Sexual grounding therapy

1. Introduction

Version followed: the residential training model described by Willem Poppeliers and Nick Duffell (2006 text "Sexual Grounding Therapy"), supplemented by Robert Fischer's 2002 IBP Newsletter report on Poppeliers' seminars, the 2006 Self & Society interview, 2019 and 2024 introductory-workshop descriptions and the current Swiss further-training curriculum taught by the SGT trainers Robert and Notburga Fischer at the IBP Institut ("Sexuelle Beziehungsthemen in Therapie und Beratung", 2024–2025). Geoff Lamb's 2021 Routledge book (Sexual Grounding Therapy: Context, Theory and Practice) and Poppeliers and Broesterhuizen's 2007 book are not drawn on here (publisher metadata and abstract only) [uncertain]. No source, including the training curriculum, publishes step-by-step exercise protocols, so the steps in section 4 remain [synthesis]. Touch-consent steps, ethics codes and the complaints search: see section 4 opening and Harm account. Adaptations for individual clinical practice are marked [synthesis].

Sexual Grounding Therapy (SGT; the trainers use the name as a registered mark, Sexual Grounding®) is a body-oriented, mainly group-based developmental psychotherapy created in the 1990s by the Dutch developmental psychologist and body psychotherapist Willem Poppeliers. It grew out of Reichian body energetics, Bioenergetics and Postural Integration, and is taught in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Brazil, Finland and the UK [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002; meandwe.fi 2024]. Its current trainers describe it as a systemic, depth-psychological and body-oriented approach to sex therapy, built on a stage model of psychosexual maturation across the lifespan and drawing on attachment and object-relations theory [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]; the 2006 interview says it is aimed at therapists, parents and teachers [source: Self & Society 34(1)]. It is better described as a developmental model plus a training and workshop programme than as a manualised therapy: its published sources, including the current training curriculum, name its exercises and "structures" but do not give step-by-step protocols [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002; Lamb 2021 publisher page; meandwe.fi 2024; IBP curriculum 2024–25].

Core idea of change: Poppeliers holds that children need parents to "mirror" their sexuality at each developmental age, neutrally and without involving the child, and that when this mirroring is missing adults keep relating "triangularly": their sexual needs pass through a third point (a parent, a rule, a fantasy) and partners become substitute parents. Change is said to happen when the person re-experiences the missing developmental stage in the body, with group members standing in for real and "potential" parents, so that the person can feel father and mother as separate and then cooperating sources of masculinity and femininity, connect heart and genitals as felt areas of the body, and move to "dyadic" relating, in which needs are expressed and met directly. The stated goal is inner "sexual grounding": "a steady stream of excitement and love" within oneself rather than pleasure or ecstasy as such [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Self & Society 34(1) interview]. The interview gives the aim as "full genital functioning throughout life" rather than pleasure, and names the genitals alongside eyes, mouth and anus as body centres through which the child meets the world [source: Self & Society 34(1)]. The current curriculum describes the work as moving between regression (looking back and catching up on missed "genital mirroring") and progression (looking ahead to maturity stages still to come) [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. These are SGT's own theoretical claims, including its energy language ("streams", "poles", "charge"); they are not established physiology.

2. Framework

Developmental map (the "Genital Ages"). SGT organises everything around eight life ages, grouped in four pairs. Each age is worked through three movements: polarisation (feeling father and mother as distinct sources of masculinity and femininity), harmonisation (feeling them as cooperating sources) and transformation (feeling them as one inner source) [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. Fischer's earlier account gives the same eight phases written as roughly 04, 14, 24 … 74 and notes that each differs in relationship, curiosity, innocence, sexual self-regulation and the role of the introjected parent [source: Fischer 2002].

Pair (SGT title)	Ages (approx.)	Developmental focus as described
Finding paradise within reality	Revelation (~4), Puberty (~14)	Child's open curiosity; parents guide "nearby" (age 4) and "at a distance" (puberty); welcome of the body's developing potency
Finding paradise within experiment	Adolescence (~24), Adulthood (~34)	Forming and keeping a partnership; drawing on previous generations
Finding paradise within relating / ageing	Ripening (~44), Ageing (~54)	Intimacy as the body changes; genital ageing
Finding paradise within generations	Leaving (~64), Dying (~74)	Placing one's sexual life in the generational line and "inner parents"

[source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Lamb 2021 contents page uses the same stage names as chapter titles]

Format and dose.

Entry: an introductory weekend (about 2 to 2.5 days, 15 to 20 hours) is a prerequisite for the training [source: meandwe.fi 2024; Counselling Directory 2019 event].
Training: residential modules of six days, four per year. The Foundation (Basic) Year covers the first two ages (Revelation and Puberty); the Advanced Training covers the remaining six. Poppeliers himself led a few days of many modules; a trainer team facilitates exercises and role-plays and a support team handles organisation [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006].
Between modules: attendance at a local sub-group with a qualified therapist is "strongly recommended, though not required" [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006].
Individual and couple work: practitioners also use SGT elements in individual or couple sessions; Fischer describes several sessions with an elderly couple combining SGT with the IBP concept of agency [source: Fischer 2002]. No session count is published for individual use [uncertain].
Before starting, participants sign the SGT guidelines and a payment contract [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006].

Professional-training version (Switzerland, current) [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. The IBP Institut runs a 21-day further training for counsellors and psychotherapists taught by two SGT trainers: seven three-day blocks over about 18 months, at most 26 participants, 147 lessons (51 self-experience, 21 theory, 55 practice sessions, 20 supervision), with peer-group meetings recommended between blocks. The blocks follow the maturity stages: (1) psychosexual maturity stages over the lifespan, childhood sexuality, resources and "sexual mirroring"; (2) childhood and puberty stage, gender identity, regulation experiences, the "sexual breathing wave"; (3) professional integration with supervised practice sessions, sexual anatomy and sexual history-taking, introduction to erotic transference; (4) young adulthood: parents and parents-in-law as support, the "masculine-feminine energy circle", dyadic sexuality, pornography and outside relationships; (5) partnership, fertility and children, the family system as resource; (6) midlife, assisted conception, erotic transference and countertransference, supervision questions; (7) second half of life, menopause, death of parents. The first six days are entirely self-experience, on the stated rationale that work with sexuality requires it. Institute and participants are bound by their own professional associations' ethics guidelines. The curriculum names its methods but gives no exercise protocols [uncertain].

Criteria for moving on. The sources give a curriculum order (Foundation Year before Advanced Training; introductory weekend before Level 1) but no explicit readiness criteria [uncertain]. For the professional training, admission requires completed or advanced training in psychological counselling, coaching or psychotherapy (or equivalent), professional experience, a completed admission questionnaire and, where questions remain, an interview [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. One screening rule is stated: people with severe early developmental trauma or sexual abuse must first complete personal therapy and feel safe enough to take responsibility for their emotional selves [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. For individual clinical use, suggested criteria for moving from assessment to body-based developmental work: stable daily functioning, no active dissociation or suicidality, the client can name and use a stop signal, and clear agreements on clothing and no-touch or limited-touch have been made and tested in lower-stakes exercises [synthesis].

A practical clinical sequence for individual work [synthesis, derived from the training structure above]:

Assessment and contracting: sexual and developmental history, trauma and abuse screening, goals, explicit boundary agreements in writing.
Stabilisation and body awareness: breath, grounding through feet and legs, noticing sensation in chest and pelvis while clothed.
Developmental mapping: locating the client's difficulty in an SGT age and in the family triangle.
Representational work: father-mother-child structures using objects, chairs or (in groups) consenting representatives.
Reparative mirroring: potential-parent messages.
Transfer into current relating: dyadic negotiation of needs, partner and generational work.
Integration and ending.

3. Guiding principles

Development, not pathology [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Self & Society 34(1)]: locate the problem in a missed developmental age rather than in a disorder; ask "which age did not get what it needed?"
The child at the centre [source: Self & Society 34(1)]: the work takes the child's perspective at each age; the therapist meets the client at the level of the regressed age, not with adult sexual framing (Poppeliers' "small spoon" image).
Mirroring as an objective reference point [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]: "To mirror someone is to act as an objective reference point." In practice: reflect what you see and sense in a neutral, caring, non-involving way; never reflect with your own desire.
Neutral, non-involving genital mirroring [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]: SGT's term for parents (and by extension therapists) acknowledging a child's sexuality without involving the child in adult sexuality. Practically: name and welcome developmental sexuality in words and attitude; there is no sexual act, sexual touch or sexual gaze.
Real rather than "good" parents [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]: the text contrasts striving to be good with "real children have real parents, and real parents have real children". Practically: aim for honest, embodied presence over idealised parenting messages.
Real, potential and introjected parents [source: Fischer 2002]: work separates the parents as they were, the inner introjected parents, and the parents they could have been. Practically: keep track of which parent is in the room at any moment.
Polarise, harmonise, transform [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]: first separate father and mother as sources, then let them cooperate, then integrate. Practically: do not rush to reconciliation before the client can feel each parent distinctly.
Heart and genitals together [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002]: sexuality is treated as whole-body expression of heart, genitals and mind. Practically: invite attention to chest and pelvis together, never to the pelvis alone; the heart is called the regulatory centre.
Natural self-regulation, the "inner condom" [source: Self & Society 34(1)]: Poppeliers argues that regulation comes from relationship and intimacy, not repression or over-excitement. Practically: help the client find their own felt limit rather than imposing or removing control.
From triangular to dyadic relating [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]: needs are to be expressed and negotiated directly. Practically: invite the client to say a need to you or to the group and negotiate it openly.
Bodily, not mainly verbal [source: Fischer 2002]: supportive parental messages are to be experienced first through the body and only secondarily through words. Practically: after a message, ask what happens in the body before asking what it means.
Abstinence as clarity [source: Fischer 2002]: "Therapeutic Abstinence is not a question of distance but of clarity." Practically: no sexual contact of any kind between staff and participants, and between participants during the work; clarity about roles rather than emotional coldness.
Openness, no hidden agenda [source: Self & Society 34(1)]: the work must be "open, direct". Practically: everything planned is explained beforehand; sexual events that happen are brought into the group, not kept secret.
Masculine and feminine are not sexual orientation [source: Self & Society 34(1); Fischer 2002]: Poppeliers says the focus is masculinity and femininity, not orientation, and Fischer notes the streams are not necessarily tied to biological sex; the current trainer curriculum includes gender identity in its childhood and puberty block [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. Practically: check how a gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans or non-binary client hears the father/mother, masculine/feminine framing and adapt language with them [synthesis]; the heteronormativity question was raised by the interviewer and is not resolved in the sources [uncertain].
Competence and training [source: Fischer 2002; EABP 2020; IBP curriculum 2024–25; Guest & Parker 2022]: working with sexuality in the body requires specific training and careful clarity to avoid repeating earlier injuries. The SGT-trainer curriculum makes self-experience compulsory (51 of 147 lessons) and builds in supervised practice; Guest and Parker note that body-psychotherapy trainings typically take two to four years of postgraduate work and that touch training belongs in psychotherapist education. Practically: use SGT techniques only after training and under supervision, within what your licence and jurisdiction allow.

4. Intervention inventory

Read this first. The SGT sources, including the current trainer curriculum, name the techniques below but publish no step-by-step protocols; the 2006 training text says plainly that exercises are facilitated by trainers and that body contact is arranged on the staff team's advice [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; IBP curriculum 2024–25]. So for each intervention, the purpose and its place in SGT come from the sources; the concrete steps are a clinically safe version for a trained therapist in individual or small-group practice, marked [synthesis]. Everything here is done clothed. No technique involves the therapist or anyone else touching genitals, breasts or buttocks, or any sexual touch; SGT training practices involving undressing and genital-area contact are reported only in the Harm account. Touch in body psychotherapy requires specific training, supervision and a check of what your licence, professional body and jurisdiction allow. Touch-consent steps for any technique below that uses touch: (1) written consent in plain language beforehand, explaining how, when and why touch may be used, that it can evoke strong feelings, and how to withdraw consent [source: Guest & Parker 2022; EABP 2020 Principle 5]; (2) immediately before any touch, describe the touch and ask permission, accepting no or hesitation as no [source: Guest & Parker 2022]; (3) offer an equal no-touch alternative (client's own hand, a cushion, distance, words) [synthesis]; (4) agree a stop signal (word or raised hand) [synthesis]; (5) check reactions during touch and watch for verbal agreement that the body contradicts [source: Guest & Parker 2022]; (6) process the experience afterwards so the contact and your intent are not misread, and record consent in the notes [source: Guest & Parker 2022 for processing; recording is synthesis]. Guest and Parker also rule out contact with breasts, genitals or other sexually charged areas and any sensual or sexual touch [source: Guest & Parker 2022].

Screening before any SGT-derived body work [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006 for abuse and developmental trauma; rest synthesis]: people with severe early developmental trauma or a sexual-abuse history should complete personal therapy first and feel able to take responsibility for their emotional states. Also defer or adapt for: active psychosis or mania; severe dissociation; active suicidality or self-harm; recent sexual assault or trauma without stabilisation; current coercive or abusive relationship; substance intoxication (the SGT guidelines require no drugs and full consciousness); and, for charging breath or vigorous movement, pregnancy, cardiovascular or respiratory illness, epilepsy, recent injury or surgery. Guest and Parker treat psychotic disorder as the one general contraindication to touch, and call for careful assessment before any touch with clients who have childhood physical or sexual abuse histories, erotic transference, poor boundaries or fear of engulfment, war or torture trauma, violent acting out, or cultural or religious prohibitions on touch, and for checking the strength of the working alliance first [source: Guest & Parker 2022].

4.1 Developmental mapping (locating the difficulty in a Genital Age)

Purpose / when: assessment and case formulation at the start and whenever the work feels stuck; links a current sexual or relational difficulty to the SGT age where mirroring was missing [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002]. Sexual anatomy and sexual history-taking are a set topic of the SGT-trainer curriculum (Block 3) [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25].
Steps [synthesis]: (1) take a sexual and developmental history by age band (around 4, 14, 24 and so on), asking how each parent responded to curiosity, bodily change, first relationships; (2) ask about each parent as real person, as inner voice (introject) and as the parent the client wished for; (3) note triangular patterns: whose approval or rule stands between the client and a partner; (4) agree with the client which age to start from; (5) write down the client's own goal in their words.
Example language (illustrative): "When you were around puberty, how did your father respond to your body changing? And your mother? … Whose voice comes in when you're close to your partner?"
Watch for: shame or flooding during history-taking (slow down, ask permission per topic); disclosures of abuse (switch to trauma-informed assessment and safeguarding duties; see 5).

4.2 Breathing and movement; charging and discharging

Purpose / when: listed as a core SGT tool for building and releasing bodily "charge" in the Bioenergetic tradition SGT came from [source: meandwe.fi 2024; Fischer 2002 on Bioenergetic lineage]; used to bring energy and feeling into the body before structural work and to settle afterwards. "Charge" is the school's own concept, not physiology.
Steps [synthesis, gentle version]: (1) client stands, feet hip-width, knees soft, or sits if unsteady; (2) 1 to 2 minutes of slow breathing into belly and chest, attention on feet and legs; (3) optional gentle movement: bouncing through the knees, swinging arms, for a minute or two; (4) pause and track sensation; (5) discharge: shake out arms and legs, an audible sigh on the out-breath; avoid hitting, kicking or screaming unless trained in those methods and screened; (6) close with 1 minute of slow breathing, feet on the floor, eyes open, and a short verbal check.
Example language (illustrative): "Let the breath drop a bit lower … feel your feet. If anything gets too much, open your eyes and stop; that's always fine."
Watch for: dizziness, tingling or cramping in hands and lips (overbreathing: slow down, breathe out longer); panic, numbing, spacing out (stop, orient to the room). Working: client reports more feeling in the body while staying present. Contraindications as in the screening paragraph; no forced or prolonged hyperventilation [synthesis].

4.2a Sexual breathing wave (clothed breath-awareness version)

Purpose / when: the current SGT-trainer curriculum names a "sexual breathing wave" (also "orgastic breathing wave") among SGT's "body-energetic regulation elements", taught in the childhood and puberty block as a regulation experience [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. The SGT procedure itself is not described in any source [uncertain]; the name appears to echo Reich's idea of a breathing wave through the trunk, which is Reichian theory, not physiology [uncertain: inference]. In clinical practice use only as clothed breath and self-regulation awareness, never to induce arousal.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) screen as above (breath-work contraindications apply); (2) client lies on a mat with knees bent and feet flat, or sits, clothed; (3) client rests their own hands on belly and chest; (4) for 3 to 5 minutes the client follows the breath as a wave, the in-breath filling belly then chest, the out-breath releasing chest then belly, at their own pace, without forcing or speeding up; (5) the therapist watches from a seated position and does not touch; (6) close by returning to ordinary breathing, opening the eyes, rolling to one side and sitting up with feet on the floor; (7) talk through where the breath moved freely, where it stopped, and what feelings came.
Example language (illustrative): "Let the breath come in like a wave, belly first, then chest, and let it leave the other way. No need to make it bigger. Where does it move easily? Where does it stop?"
Watch for: overbreathing (tingling, dizziness: slow down, lengthen the out-breath); arousal or shame (normalise briefly, return attention to chest and feet, do not explore it with the therapist as its object); dissociation or abuse memories (stop, sit up, orient to the room). Working: a fuller, freer breath and the client's sense of being able to settle themselves.

4.3 Heart-genital relationship exercises (clothed attention version)

Purpose / when: SGT's central focus is the felt connection between heart and genital areas, used in the parent-triad and Good Parent Message work [source: Fischer 2002; Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; named as an exercise in meandwe.fi 2024]. Use when the client splits love and desire or feels sexuality as disconnected from feeling. Exact SGT exercise not described in sources [uncertain].
Steps [synthesis]: (1) client sits or stands, clothed, eyes open or lowered; (2) client places their own hand on their chest (no touch by therapist); (3) attention first to the chest: warmth, heartbeat, tightness; (4) then, only with consent, a brief noticing of the pelvic area as a whole ("the lower belly and pelvis"), describing temperature, tension, numbness or nothing; (5) then attention to both at once, and how each affects the other; (6) close with attention back to feet and breath; talk through what was noticed and what it reminds the client of.
Example language (illustrative): "Notice your chest under your hand. Now, if it's okay, notice your pelvis too, just as an area of the body. What happens in the chest when you include the pelvis?"
Watch for: shame, sudden numbness or disgust (may point to a developmental injury or abuse: slow down, return to chest and feet); arousal (normalise briefly, keep neutral, do not explore it with the therapist as its object). Working: client can hold both areas in awareness without shutting down.

4.4 Father-mother-child triangle (parent-child triad with representatives)

Purpose / when: the core SGT "structure": the participant finds their place in the original triad, notices sensations in the heart and genital areas, and rearranges the triad to find the best sensations [source: Fischer 2002; named as "father-mother-child triangle exercises" in meandwe.fi 2024]. Use to make triangular patterns visible and to feel father and mother as separate sources (polarisation).
Steps: group version per Fischer: other participants embody the parents; the participant takes their place, tracks sensation, then moves themselves or the parents until heart and genital sensations feel best [source: Fischer 2002]. Individual version [synthesis]: (1) use chairs, cushions or floor markers for father and mother; (2) client places them where they feel them to have been at the chosen age; (3) client stands in the child's place and describes body sensation; (4) client tries other positions (closer to one parent, between them, in front of both, parents side by side); (5) find the position where the body feels most at ease and alive; (6) step out, look at the arrangement from outside, debrief.
Representatives in groups [synthesis]: role is chosen voluntarily, can be declined; representatives do not touch the protagonist unless a specific contact (e.g. standing shoulder to shoulder) is agreed through the consent steps; de-role every representative at the end ("I am not your father, I am Tom").
Example language (illustrative): "Put your father and mother where they were for you at four. Now stand where you stood. What do you feel in your chest? In your belly and pelvis? Try a step closer to your mother … what changes?"
Watch for: client standing between the parents or as a partner to one parent (SGT's triangular pattern; name it gently); collapse, freezing, or flooding (move client out of the structure, orient). Working: a clearer felt difference between the two parents, and a position the body prefers.

4.5 Good Parent Messages from potential parents

Purpose / when: reparative mirroring: ideal or "potential" parents give the support that was missing, experienced mainly through the body; Fischer's example is a potential father giving his daughter permission to enjoy good feelings in her body [source: Fischer 2002]. Use after the triad has shown what was missing.
Steps [synthesis for individual use]: (1) with the client, work out the missing message for that age and parent, in the client's words; (2) a representative, a chair, or the client's imagination holds the potential parent; the therapist speaks the message only if the client wants this and it is clear the therapist is lending a voice, not becoming the parent; (3) message spoken slowly, at a distance the client chooses; (4) client notices the body first, then meaning; (5) repeat or adjust wording until it lands; (6) client may answer the parent; close by stepping out of role.
Example language (illustrative): "Your potential father might say something like: 'It's good that your body is growing. You can enjoy feeling it, and it belongs to you.' Let it in … where do you feel it?"
Watch for: messages that are sexualised, that make the client responsible for a parent's feelings, or that come from a representative's own agenda (stop and reword); grief is common and useful. Working: warmth, relaxation, breath deepening, a felt sense of permission. Never phrase a message as the speaker's own desire for the client [synthesis].

4.6 Neutral ("genital") mirroring as a therapist stance

Purpose / when: SGT holds that what was missing is neutral, caring, non-involving acknowledgement of a child's sexuality by parents who have worked through their own triangles [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Self & Society 34(1)]. The trainer curriculum sets as a learning goal confidence in the sexual mirroring of the child and adolescent within the client, including gender identity, understood as reparenting [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. In clinical practice this is a verbal and attitudinal stance throughout.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) name developmental sexuality as normal and good when the client describes it; (2) reflect what you observe (posture, breath, colour) without evaluating attractiveness; (3) keep your own feelings out of the reflection; (4) take your countertransference to supervision.
Example language (illustrative): "What you were curious about at that age was completely normal. It sounds as if nobody told you that."
Watch for: any drift into personal comment on the client's body or sexuality, gaze or remarks with an erotic tone; this is a boundary violation, not mirroring. Visual mirroring of an undressed body is outside ethical clinical practice (see Harm account).

4.7 Family reconstruction (re-staging the complete family)

Purpose / when: extends the triad to the whole family: participants role-play parents and others, sometimes with the protagonist working as the "child being" [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; "family reconstructions" in meandwe.fi 2024]. Use when siblings, grandparents or a parent's partner are part of the pattern.
Steps [synthesis]: like 4.4, with objects or representatives for each family member placed by the client; the client tracks body sensation in each position, names what each member carried, and tries repositioning; close with de-roling and a sharing round.
Example language (illustrative): "Who else was in the house when you were 14? Put them where they were … Where does your body want to stand now?"
Watch for: regression too deep to manage in the available time; group members' own material being triggered (debrief representatives too). Clothing stays on [synthesis; see Harm account for the training practice].

4.8 Generational energy exercises (ancestral line)

Purpose / when: SGT links sexuality to birth family, extended family, ancestral line and, in committed couples, the partner's family; later ages focus on placing one's sexual life in the generational line [source: Fischer 2002; Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; named in meandwe.fi 2024]. Use for ageing, loss, leaving and dying themes, or inherited patterns.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) client lays out parents and grandparents (objects or representatives) behind them; (2) stands in front of the line, then turns to face it; (3) notices what is passed on that is supportive and what is burdensome; (4) acknowledges both, then turns back to face their own life and partner or descendants; (5) debrief.
Example language (illustrative): "Feel the line behind you. What do you want to take from it? What do you want to leave with them?"
Watch for: unresolved grief; collective or cultural trauma in the line (pace it). The SGT-trainer curriculum confirms that family-systemic constellations are among SGT's working methods and treats the family system as a resource [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25], but SGT's specific form of this exercise is not described in sources [uncertain].

4.9 Inner child work

Purpose / when: named among SGT tools [source: meandwe.fi 2024]; participants "work as child beings" in training [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. Use to reach the felt experience of a specific age before reparative messages.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) agree the age and a safe scene; (2) client sits or stands as they did then, clothed, and speaks in the present tense as the child; (3) therapist stays an adult witness, not a parent or partner; (4) limit to 10 to 20 minutes; (5) return to adult: stand, name today's date, age and place; (6) adult client reflects on what the child needed.
Example language (illustrative): "Be four for a moment. What's happening? … Now come back: stand up, feel your adult legs, tell me today's date."
Watch for: loss of adult observer, dissociation, age-regressed dependency on the therapist (shorten, ground, strengthen the adult self before the next attempt).

4.10 Role-play and psychodrama

Purpose / when: SGT uses role-play and psychodrama to enact family scenes and missed experiences [source: meandwe.fi 2024; Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. Use to rehearse a new response or to confront an introjected parent.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) set the scene briefly; (2) client chooses roles (representative, empty chair or therapist voicing a role on request); (3) enact one short exchange; (4) role-reverse if useful; (5) replay with the new response; (6) de-role everyone and share.
Example language (illustrative): "Say to your mother's chair what you couldn't say at 14 … Now sit in her chair. What does she feel hearing that?"
Watch for: physical enactments that would require bodily contact with sexual connotation (not done); representatives' own triggers.

4.11 Guided imagery

Purpose / when: listed among SGT tools [source: meandwe.fi 2024]; Fischer describes partners sharing the energy cycle "in imagination" [source: Fischer 2002]. Use to evoke potential parents or a safe developmental scene, and for clients who cannot yet use representatives.
Steps [synthesis]: seated, eyes open or closed by choice; short induction with breath; image of the age and a potential parent who responds well; body check; exit with re-orientation to the room.
Example language (illustrative): "Imagine a father who is pleased you're growing up and keeps a good distance. How does he look at you? What does your body do?"
Watch for: imagery turning to abuse memories (open eyes, orient, switch to stabilisation).

4.12 Object relations techniques

Purpose / when: named in the 2024 SGT workshop list without description [source: meandwe.fi 2024]. SGT's distinction between real, ideal/potential and introjected parents [source: Fischer 2002] suggests work with internal parent images. Specific SGT procedures not found [uncertain].
Steps [synthesis]: identify the introjected parent's voice in a current situation; externalise it on a chair; separate it from the real parent and the potential parent; client chooses how to respond.
Example language (illustrative): "That sentence, 'don't make a fuss about your body': whose voice is it? Put it on this chair."
Watch for: confusion between real and introjected parent; keep them physically separate in the room.

4.13 Genital self-regulation (psychoeducation and interoception only)

Purpose / when: named in the 2024 workshop list [source: meandwe.fi 2024]; linked to Poppeliers' idea that sexuality regulates itself through relationship and the heart ("inner" or "emotional condom") [source: Self & Society 34(1); Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. The SGT exercise itself is not described in sources [uncertain]. In clinical practice use only as education and clothed awareness work, never as any genital-contact exercise.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) explain the SGT idea of regulation through heart and relationship as the school's model; (2) client notices, clothed and seated, how excitement or tension rises and falls in the body during a neutral or mildly emotional topic; (3) practise lowering intensity with breath and attention to chest and feet; (4) discuss how the client might apply this privately and with a partner, in their own words and at their own discretion.
Example language (illustrative): "Notice where excitement shows up, and what happens when you bring the breath to your chest. You're learning your own dial, at your pace."
Watch for: the client experiencing the topic as intrusive (respect limits); compulsive sexual behaviour or paraphilic distress needs a specialist sex-therapy assessment [synthesis].

4.14 Breathing together (shared cycle in imagination) for couples

Purpose / when: partners share SGT's masculine and feminine "energy cycle" in imagination while breathing together [source: Fischer 2002]; the current trainer curriculum lists the "masculine-feminine energy circle" as a body-energetic regulation element, taught in the young-adulthood block alongside dyadic sexuality [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]; its exact procedure is not published [uncertain]. For couples in the experiment and relating ages. The cycle is Poppeliers' model, not physiology.
Steps [synthesis]: (1) partners sit facing each other, clothed, at a distance both choose; (2) synchronise breathing for 2 to 5 minutes, eyes open or closed; (3) each imagines warmth moving from their own heart outward to the partner and returning; (4) stop, each describes their experience; (5) agree what each wants more or less of.
Example language (illustrative): "Breathe together. Imagine something warm going from your heart to your partner and coming back. Then tell each other what you noticed."
Watch for: one partner going along to please the other (check each separately); coercion or abuse in the relationship (do not do joint body work; assess safety).

4.15 Experiential models of abusive versus beneficial relating

Purpose / when: structures that help participants feel the difference between abusive and beneficial relational behaviour [source: Fischer 2002]. Use with clients who cannot tell support from intrusion.
Steps [synthesis]: show two contrasting positions with chairs or representatives (e.g. a parent too close and pulling the child toward them versus a parent at a respectful distance, attentive); client stands in the child's place in each; compares body sensation; names the felt markers of safety and of intrusion.
Example language (illustrative): "Stand here with the parent close and leaning in. Now here, with the parent at that distance. What does your body tell you about each?"
Watch for: strong trauma reactions in abuse survivors (only after stabilisation).

4.16 Direct (dyadic) negotiation of needs

Purpose / when: participants are encouraged to bring unmet needs straight to trainers and the group and negotiate them directly, moving from triangular to dyadic relating [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006].
Steps [synthesis]: client names a present need to the therapist or a group member in one sentence; the other answers honestly what they can and cannot give; both stay with the outcome, including no; debrief what it was like to ask directly.
Example language (illustrative): "Say it directly to me, in one sentence. I'll tell you honestly what I can do."
Watch for: needs that the therapist cannot meet within boundaries (say no clearly, warmly, and explore the feeling); this is where transference becomes explicit.

4.17 Group sharing, integration and closing

Purpose / when: experiences are discussed in the group to be understood and integrated [source: Fischer 2002]. End of every structure and session.
Steps [synthesis]: protagonist speaks first; representatives share from role and then de-role; others share personal resonance, not advice; the session ends with a grounding round (feet, breath, one word).
Example language (illustrative): "Share what moved in you, not what she should do. Representatives: say what you felt in role, then your own name."
Watch for: participants leaving activated; build time for this.

4.18 Bringing sexual events into the process

Purpose / when: the SGT guidelines say sexual acts that occur during a training are to be brought into the group process as soon as possible, to be worked with as triangle issues [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002].
Steps [synthesis]: in individual practice, invite the client to talk about attractions or sexual feelings toward the therapist or group members as material; keep it verbal; restate the boundary; take your own reactions to supervision.
Example language (illustrative): "It's fine to talk about these feelings here; nothing will happen with them between us, and that's what makes it safe to explore."
Watch for: this rule is not a substitute for safeguarding: a sexual act between a trainer and participant is misconduct to be reported, not group material (see Harm account).

4.19 Sub-groups and therapy between modules

Purpose / when: strongly recommended local sub-group with a qualified therapist between modules to process material [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006].
Steps [synthesis]: if your client attends SGT trainings, offer individual sessions after each module to integrate material, monitor for destabilisation, and review boundary experiences.
Watch for: post-workshop crashes, intrusive memories, sleep disturbance.

4.20 Couple work using agency

Purpose / when: Fischer describes several sessions with an elderly couple, combining SGT with the IBP concept of agency, the therapist choosing the next focus each time [source: Fischer 2002].
Steps [synthesis]: work alternately with each partner's developmental map (4.1) and family (4.7) with the other present as witness; then shared exercises (4.14, 4.16); end each session agreeing what each takes home.
Watch for: one partner becoming the "patient"; age-related health limits on body work.

5. Handling problems

The SGT sources address only a few problems directly: screening out people with severe developmental trauma or sexual abuse until after personal therapy, handling sexual contact among participants by bringing it into the group, and the advice that avoiding sexuality is not accepted [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002]. Everything else below is [synthesis] unless tagged.

Client is stuck, nothing changes in the body [synthesis]: go back to developmental mapping (4.1): the age may be wrong, or an earlier, non-sexual need (safety, holding) comes first. Use objects and imagery instead of representatives; reduce intensity rather than increase it.
Reluctance or "resistance" [synthesis]: Fischer reports that Poppeliers does not accept evasions of sexuality [source: Fischer 2002]. In clinical practice, do not treat reluctance about sexual material as a defence to be overcome. Treat it as information and as a consent signal: name it, offer a less exposing version (talk instead of body, chest instead of pelvis, objects instead of people), or drop the topic. Reluctance is never a reason to push.
Overwhelm, flooding, dissociation [synthesis]: stop the structure; client opens eyes, feet on floor, names five things in the room; lengthen the out-breath; move out of the child position; no return to the material in that session. Next time, shorten the exercise and strengthen the adult self first. If dissociation recurs, switch to a phase-oriented trauma approach.
Abuse memories surface [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006 for deferral; rest synthesis]: stop body work on sexuality; stabilise; assess current safety and any ongoing risk to children (safeguarding duties); offer trauma-focused treatment; return to developmental work only when the client chooses it and is stable.
Arousal in session [synthesis]: normalise briefly and neutrally; bring attention to breath, chest and feet; do not make arousal the focus of exploration with the therapist as its object; record it; take to supervision.
Erotic transference [synthesis; recognising and professionally handling erotic transference and countertransference is a set topic of the SGT-trainer curriculum, Blocks 3 and 6, source: IBP curriculum 2024–25; Guest & Parker 2022 list erotic transference among conditions needing careful thought before any touch]: allow it to be spoken, restate the boundary warmly and clearly, link it to the developmental need (being seen and welcomed), and never reciprocate. If the client keeps pressing for contact, discuss it openly and consider whether work can continue.
Therapist's own arousal or attraction (countertransference) [synthesis; EABP 2020 Principle 5.a, 5.b.5]: notice it, do not act or disclose it, take it to supervision promptly; if it affects judgment, refer on. Fischer's point applies: abstinence is clarity, not distance.
Client asks to undress or be touched intimately [synthesis; EABP 2020 Principle 5.b.1]: decline clearly; explain that the work stays clothed and non-sexual even if the client proposes otherwise; explore what the request is about (wish to be seen, to be welcomed).
Rupture (client feels shamed, misread or pushed) [synthesis]: name it, take your share, ask what was hurtful, repair verbally before any further body work; revisit consent agreements.
Non-adherence (missed sessions, not doing home practice) [synthesis]: SGT trainings ask participants to attend even when ill because symptoms may reflect patterning [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]; do not adopt this rule clinically. Respect illness and absence; explore meaning only if the client wants to.
Gender, orientation and identity fit [synthesis]: the father/mother, masculine/feminine framing can alienate LGBTQ+, trans and non-binary clients or those without two parents. Ask how the model fits, use the client's terms, and allow representatives of any gender or none.
Religious or cultural conflict [synthesis]: Lamb's book is described by its publisher as taking controversial positions on sexuality and religion [source: Routledge page]; check the client's values and do not set the model against them.
Couple with power imbalance or abuse [synthesis]: no joint body work; individual safety assessment; specialist domestic-abuse referral.
Client returns from an SGT workshop destabilised or troubled [synthesis]: assess for intrusive memories, shame, sleep and mood changes; ask openly about what was done, including clothing and touch, without suggesting answers; see the Harm account for duties.
Minors [synthesis]: SGT works with adults' childhood experience. Never do body work on sexuality with a minor; parent guidance stays verbal and educational.

Harm account

Scope: this section covers the risks of working with sexuality through the body as SGT does, based on what SGT's own published descriptions say was done. No documented complaints, disciplinary findings or court cases about SGT or Poppeliers were found in reliable sources. No complaint or disciplinary decision naming SGT or Poppeliers is cited here (terms in English, Dutch and German: complaint, misconduct, klacht, tuchtcollege, Vorwürfe); the two unrelated Dutch healthcare decisions (ECLI:NL:TGZCTG:2024:92 and ECLI:NL:TGZRAMS:2023:129) do not mention SGT or Poppeliers [source: those decisions]. [uncertain: absence of reports is not evidence of safety; SGT trainers are not necessarily BIG-registered, and complaints handled by associations such as EABP or national body-psychotherapy bodies are not generally published.] Nothing below alleges misconduct by any named person.

What was actually done

Setting and contract. Since the 1990s Poppeliers has run SGT as residential group training of four six-day modules a year, in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico and later the UK (introductory weekends from about 2006; a 2019 two-day workshop at East Grinstead, West Sussex) and Finland (Helsinki introductory weekend, October 2024) [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Self & Society 34(1); Counselling Directory 2019; meandwe.fi 2024]. A professional further training based on SGT runs in Switzerland (IBP Institut, 2024–2025, Gelfingen LU and Gais AR) [source: IBP curriculum 2024–25]. Participants signed the SGT guidelines and a payment contract before starting; Poppeliers kept a low public profile, said to be for safety and psychological integrity [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Self & Society 34(1)].
Child-role work, sometimes unclothed. Other participants role-played the parents, the whole family was re-staged, and participants worked as "child beings", sometimes without clothes [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. The 2006 interview also reports that participants sometimes work without clothes and involve the whole body [source: Self & Society 34(1)].
Body contact including the genital area. The 2006 training text states that whole-body interaction, including genitals, was part of the work within agreements, that touch exercises used sensitive sterile gloves, and that the staff team advised on how body contact was facilitated [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. The interview presents genital work as professional, comparable to medical care [source: Self & Society 34(1)]. No further detail is given here.
Pressure features. Participants were asked to attend the whole training even when ill, as symptoms may be part of their patterning [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006]. Fischer reports that the founder does not accept attempts to evade sexuality [source: Fischer 2002]. A participant testimonial calls the work "not for the faint-hearted" [source: Counselling Directory 2019].
Safeguards stated by SGT. No overt sexuality between trainers, therapists and participants; participants not to have sexual acts with one another (even couples discouraged during modules); no misuse of sexual vulnerability; no drugs; any sexual act to be brought into the group; screening out of people with severe developmental trauma or sexual abuse until after personal therapy [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Fischer 2002].

How it caused harm

No documented injuries or case reports involving SGT were found [uncertain]. The mechanisms below are the recognised risks of such practices [synthesis, consistent with EABP 2020 Principles 5 and 7 and Guest & Parker 2022]. A Dutch disciplinary case that does not involve SGT shows how such risks are judged: in 2023 the Amsterdam regional disciplinary tribunal barred a former psychologist and psychotherapist from re-registering after "body-oriented exercises" in which he touched a clothed client's whole body, including erogenous zones, in his bedroom; it held that touching erogenous zones is not a recognised treatment and breaches the professional standard, and that the client's prior consent did not matter given the dependent therapeutic relationship [source: ECLI:NL:TGZRAMS:2023:129].

Consent compromised by regression and group pressure. Consent to undressing or contact given in a contract before the training, or in a regressed child-role state in front of a group, is weak: the person may not be able to say no in the moment. Signing guidelines before starting, attendance-even-if-ill rules and framing reluctance as evasion add pressure.
Re-enactment for abuse survivors. Unclothed child roles, adult representatives as parents and attention to the genital area recreate the structure of child sexual abuse (child exposed, adults in power, sexuality focus). Survivors, including undisclosed ones that screening missed, are most at risk of re-traumatisation, dissociation, shame and self-harm afterwards.
Boundary violations and transference. Regression and parent-child roles intensify erotic transference and countertransference, as Fischer himself notes [source: Fischer 2002]. With leaders who are also trainers and therapists (dual roles), the conditions that precede therapist sexual misconduct are present; peer participants playing parents are untrained for this.
Peer sexual contact. The rules accept that sexual acts between participants may happen and route them into group process; this can expose vulnerable participants and turn an event that may be non-consensual into group material rather than a safeguarding matter.
Who is most at risk: survivors of sexual abuse or assault (disclosed or not), people with dissociative or personality difficulties, young adults, people in crisis or recently separated, people dependent on the training for a qualification, and participants with less power in the group.

Recognising it today

Language: "genital mirroring", "sexual re-education", "working as child beings", "revisit your sexual innocence with supportive parental figures", "heart-genital" exercises, "genital self-regulation", "charging and discharging", "cellular" knowledge of sexuality [source: Poppeliers & Duffell 2006; Counselling Directory 2019; meandwe.fi 2024].
Red flags in a colleague's, group's or workshop's practice [synthesis]: undressing in therapy or groups; any touch of genitals, breasts or buttocks, gloved or not; touch framed as "like medical care" by a non-medical practitioner; the claim that prior agreement or a signed contract makes intimate touch acceptable (a Dutch tribunal held consent does not cure it in a dependent therapeutic relationship, ECLI:NL:TGZRAMS:2023:129); sex or relationship therapy that includes touch (UK COSRT states such therapy is talk-based and involves no touch, COSRT 2024); consent taken once by contract rather than moment by moment; no screening interview; reluctance described as "evading sexuality" or as resistance; rules that you must stay or attend when ill; secrecy about methods; sexual contact among participants treated as therapy material; leaders who combine trainer, therapist and supervisor roles; workshops marketed to teachers and parents as sexual development training.
How legitimate work differs [synthesis; EABP 2020]: clothed; touch only on non-intimate areas, explained in advance, consented each time with a no-touch alternative and stop signal; reluctance respected; abuse histories treated with phase-based trauma care first; sexual feelings discussed, never acted on; methods described openly before enrolment; complaints routes publicised.

What to do instead and how to help those harmed

Alternatives [synthesis]: for sexual difficulties, psychosexual or sex therapy by an accredited sex therapist (assessment, psychoeducation, couple communication, home-based sensate-focus-type exercises done privately by partners); for abuse histories, phase-oriented trauma therapy (e.g. trauma-focused CBT, EMDR) and clothed, consent-based body psychotherapy; the clothed, no-intimate-touch adaptations in section 4 of this guide.
Assessing an affected client [synthesis]: ask openly and non-leadingly what happened, including clothing, touch, who was present and how consent was asked; assess PTSD symptoms, dissociation, shame, depression, suicidality and self-harm with standard risk assessment; validate that discomfort was a reasonable response; avoid reproducing pressure in your own work.
Treatment [synthesis]: stabilisation, then trauma-focused processing if indicated; work on self-blame ("I signed the agreement"); restore the client's sense of the right to refuse; group harms may also need work on loss of community.
Ethical codes that apply: EABP 2020 Ethics Guidelines require clients to be informed beforehand about body techniques, freedom of choice to participate, no coercion, no sexual abuse "even when the client proposes such exchanges", awareness of power, and supervision on boundary issues; advertised growth groups must state their purpose and the experiences offered [source: EABP 2020]. Netherlands: the NVP Code for Psychotherapists (2007) bars a sexual relationship with a client during or directly after the professional relationship (art. II.5.1.1) and verbal or non-verbal behaviour that client or therapist would reasonably experience as sexual (II.5.1.2); procedures in which touch has a place are allowed only when indicated and not when they mainly serve the therapist, and sexual touch will as a rule breach the code (II.5.3); treatment requires voluntary, informed consent (II.2.1.1), written consent for methods likely to cause strongly negative experiences (II.6.2 d), and no exploitation of the therapist's position (I.6) [source: NVP Beroepscode 2007]. Dutch disciplinary tribunals have suspended or struck off BIG-registered psychologists and psychotherapists for sexual contact with a client (ECLI:NL:TGZCTG:2024:92, 12-month suspension on appeal) and for touching erogenous zones in body work (ECLI:NL:TGZRAMS:2023:129) [source: those decisions]. Germany: the Berlin Chamber of Psychotherapists' ethics commentary calls sexual abstinence an indispensable premise, any acting on the therapist's sexual wishes a breach, and post-therapy relationships a matter for case-by-case judgement with the therapist alone responsible [source: Psychotherapeutenkammer Berlin 2004]. UK: COSRT states that psychosexual and relationship therapies are strictly talk-based, involve no touch or examinations, and bar sexual contact or intimate relationships with clients [source: COSRT 2024]. Not drawn on: whether a newer NVP or the NIP code applies, the German model professional code for psychotherapists and the criminal law on sexual abuse in treatment relationships, and UKCP, BACP and APA codes [uncertain: check the current code that binds the practitioner].
Reporting routes: EABP members can be reported to the EABP Ethics Committee (written, signed, in English; usually within five years, longer for suspected severe abuse with lasting effects) [source: EABP 2020 section 4]; otherwise the practitioner's registration or professional body, and the police for sexual offences. In the Netherlands, complaints about BIG-registered psychologists and psychotherapists go to a regional disciplinary tribunal, with appeal to the Central Disciplinary Tribunal [source: ECLI:NL:TGZRAMS:2023:129; ECLI:NL:TGZCTG:2024:92]; the NVP code requires a psychotherapist with evidence of a colleague's breach to raise it with that colleague first and, where serious harm is shown and not remedied, to report it to the most appropriate body after telling the colleague [source: NVP Beroepscode 2007, I.1.3.1]. COSRT handles complaints about its members through its Conduct Procedure [source: COSRT 2024]. With an adult client, reporting is normally the client's choice: inform them of options and support them; mandatory duties apply where children are at risk, and some jurisdictions have specific duties or required leaflets for therapist sexual misconduct (e.g. some US states) [uncertain: check local law].
Your own practice [synthesis]: if you use SGT-derived techniques, keep them clothed and non-intimate, document consent each session, get supervision from someone outside the SGT training line, and only use methods your licence and jurisdiction allow.

Sources

Sources:

Books cited [uncertain]:

Poppeliers, W. & Broesterhuizen, M. (2007). Sexual Grounding Therapy: Love and Sexuality in the Perspective of Relations and Generations. Protocol Media Productions (ed. G. Lamb).
Lamb, G. (2021). Sexual Grounding Therapy: Context, Theory and Practice. Routledge.

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