Submitted · October 2026
“When Regulation Is Not the End,” submitted to Somatic Psychotherapy Today.
Clinical model in development
SPIRALAYA
What do you do when something intense becomes accessible in the room, and you are not yet sure what it means or where the work should go?
A somatic-relational clinical framework for decision-making when experience becomes charged and its meaning is still uncertain.
For practitioners working with the body, trauma, relational process, and charged experience.
Some people function well, understand themselves, and can even calm themselves when their system is flooded, and still feel that something in life remains out of reach. Desire, anger, pleasure, closeness or a boundary may be known to them intellectually, yet not truly available as living experience.
In therapy, when protection no longer needs to organise the whole space to the same degree, something more may become accessible. Its appearance does not yet say what it is, what it means, or how much freedom the person has in relation to it. Nor is it necessarily "more real" than what was there before. And here a question opens for the therapist: what is appropriate to do now?
When charged material enters the relationship
A client may feel anger, longing, attraction or even love towards the therapist, and be afraid to bring it into the room for fear that the therapist will be alarmed, pull away or close the space.
On the other side, the therapist meets charged material that calls for a response, even when its meaning is not yet clear and even when they are affected by it themselves.
SPIRALAYA works with exactly this moment: how to stay within the encounter and make a clinical decision without rushing to interpret, push away or act on it.
The unit of work in SPIRALAYA is the person's changing relationship to a charged experience as it becomes accessible. The focus is not only on what arises, but also on what remains possible for the person in relation to it.
Accessible: available now to experience, awareness or relationship, not only known.
“You do not always need to know what an experience means to see what is still possible in relation to it.”
The Model
Three questions
- What becomes accessible now?
- What else could it be? What other possibility is there?
- How much freedom remains in relation to it?
These questions are not a protocol or a sequence. They are a way of reading the clinical moment without deciding too quickly what the experience is or where the work should go.
Capacity
Capacity is not defined by how much intensity a person can tolerate.
Capacity is the degree of freedom that remains in relation to what has become accessible. Presence, access to boundary and choice are ways in which that freedom may show up.
That freedom can show up in different ways, for example: staying, slowing down, moving closer, moving away, changing direction, setting a boundary, stopping or not knowing.
More capacity does not necessarily mean more intensity. It means more freedom in relation to what is arising.
Presence, boundary, choice
- PresenceIs the person still here enough to know that something is happening, to feel the body, the room and the relationship?
- BoundaryIs there still access to what fits and what does not, to "yes", "no", "less", "not now" or "something else"?
- ChoiceIs there more than one real option?
Activation, freedom and intervention
The level of activation is not a measure of how much freedom is available to a person in relation to what is happening. A person may be highly activated and still remain present, have access to boundary, and have more than one real option available. Conversely, a person may appear very calm while choice is narrowing, access to boundary is becoming less available, or the response is becoming almost automatic.
Presence, access to boundary and choice help us read how much freedom remains in relation to what is happening.
The question is not what the smallest intervention is, but what intervention is proportionate and appropriate to what is happening, the clinical aim, and the freedom available.
Charged experience and eros
Movement, moving away and the spiral
Moving away, shifting into thinking, changing the subject, stopping or not knowing do not in themselves tell us what is happening. They are not necessarily avoidance, but neither are they necessarily expressions of freedom. The question is how much freedom remains in relation to what has become accessible, and what options are still available to the person.
The spiral is not a ladder. There is no single correct direction, and no inherent priority given to moving closer, going deeper, or increasing intensity.
In the Room
What this looks like in practice
The following illustration is constructed. It was written to show the model's way of thinking and is not based on any particular person or therapy.
Something becomes alive in the body. The person notices it, and almost at once begins to explain it.
I do not give it a name. I do not yet know what it is, and neither does the person in front of me.
My instinct once was to invite them to stay with the sensation a little longer. Today I am more careful, because the invitation to "stay with it" is not neutral either. It already suggests a direction.
Instead, I check what is happening now. Is there still room to slow down? Can the direction change? Is stopping really available?
The experience has already appeared. What remains uncertain is how much freedom is still available in relation to it.
So I do not invite them to stay. I say that something seems very alive right now, and ask whether they want to keep going with it, take a little distance from it, or stop.
They ask for a little distance. After a few minutes they say they could go back to it, if they want to.
What has changed is not the sensation, but how many options they have in relation to it.
Where it comes from
SPIRALAYA has developed in dialogue with Focusing, somatic work and relational thinking.
Professional context and sourcesEthics and Scope
Stated plainly, not implied
SPIRALAYA works with material that requires an explicit ethical position rather than an implied one. The following is the position.
- The work is not directed toward erosEros is not an aim, not a stage to be reached, and not a sign that the work is going well. It is one possibility among others, and its appearance is treated as information rather than as an instruction about where to go next.
- Consent is continuousNot a form signed once. Direction can change, and work can stop, at any point and without cost to the person. No assessment of capacity overrides a 'no'. Presence, boundary and choice help protect the person's ability to influence the pace, direction and continuation of the work, not reinterpret their choices for them.
- Boundaries are not withdrawalA clear limit is held while the relationship stays present. Holding the boundary by disappearing emotionally is its own clinical problem, and the framework names it as one.
- Responsibility is asymmetricalThe practitioner carries the frame. The practitioner's own reactions belong first to reflection and supervision, never to the room as material for the person to hold. Whenever the person's capacity is being read, the practitioner's is read too, and the check is not symmetrical. Am I still present, holding the professional boundary, and clinically free to choose, or is my own fear, attraction, rescue impulse, avoidance or personal need beginning to organise the work?
- Scope of practice is not assumedThe professional standing and legal status of touch differ between disciplines and jurisdictions. Nothing here claims a general permission for anyone to use it. The framework itself does not require touch.
- The model is in developmentIt carries no evidence base of its own, and says so wherever it is presented.
About
Developed by Gili Cook
Gili Cook is based in Israel and works at the intersection of emotional, somatic and relational practice.
She has 23 years of experience in therapeutic and emotional work, including 12 years of body-based work and touch. She holds a BA in psychology, completed three years of training in couples and family therapy and two years of training in Focusing, and has studied Somatic Experiencing and Nonviolent Communication.
Her background in body-based traditions sharpened her attention to vitality, desire, and the ethical complexities of working with charged embodied experience.
She maintains a private clinical practice in Israel. SPIRALAYA grew out of that practice, out of repeated clinical observation, and out of questions she could not answer with the frameworks she had.
She is the developer of SPIRALAYA, a somatic-relational clinical model still in development, and is currently completing a Hebrew book presenting it.
Contact
For professional enquiries, talks and institutional collaborations: gili@spiralaya.com
Book and Publications
The book
A Hebrew book presenting SPIRALAYA is in preparation. It is written for qualified practitioners and for advanced professional readers working with the body, trauma and intimacy. It is not a self-help book and not a manual for working on oneself.
Publication details will be posted here.
Articles
Updates
Professional updates
Occasional updates on the book, publications and the development of SPIRALAYA.
No sessions, no offers, and nothing frequent. A few times a year at most.