Amalia Garcia will be holding the workshop for us for the Spring Meeting this year, 16th May 2026, 2-4pm. The workshop will be held at  at Friends Meeting House, 91-93 Hartington Grove, Cambridge CB1 7UB and will be held after the AMBT committee meeting from 11.00am to 1.00pm (open to all members, in person and online), following a bring and share lunch.

​The afternoon workshop with Amalia is free for all members, and open to non-members at a cost of £20.

​Amalia's bio
Amalia is a Senior Lecturer in Dance and an Internal Family Systems (IFS) practitioner, working at the intersection of embodied movement, creative process, and therapeutic presence. Her work brings together somatic practices, improvisation, and parts-work to support safety, self-leadership, and compassionate relationship with inner experience. She is a programme assistant on IFS trainings, leads creative health programmes, and facilitates movement spaces that honour both psychological depth and poetic embodiment.

Session Brief
This 2-hour session will weave Internal Family Systems with gentle, exploratory movement. Through simple somatic and creative practices, participants will be invited to listen to their inner world through the body, cultivating curiosity, safety, and connection with different parts of self. The emphasis will be experiential rather than theoretical, allowing space for presence, felt sense, and Self-led awareness to emerge. The precise focus and structure will be shaped closer to the time, in response to the group and what feels most alive and needed.

Email Yvonne Lentge to book your place: [email protected]

Posted by Ruthie Baigent ABMT Vice Chair and Treasurer, 22/01/2026

A discussion referencing biodynamic psychology, and other spiritual, psychological and socio-political factors relating to the body's stress response

This presentation discusses the body's stress response, including medical, psychological and socio-political summaries, from a perspective of Biodynamic and Internal Family Systems (IFS) psychotherapy.

Watch this presentation to find out more about:
 -- ALLOSTATIC LOAD,
 -- ALLOSTASIS,
 -- the impact of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)
 -- and other factors involved in a person's INDIVIDUAL RESPONSE to stress.

Watch also to learn more about the little-discussed impact of toxic stress on dental health. This is my own personal perspective covering what I have learned in my studies -- in particular, regarding
 -- MAGNESIUM,
 -- XYLITOL,
 -- BONE BROTH,
 -- and REMINERALISATION (of teeth and bones)

________________________________________

Key Texts, Links and References (including some that didn't show up on the video)


 -- https://www.naturallyyoudentist.com/cavities ---10-easy-prevention-tips.html
 -- https://www.youtube.com/@dr.elliephillips
 -- Study on Xylitol: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4232036/

________________________________________


Tooth decay and allostatic load

Studies on magnesium:

--- Oral manifestations of magnesium and vitamin D inadequacy, Anne Marie Uwitonze, Sayeeda Rahman, Nkemcho Ojeh, William B Grant, Harleen Kaur, Afrozul Haq, Mohammed S Razzaque. Inadequacy of those essential minerals is associated with delayed tooth eruption and with enamel or dentin hypoplasia. Taking calcium without magnesium results in soft dental enamel, which cannot resist the acids causing tooth decay.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32084549/

_______________

--- Magnesium and stress, Magdalena D. Cuciureanu and Robert Vink.

"Magnesium status is highly associated with stress levels, with both stress and hypomagnesemia potentiating each other’s negative effects. Indeed, hypomagnesemia has been associated with stressful conditions such as photosensitive headache, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, audiogenic stress, cold stress, and physical stress, amongst others."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507250/




--- Magnesium Status and Stress: The Vicious Circle Concept Revisited, Gisèle Pickering, André Mazur, Marion Trousselard, Przemyslaw Bienkowski, Natalia Yaltsewa, Mohamed Amessou, Lionel Noah, Etienne Pouteau.

"Numerous studies, both in pre-clinical and clinical settings, have investigated the interaction of magnesium with key mediators of the physiological stress response, and demonstrated that magnesium plays an inhibitory key role in the regulation and neurotransmission of the normal stress response. Furthermore, low magnesium status has been reported in several studies assessing nutritional aspects in subjects suffering from psychological stress or associated symptoms. This overlap in the results suggests that stress could increase magnesium loss, causing a deficiency; and in turn, magnesium deficiency could enhance the body’s susceptibility to stress, resulting in a magnesium and stress vicious circle."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7761127/



Bibliography

 -- Boyesen, G. Between Psyche and Soma. (BPS) (E-copy.)

 -- Juhan, Deane. (2003) Job’s Body (JB). NY: Barrytown/Station Hill.

 -- Martini, F; Nath, J; Bartholomew, E. (2012) Fundamentals of Anatomy & Physiology. San Francisco: Pearson.

  -- Multiple Authors (2022). New Collected Papers of Biodynamic Psychology (NCP). Galashiels: New Psychotherapy Publications. Boyesen, M L. “PSYCHO-PERISTALSIS: Part 1 - The abdominal discharge of nervous tension” (Article 1.3). Boyesen, G. “Experiences with Dynamic Relaxation and the Relationship of its Discovery to the Reichian and ‘Bioenergetic’ view of Vegeto-therapy.” (Article 1.1)

-- Rutishauser, Sigrid. (1994) Physiology and Anatomy, A Basis for Nursing and Health Care. London: Churchill Livingstone.

-- Strauffer, K. (2010) Anatomy and Physiology for Psychotherapists (APP). NY: W W Norton & Company, Inc.

New Collected Papers of Biodynamic Psychology available here: https://www.bodypsychotherapypublications.com/pub_22.html



​By Ruthie Baigent, 28 October 2025

​Our 2025 AGM Autumn Meeting will take place on 1st November at Friends Meeting House, 91-93 Hartington Grove, Cambridge CB1 7UB. Our afternoon workshop will be given by Kathrin Stauffer from 2-4pm. The workshop is open to members of ABMT free of charge and  members of the public can attend at a cost of £20.

More details below:



Working with low-energy states in Biodynamic Massage
A short workshop with Kathrin Stauffer for members of ABMT



Based on my 2020 book on psychotherapy with clients who were neglected early in life, I want to present my take on working in biodynamic massage with low-energy states. I will attempt to make a case that work with low-energy states needs to be radically different from work with high-energy states, and want to show both theoretically and practically why I think this and how it looks.


The presentation will include both a more theoretical perspective and practicalities for how the theory can be applied to hands-on work with clients.


Kathrin Stauffer PhD is the author of two books: ‘Emotional Neglect and the Adult in Therapy: Lifelong Consequences to a Lack of Early Attunement’ (W.W. Norton 2020); and ‘Anatomy & Physiology for Psychotherapists: Connecting Body & Soul’ (W.W. Norton 2010). She was born and educated in Switzerland. Originally a research biochemist, she retrained at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy in the 1990s. She lives in Cambridge and works in private practice as a body psychotherapist, EMDR practitioner, trainer and supervisor. She is also currently the president of the European Association of Body Psychotherapy.  www.stauffer.co.uk

​The ABMT Spring Meeting & Workshop will take place on Saturday 10th May. As usual the committee meeting begins at 11.00am and the workshop begins at 2.00pm. The Venue is CCPE (Centre of Counselling & Psychotherapy Education) 2 Warwick Crescent, London W2 6NE. The meeting is open to all members, and the afternoon workshop is free for members and non-members are welcome too, for £20.
​


Workshop Facilitator
This spring our workshop will be given by Carlien Van Heel. Carlien is originally from the Netherlands and came to London in 1985 to study Biodynamic Psychotherapy with Garda Boyesen. She has 38 years experience in private practice and is a senior trainer with the LSBP and a UKCP accredited supervisor. Carlien gained an MA in Body Psychotherapy in 2014. Carlien continues to be inspired by Boyesen’s concepts and theories and enjoys linking them to more recent findings.


The Workshop
Carlien will share two powerpoint presentation on Boyesen’s concept of Psycho-peristalsis and how it links to the concepts of primary and Secondary Personality. She first presented this at the Oslo Conference in 2024. In her view, psycho-peristalsis is now almost backed up by current findings in physiology and neuroscience. She is very much looking forward to sharing this topic with you, that is so central to our biodynamic work.


We hope to see you on Saturday May 10th!


To find out more and to book, please email ABMT Membership Secretary  [email protected]


Posted by Ruth Baigent, Vice Chair ABMT, 4th May 2025

Jan Trewartha, founder and director of The Fascia Hub, the British Fascia Symposium, and Body in Harmony Training (focusing on light touch work, especially working with scars and adhesions) came to deliver a workshop for the ABMT 9th November 2024. Her knowledge is extensive and a powerful complement to the working knowledge of Biodynamic Massage. We have a lot to learn from her work and experience.


Jan has been in healthcare since 1979, originally training as a State Registered Nurse in the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC), working at grass roots level with patients on the wards and spending time in the operating theatre; a superb if non-deliberate foundation for her future career.  
 
In 1988 Jan took time out to go travelling for three years, where her life was to dramatically change direction. Trained by a blind massage therapist to really ‘feel’ the body led to a lifetime passion for body work.  Her work now is the culmination of many years of training and experience in different disciplines. She has been in practice since 1992 where her clients have been willing guinea pigs in her ongoing development of light touch therapy work.  
 
Jan has been teaching since 1993, and in 2014 became the first accredited UK teacher in Sharon Wheeler’s ScarWork. Having had surgery in Great Ormond St. Hospital as a young child, resulting in major scarring, Jan experienced great relief and lightness after being treated by Sharon Wheeler; this has given her an awareness of the effect of adhesions and empathy with her clients. 
 
Apart from a missionary zeal for spreading the word about the effects of scarring on the body, Jan’s passions are for travelling and for anything that gets her outdoors and moving.

​Jan's book is available here: uk.singingdragon.com/collections/author-jan-trewartha-pid-300246
​
Find out more about training with Jan for "Sharon Wheeler's ScarWork", "Fascial Unwinding and Energy Awareness", and "Specialist training working with abdominal and pelvic scars" here: www.bodyinharmony.org.uk

And Jan's Fascia Hub can be found here: https://thefasciahub.com/

​By Ruthie Baigent, 22nd November 2024

Patrick Casement, psychoanalyst and author of several books and numerous papers on clinical technique, most famously: On Learning from the Patient.

In The Emperor's New Clothes, Patrick Casement discusses power dynamics in psychoanalytic training that can patronise, pathologise and, ultimately, even dismiss students. Psychoanalytical theory is capable not only of drawing into the light, but also of eclipsing the reality of the person in its projection. What Casement describes in terms of group dynamics and narcissistic projection are issues that are common to all institutional trainings -- including schools (for children) -- and, potentially, in all relationships, so we can all learn something from his article, whether we are working with clients, students, children, or simply being with each other in daily life. 

​​Casement says, “…projection comes into play in the services of narcissism…”. If we are unguarded and unaware we risk walking in illusion and not seeing or giving space to the reality outside of ourselves and our “group”, be that a psychoanalytic society, training committee, or, I would add, staff-room friendship group, or beyond. It is the power dynamics of exclusion, of fascism (as I have written about elsewhere), to which we are all prey since it is an easy place for us to go to in our (unwitting, secondary personality) narcissism and insecurity. Casement shows how this is possible, and even normal, when we are inattentive.

The ABMT's Annual General Meeting will be held at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, Beauchamp Lodge, 2 Warwick Crescent, London W2 6NE.  The nearest tubes to the venue are Warwick Avenue (Bakerloo Line) or Paddington.

As usual, the Meeting will run from 11.00 am until 1.00 pm. The Afternoon Session will be from 2.00 pm until 4.00/4.30 pm.

Our Speaker this year will be Jan Trewartha, who came a few years ago to talk about and demonstrate her Scarwork techniques. 
 
Jan is the founder and director of The Fascia Hub and the British Fascia Symposium.  She also runs Body in Harmony Training, focusing on light touch work, especially working with scars and adhesions.

Jan will be presenting a session which revisits this work and its alignment and relationship with Biodynamic Massage. 

The Session will be in person and also on-line. Please let me know ([email protected])  if you would like to attend, and whether you will need a Zoom link. The event is free to members, and £20 to non-members.

There is some further information about Jan, below. I'm sure it will be a very interesting.