowledge and values that we have come to share around somatic psychology, into more traditional forms of psychology and counseling, in social work and in education. Because I value the role of higher education in creating culture, I think there’s huge potential for the work that we do to be taken up by others in ways that will begin to  transform the culture in which we live.  That’s one piece. 
The other piece is that I see students in somatic psychology as already having an appreciation for the lived experience of the body, an area that has some real potential to become more fundamentally connected  to issues of social justice, diversity and equity.   The issues of social power and cultural diversity have not been taken up very well by somatic psychology as a field.  While here are some exceptions (Don Hanlon Johnson and Thomas Hanna, for example) overall, we’ve tended to emphasize individual experience and not paid an awful lot of attention to how individual experience and interpersonal experience translates to the social and political realm. I’m really looking forward to working with students on these issues.