Emotional Activation Therapy (EAT)

Intense emotional work quickly sums up our clients ' problems. EAT contains a structured approach that reveals and helps to modify fundamental regulatory problems in clear steps based on specific problematic situations. This way of working uses current findings of embodiment research, according to which manipulations of posture, facial expressions, gestures, breathing rhythm and voice create emotional states and also influence how affective states are processed. Together with the patients, an Emotional Field is developed that reflects all the feelings associated with a concrete problematic situation. It shows the functioning of primary and secondary emotions. With the help of the body emotions such as joy, grief, fear, anger, etc. can be triggered selectively. Clients experience a revitalizing, proximal and body-close work with emotions, e.g. emotion exposure and discrimination, improvement of emotion regulation, emotional charging of targets and values etc. Not only CBT but also other therapeutic schools can benefit from EAT.

Embodied Leadership: The methodology in coaching has to follow the way the psyche works.

Over the course of our life, we collect a huge amount of experience. Some are thrill and joyful, others make embarrassed, anxious or sad. Often not clearly nameable feelings occur. Their naming presupposes awareness. Usually it's more of a very body related sense, also called somatic markers or core affect. This awareness of a physical condition in a given situation is also referred to as "gut feeling" or intuition, the cause of which cannot be determined. This very rapid reaction arises in the following way: External stimuli (such as a certain trigger situation) or internal stimuli (e.g. an imagined trigger situation) undergo an evaluation with the participation of sub-cortical regions in the brain. This directly causes somatovisceral stimulation, which creates a change in the internal physiological milieu. This change is registered by interoception and described as a gut feeling, somatic marker or core affect. This immediate response indicates whether objects or events are helpful or harmful, rewarding or threatening, and it prompts if things in the environment should be accepted or rejected. It works as a kind of "neurophysiological barometer" that reflects the quality of my relationship with the flow of changing environmental conditions. These processes are not conscious but are nevertheless the basis of decisions and central learning processes. Embodied Leadership focuses on such body signals, assigns them an important role in action control and trains their effective use in complex situations.

The perceived situation is mapped in a modality-specific way, but not – as postulated by the classical approaches – converted amodal. All content is recorded by the brain, which is to be viewed as a result of the interaction of the organism with the relevant situation:

•    Sensorimotor patterns of visual impressions and related eye and neck movements, movements of the entire body, etc.

•    Sensorimotor patterns related to touch and handling in the situation,

•    Sensorimotor patterns associated with older memories of  a specific situation, and

•    Sensorimotor patterns that trigger subsequent emotions related to the situation.

How we deal with a leadership role depends on what experience we have had in our past. For example despite a high level of competence, some managers find it difficult to expose themselves to an auditorium and to establish an upright body posture. It seems that they are not allowed to do so. Instead of natural strengthening and support, there has been injury and shame in the past. A current exposure then evokes the former bodily felt experiences: body is collapsing, the gaze goes down, the legs tremble, the flow of speech becomes irregular, etc. The person is hijacked by past experiences.

Embodied Leadership makes these automatic protection mechanisms visible and supports the development of more adequate and goal-oriented behaviors.