Professional context

Where SPIRALAYA sits in the field

Existing approaches already offer rich ways of working with the body, trauma, arousal, meaning, choice and the therapeutic relationship.

SPIRALAYA focuses on a slightly different question: once a charged experience has become accessible, by what criterion do we decide what is right to do now?

Different approaches may point in different directions, such as regulation, completion, moving closer to the experience, processing or integration. SPIRALAYA does not assume in advance that any one of them is right in every moment. Its criterion is how much freedom is available to the person in relation to what is happening now, and what the therapist’s intervention does to that freedom.

Developed in dialogue with

The model grew out of clinical work and an ongoing engagement with Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, body psychotherapy and relational thinking. It does not present work with the body, regulation, attention to experience, boundaries or the therapist’s response as its own inventions.

Related approaches examined in comparison

During the model’s development, related concepts were also examined: psychological flexibility (ACT), regulatory flexibility, agency and autonomy, and the window of tolerance. The comparison serves to clarify what SPIRALAYA shares with the field, and where its clinical organisation may differ.

Status of the model

SPIRALAYA is a clinical model in development. It has not yet been tested as a whole in empirical research, and it is not presented as a substitute for the approaches it draws on.

Selected sources

• Bonanno, G. A., & Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613504116
• Gendlin, E. T. (1969). Focusing. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 6(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0088716
• Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.
• Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton.
• Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
• Tanner, D. (2015). Let’s face the music and dance: Working with eroticism in relational body psychotherapy. The male client and female therapist dyad. International Body Psychotherapy Journal, 14(2), 55–79.