Key Takeways
Some things in therapy run out of words before they are done. A feeling you cannot quite name. A tightness in your chest that you notice mid-sentence and then push past. A sadness that comes up through your legs before you have any idea what it is about.
If you have spent time in therapy that stayed mostly in your head, you may already know that feeling. Something is present, and available, and then the conversation moves on because words cannot hold it yet. Over time, you may have learned to talk about what you feel without quite meeting it.
Experiential psychotherapy begins somewhere different. It starts with what is already here, in the body, in the moment, before the summary. It works slowly and carefully from there.
I am Clayre Sessoms, a psychotherapist working in Vancouver and online across Canada. Experiential work is central to how I practise, alongside the relational frame that runs through the rest of my work, and alongside my colleague Laura Hoge. This post is an introduction to what experiential psychotherapy is, the lineages it comes from, and what actually happens in a session that works this way.
What experiential psychotherapy actually is
Experiential psychotherapy is a way of working that treats present experience as the primary material. What you are feeling in your chest right now. The small movement your hand wants to make but is not making. The word that came up and then got replaced with a different one. The image that rose for a second and then went away.
That does not mean thinking is unwelcome. It means that the place we begin, and often return to, is the actual moment of now. We slow down. We pay attention to what is present in your body and in the space between us. We find words together for what was, until then, not yet said.
In practice, this often feels less like being interviewed and more like being accompanied. The therapist is paying close attention, not collecting information. You are invited to turn toward what you are experiencing, not away from it. Even difficult material gets approached gently, in doses your system can hold.
The lineages this work comes from
Experiential psychotherapy is not one method. It is a family of approaches that share a few common commitments: the body as an intelligent partner, mindfulness as a stance rather than a technique, and the understanding that some things cannot be thought into place and have to be felt through.
Several streams sit inside what I practise.
Ron Kurtz developed the Hakomi Method in the 1970s, grounded in mindfulness, nonviolence, and what he called little experiments in a mindful state. Hakomi works gently with what Kurtz called core material, the organizing memories and beliefs that shape how a person moves through the world without having to think about it. Core material, he wrote, is not accessible through the intellect. It becomes available through mindfulness and evocation.
Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher and psychotherapist, developed Focusing around the same time. He noticed that many people in therapy had something present in their bodies, a felt sense, that knew more than they could say. Focusing is the practice of turning toward that felt sense, naming it imperfectly, and letting the naming change what is there.
Ruella Frank, writing from the Gestalt tradition, describes six fundamental movements that begin in infancy and shape how we meet the world: yielding, pushing, reaching, grasping, pulling, and releasing. Her work shows how movement itself, and the patterns of movement a body has learned, carry relational history that words cannot reach on their own.
Pat Ogden developed Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a trauma-informed approach that works with the body's posture, movement, and nervous system responses alongside the story. Laura and I are both certified in it, and it is one of the most frequent ways the body enters our sessions.
These streams have different vocabularies. They agree on something important: what the body is doing, right now, is not a symptom to decode. It is information about what is true, what is carried, and what is ready to move.
What a session actually looks like
In practice, an experiential session tends to be quieter than most people expect.
We talk for a while. You say what is on your mind. As you talk, I am listening for more than the story. I am listening for what shifts in your breath, what your shoulders do when you say certain words, the place you wince or soften, the thing you almost said and then did not.
At some point, I might slow us down. I might say something like, can we stay here for a moment. Or, what are you noticing right now. Or, would you be willing to try a small experiment. The experiments are small on purpose. In Hakomi they might be a phrase said slowly, or a gesture held for a few seconds, or an invitation to notice what happens in your body when I reflect something back. The point is never to produce a feeling. The point is to notice what is already there and to give it room.
Sometimes what comes is grief that has been waiting. Sometimes it is anger you were not allowed to have. Sometimes it is tenderness toward a younger part of yourself that you had not expected to feel. Sometimes nothing in particular, and that also tells us something.
Nothing is forced. If your system says no, we do not push through. We work at the pace your nervous system can actually hold, and we pay attention to whether we have gone too fast and need to come back.
Why this matters for bodies that have been on alert
This work is especially relevant when you have spent a long time living with your guard up.
For trans, nonbinary, queer, and Two-Spirit folks; for Black, Indigenous, and racialized folks; for disabled and neurodivergent folks; for anyone whose safety has had to be watched for in ways other people's safety has not, the body often carries a great deal of information. Which rooms are safe. Which faces to scan first. Where to store what you cannot say. This is not a personal failing. It is what a body does when it has been paying attention for good reasons.
Experiential therapy can meet that kind of carrying without asking you to explain it first. Much of what is held in a vigilant body is not held in words, and trying to think or talk a way through it often goes in circles. Meeting it with slower, body-attuned attention can let some of it begin to move.
This work is not a replacement for the other supports your life may need, including medical care, housing, community, medication, and material resources. It works alongside them. The aim is not that you should be able to manage more. The aim is that you should be able to live in your own body and your own life with a little more ease, and with more of yourself present.
If this speaks to you
If any of this resonates, and you want a sense of what sessions can look like, you can read about my approach to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy online, one of the experiential modalities I use most. When you are ready, reaching out is welcome.
If you want to read further in the lineage, Ruella Frank's work on the bodily roots of experience in psychotherapy is a clear, careful starting point.
What I can say, after years of sitting in this work, is that the body is not a problem to solve. It is a collaborator. A great deal of what has been impossible to think about can be felt toward, slowly, in the company of someone paying careful attention. You do not need to have the words first. You only need to be willing to stay with what is already here.
A note on the tradition: this post draws on Ron Kurtz's Body-Centered Psychotherapy: The Hakomi Method (LifeRhythm), Eugene Gendlin's Focusing and the posthumous collection The Psychology and Philosophy of Eugene Gendlin edited by Kevin Krycka and Eric Severson (Routledge, 2024), Ruella Frank's The Bodily Roots of Experience in Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2023), and Pat Ogden's Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (W. W. Norton).
Frequently Asked Questions
How is experiential therapy different from talk therapy?
Experiential therapy and talk therapy are not in opposition, and a lot of therapy already moves between the two. The distinction is mostly about where the work begins. In experiential therapy, we start with what is present in the moment, in your body and in the space between us, and let language rise from there. In more purely verbal approaches, language often leads and the body comes along. Many people find the experiential starting point especially useful when words have been running in circles.
Do I need to be comfortable with my body for this to work?
No. Many people come to this work precisely because their relationship with their body has been difficult, frightening, disconnected, or fraught. We start from wherever you are. Part of the work is building a slower, kinder relationship with what your body is doing, one small increment at a time.
Is experiential therapy the same as somatic therapy?
They overlap a great deal. Somatic therapy is a broad umbrella for body-based approaches. Experiential therapy is a wider umbrella of present-focused work that includes but is not limited to the body. Most good somatic therapy is also experiential. Most good experiential therapy is also somatic. In practice, what I offer is both.
Will you ask me to do physical things I do not want to do?
No. Nothing is asked of you that you do not consent to, each time. The small experiments in Hakomi and Focusing are invitations, and you can always decline them. In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, we might occasionally try a small movement or posture, and only if it fits the moment and you are willing. Consent is continuous, not one-time.
Does experiential therapy work online?
Yes. Experiential and somatic work are both quite possible over video. You can notice what your body is doing in your own chair, and I can notice what I see across the screen. Some things are different online. Some are surprisingly unaffected. Most of my clients are online, and we work with attention to both the possibilities and the limits of the medium.
