Atlas›Domain IV · Body-oriented psychotherapy›Guide 044
Guide IV-044

Depth-psychologically based body psychotherapy (Downing)

George Downing1995
A 32 · L 34 · M 3419 interventions in the Trinity explorer
Client cardCompare
[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: George Downing's approach, which his own website calls Body-Focused Therapy (BFT), as set out in Körper und Wort in der Psychotherapie: Leitlinien für die Praxis (Kösel, 1996; first published in Italian as Il corpo e la parola, Astrolabio-Ubaldini, 1995), reconstructed from the German-language secondary literature that teaches and applies it (Langlotz-Weis 2017, 2019; Geuter 2015; Sassenfeld 2011; Reck 2017). [source: Downing's bibliography page; ibs.it description and reader review of the Italian edition; Google Books record; MAK bibliography] What is documented: the BFT name and Downing's publication list (his website); his training background (istob); the book's main themes (Italian publisher description); what Geuter says the book contributed (Springer reading sample); how Downing's Heidelberg/Munich colleagues summarise BFT (Reck's 2017 slides); the current Munich training format (LMU); and the four-step structure of Video Intervention Therapy (contents page of Downing's 2025 book). Not documented outside the book: Downing's own step-by-step body procedures, any phase model for the body work, and his own wording; the book has no online preview or published table of contents. So procedural detail below comes from the secondary sources or is marked [synthesis] or [uncertain].

What it is. George Downing's body psychotherapy is a way of weaving short, focused body work into an ordinary talk-based, depth-psychological (psychodynamic) therapy. The book's title, "body and word", sums it up. The publisher's description says the book combines body-centred work with a purely verbal clinical approach, two practices usually kept apart. It discusses how to integrate the two, how to adapt the method to different types of patient, the body's defences, and transference and countertransference, with clinical case examples. [source: ibs.it description and reader review of the Italian edition] In the Heidelberg/Munich group around Corinna Reck, BFT is also used as a supplement to cognitive behavioural therapy. [source: Reck 2017 slides, PTK Bayern] It is a clinical method and a body of theory, not a manualised protocol, and it has no fixed session count. Downing (PhD) is a clinical psychologist, formerly professor of clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley, and later worked for years as a psychologist in child psychiatry at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. He has led body-psychotherapy trainings in several European countries since 1975, and his website lists a BFT certification (its requirements are not documented here). [source: istob forum page; Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025; Downing's bibliography page] He also developed a separate, related method, Video Intervention Therapy (VIT), in which therapist and patient review together a short video of the patient interacting with someone else (Downing 2003, 2004; Downing et al. 2013; Downing 2025). VIT is outside this guide except where it informs the body work (see 4.17, 4.19). [source: Downing's bibliography page; Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025]

Core idea of change. Downing held that early emotional interactions are stored as affect-motor schemas (affektmotorische Schemata). These are bodily "micropractices": habitual ways of moving, breathing, tensing and reaching, each tinged with a typical feeling. Alongside them sit motor convictions: bodily expectations about how the world will answer one's actions. Both are procedural and largely unconscious, and they keep shaping attachment experience in adult life. [source: Sassenfeld 2011, citing Downing 1996, 2006; Geuter 2015, p. 97]

Geuter credits Downing's 1996 book with linking body psychotherapy to infant research and psychoanalytic object-relations theory, developing the theory of affect-motor schemas, and outlining a theory of technique. He also cites Downing for treating affect-motor schemas as the basis of dispositions to psychological disorders. [source: Geuter 2015, Springer reading sample, pp. VI, 5, 9–10] Reck's summary of BFT uses two further terms: body organizing (posture, gesture, facial expression and movement working together with thinking and feeling, with a "core repertoire" laid down in early interaction) and body micropractices (bodily capacities and strategies that regulate how affect is expressed, connection and differentiation schemas, and defence against feelings). Because these patterns sit in procedural memory, the work aims to make procedural sequences conscious and to improve body capacities and micropractices, through video microanalysis and body-oriented work. [source: Reck 2017 slides, PTK Bayern, citing Downing 1996, 2003, 2006] A reader's summary of the Italian edition puts the core image this way: the body sets up a kind of staging on which the person meets the other actors in their personal drama, and one aim of therapy is to change that staging. [source: ibs.it description and reader review of the Italian edition]

The main schema families are attachment (Bindung, e.g. reaching out, holding on) and boundary-setting (Abgrenzung, e.g. pushing away). [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]

Change happens in four ways:

  • The client becomes aware of these schemas as they are lived in the present moment.
  • The client explores them through body experience: sensation, breath, impulse and movement.
  • The client tries out alternative micropractices inside a supportive relationship, which gives new, corrective bodily experiences (Langlotz-Weis calls this a form of "re-parenting", Nachbeelterung).
  • The client puts the experience into words and links it to their history and current relationships.

[source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Geuter 2015]

2. Framework

The sources give no formal phase model for Downing's body work. It is used as a set of in-session moves inside a longer psychodynamic (or cognitive-behavioural) therapy, not as a staged programme. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; Geuter 2015; Reck 2017 slides, PTK Bayern] Geuter says the 1996 book sets out "Grundzüge einer Lehre der Technik" (an outline of a theory of technique), but the publisher's sample gives no details. [source: Geuter 2015, Springer reading sample, p. VI] Downing's website, the publisher descriptions, Reck's slides and the training pages describe no phase model either. [uncertain: the book may contain one] The only phase structure Downing has published in an accessible form belongs to Video Intervention Therapy, not to the body work (see 4.17). Training format today: LMU Munich (MUNIK, scientific lead Corinna Reck) offers a continuing-education series in body-oriented psychotherapy taught with Downing: 4 seminars of 3 days each, starting autumn 2027, for licensed psychotherapists (trainees by arrangement). It can be combined with LMU's training in interaction-centred psychotherapy in early childhood, through which a basic VIT certificate after Downing can be gained. [source: LMU MUNIK training page]

The working sequence below is the order the sources imply (setting and stance, then introducing body work, then microanalysis, then cognitive embedding). [synthesis built on socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019 and Langlotz-Weis 2017]

Format. Individual outpatient therapy. The therapy follows the length of the host psychodynamic treatment (short-term to long-term). Body interventions usually last a few minutes up to a large part of a session. They are done mostly sitting or standing in the ordinary consulting room; mats, cushions and blankets are optional. [synthesis; Geuter 2015 case uses a stool, a figure and a blanket] Inpatient psychosomatic programmes in Germany sometimes add separate body-therapy sessions; one programme describes two 60-minute sessions a week, though not specifically Downing-based. [source: Beutel, in Schriftenreihe XI 2008]

Phase A: Alliance, assessment and introducing the body [synthesis]

  • Goals:
    • Build a safe working relationship.
    • Take a history, including early attachment experience, trauma and physical health (screening, see 5.6).
    • Explain the rationale for including the body.
    • Agree how the client can stop any exercise.
    • Get explicit consent before any touch. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019, which stresses consent before touch]
  • Session count: about 1–5 sessions [synthesis].
  • Move on when the client can describe at least some body sensations, understands and agrees to the rationale, and is stable enough for affect-activating work.

Phase B: Noticing and exploring affect-motor schemas [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; Geuter 2015]

  • Goals:
    • Track the present moment in the five channels: thoughts, feelings, inner images, body sensations and motor impulses.
    • Identify recurring bodily defences (flat breath, raised shoulders, clenched jaw, lump in the throat, slack paralysis).
    • Identify attachment and boundary schemas.
    • Slow the action down (live micro-behavioural analysis).
  • Move on when the client can recognise a pattern as it happens and link it, even tentatively, to a feeling or relationship theme.

Phase C: Experimenting with alternative micropractices and corrective experience [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Langlotz-Weis 2017; Geuter 2015]

  • Goals:
    • Try new movements and breathing patterns (e.g. pushing away, reaching, standing up, softening).
    • Use supportive touch or imagined touch.
    • Activate over-controlled feelings or calm overwhelming ones.
    • Work with enactments in the therapeutic relationship.
  • Move on when the new pattern can be done with some ease and is felt as one's own.

Phase D: Integration and transfer [synthesis; principle of cognitive embedding from Langlotz-Weis 2017]

  • Goals:
    • Put the experience into words and link it to biography and current relationships.
    • Practise the new micropractice in daily life.
    • Work through ending as a relational experience.
  • End criteria: symptom and relationship goals of the host therapy are reached, and the client can use body awareness for self-regulation on their own.

Phases B–D repeat in cycles throughout therapy rather than running once in sequence. [synthesis]

3. Guiding principles

  • Body and word together. Every body experience is followed by speaking about it, and talk is regularly brought back to the body. Practical meaning: never end a body exercise without a verbal debrief. [source: Downing 1996 title; Langlotz-Weis 2017, "Verweben der Ebenen"]
  • History lives in the body now. Biography shows up in present affect-motor schemas (posture, breath, muscle tension, gut feeling), not only in beliefs. Practical meaning: look for the past in how the client moves and breathes in the session. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 97, citing Downing 1996]
  • Work in the here and now. Practical meaning: ask what is happening in the body right now, not what usually happens. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • Supportive, permission-giving, validating, resource-oriented stance. Practical meaning: invite rather than instruct, and validate even very small new behaviours. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • Mindful, non-judging observation. Practical meaning: help the client notice sensations without evaluating them. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • Corrective (re-parenting) experience. Therapy offers alternative bodily-relational experiences to the ones in the old schemas. Practical meaning: design experiments where the old expectation ("reaching gets no answer") can be disconfirmed. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Geuter 2015]
  • Bodily defence is respected, not broken. Defences such as held breath or raised shoulders are understood as protective. Practical meaning: explore and soften them gradually; do not force them open. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017 lists the defence forms; the publisher description of Downing's book names the body's defences as a main theme (ibs.it description and reader review of the Italian edition); Reck lists defence against feelings among the functions of body micropractices (Reck 2017 slides, PTK Bayern)] [synthesis for the "do not force" wording]
  • Explore meaning; do not assume it. Practical meaning: ask what a gesture or symptom means to this client instead of reading it off a character typology. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 98–99]
  • Regulate arousal in both directions. Practical meaning: activate over-controlled feelings (more breath, movement) and calm overwhelming ones (slower breath, support). [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103]
  • Cognitive embedding is essential. Breathing tends to intensify feelings. Practical meaning: always pair activation with meaning-making and grounding before the client leaves. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • Consent before touch. Practical meaning: explain, ask and offer a no-touch alternative every time. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019] [synthesis for the full sequence, see 4.11]
  • Therapist's own body self-experience. Practical meaning: do not use exercises you have not experienced yourself, and get supervision. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • The relationship is the medium (depth-psychological frame). Body events in the session are also read as transference and countertransference, and as enactments. Practical meaning: ask what a movement is saying to you. [source: Geuter 2015 on the Handlungsdialog; the publisher description of Downing's book lists transference and countertransference among its main themes (ibs.it description and reader review of the Italian edition); Downing's 2026 VIT seminar also teaches recognising and using countertransference (KJPD Thurgau VIT seminar flyer 2026)] [uncertain: how Downing works with them in body work is not described outside the book]
  • Target dispositions, not only symptoms. Practical meaning: work on the underlying attachment or boundary schema even when the current symptom has eased. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 101]
  • The client heals themselves. Practical meaning: the therapist offers impulses and a holding environment; the client's own sensing guides the process. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 95, 100]

Adapt the method to the patient. Downing's book treats adapting combined body and verbal work to different types of patient as a core task. Practical meaning: choose the amount, kind and pace of body work for this client (for example no-touch, observation-only or seated work) rather than applying one routine to everyone. [source: ibs.it description and reader review of the Italian edition] [synthesis for the practical meaning]

4. Intervention inventory

Notes on this inventory:

  • The sources name the interventions below but rarely give step-by-step procedures. The steps are therefore mostly [synthesis]: written to fit the sources' descriptions, not taken from Downing's text.
  • Example language is illustrative throughout.
  • Downing's 1996 book may contain further named techniques; it has no online preview or published table of contents, and his website does not describe BFT techniques. [uncertain] Two further applications documented by his colleagues and seminar organisers are included at 4.18 and 4.19.
  • Any intervention involving touch requires specific training in body psychotherapy, supervision, and a check of what your licence, professional code and jurisdiction allow. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017, on supervision and self-experience]

4.1 Introducing body work (rationale and agreement)

  • Purpose: Make body work understandable and voluntary before it is used. The sources give "how to introduce body and breath work" its own topic. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • When: Early in therapy, and again before the first exercise of a new kind.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Link the body to the client's own problem. Use something they said or showed, such as a tight throat when talking about their father.
    2. Explain in one or two sentences that early relationship experiences are also stored as bodily habits, and that noticing them can open new options.
    3. Describe what an exercise would involve: noticing, small movements, breath, possibly touch.
    4. Agree a stop signal (a word or a raised hand). State that refusing is always fine and will not be held against the client.
    5. Ask about health limits (see 5.6).
    6. Ask for consent for this step only.
  • Example language (illustrative): "While you talked about your father, your shoulders came up. Could we spend a minute just noticing that? You can stop at any point."
  • Watch for: Polite compliance without real agreement, shame about the body, and memories of past boundary violations. If any of these appear, slow down and offer purely verbal or observation-only options.

4.2 Directing attention to body experience (Spüren)

  • Purpose: Bring the client into present-moment contact with sensation. This is the basic move that all other interventions rest on. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 97–98, 103; socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • When: Whenever talk becomes abstract, repetitive or intellectualised, or when a visible bodily change occurs (a sigh, a clenched hand, a sudden stillness).
  • Steps:
    1. Stop the narrative gently.
    2. Ask what the client notices in the body now, while speaking or while silent. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103]
    3. Help them locate it (where?) and describe its quality (tight, warm, heavy, moving), its size and any movement in it. [synthesis]
    4. Stay with it for several breaths without trying to change it. Keep the stance non-judging. [source: socialnet review]
    5. Ask what feeling, image or thought comes with it (this leads into 4.3).
    6. Return to the topic and ask how it looks now. [synthesis]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let's pause here. What do you notice in your body right now, as you say that?" / "Where exactly is the tightness? … Can you just stay with it for a moment?"
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: richer, more specific description; spontaneous breath change; a feeling emerging.
    • Numbness or "nothing" is information, not failure (see 5.1).
    • Rapid escalation or spacing out means you should switch to calming (4.8).

4.3 Circle of exploration: weaving the five channels

  • Purpose: Deepen self-exploration by linking thoughts, feelings, inner images or fantasies, body sensations and motor impulses. Langlotz-Weis calls this "weaving the levels" (Verweben der Ebenen); Geuter calls it the "circle of exploration". [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; Geuter 2015, p. 102] [uncertain: whether Downing himself uses this exact five-channel scheme]
  • When: After a body sensation or a feeling has come into focus.
  • Steps:
    1. Start from whichever channel is most available.
    2. Ask a bridging question into another channel, for example from a thought to a sensation, or from a feeling to an image. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 102]
    3. Keep cycling through the channels until a coherent theme appears, such as "when I want something, I freeze".
    4. Check whether the formulation fits by asking how it feels in the body. Geuter treats a statement as accepted only when it feels congruent (Stimmigkeit). [source: Geuter 2015, p. 96]
  • Example language (illustrative): "When you have that thought, what happens in your chest?" / "If that heaviness had an image, what would it be?" / "Does your hand want to do anything?"
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: a felt "yes, that's it", a shift in breath or posture.
    • Signs of a problem: purely cognitive answers to body questions, or the client going along with your words.

4.4 Identifying bodily defence micropractices (Körperabwehr)

  • Purpose: Make visible the habitual bodily ways the client stops or dampens feeling. These are the defensive side of affect-motor schemas. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; Sassenfeld 2011 on micropractices]
  • When: When a feeling seems to be near but does not arrive, or a typical pattern repeats.
  • Defence forms named in the sources:
    • flat breathing
    • pulling the shoulders up
    • tensing the jaw
    • a lump in the throat (Kloßgefühl)
    • slack paralysis (schlaffe Lähmung)
    [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Name the observable pattern descriptively, without interpretation.
    2. Invite the client to notice it from the inside.
    3. Explore how they do it, as an action rather than something that happens to them: what holds, from where, how strongly.
    4. Optionally let them do slightly more of it, then slightly less, and notice what each change brings. Mark this step [uncertain]: amplifying a pattern is common in body psychotherapy, but no source attributes it to Downing.
    5. Ask what the pattern protects against and when they learned it.
    6. Respect the defence: it may stay.
  • Example language (illustrative): "I notice your breath gets very shallow when you mention her. Can you feel that?" / "How are you stopping the breath – where does that happen?"
  • Watch for: Shame at being "caught". Frame the pattern as clever and once necessary. A feeling (often sadness or anger) breaking through means you should slow down and support the client (4.8, 4.14).

4.5 Live micro-behavioural analysis (slowing down the moment)

  • Purpose: Examine a short interactional or bodily sequence in very slow motion so that the affect-motor schema becomes visible step by step. Downing developed the schema concept from slow-motion video analysis of early interaction, and Langlotz-Weis carries this over into live micro-behavioural analysis during body and breath work. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • When: When a pattern happens quickly and automatically, for example the moment before the client backs down, or the instant a smile covers anger.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Choose one short moment, either just observed or recalled vividly.
    2. Ask the client to replay it very slowly, either in imagination or by actually doing the movement at a fraction of normal speed.
    3. At each micro-step, ask about sensation, impulse, feeling and expectation of the other person (the motor conviction).
    4. Find the exact point where the habitual micropractice takes over, such as the breath stopping or the gaze dropping.
    5. Explore what other option might exist at that point (this leads into 4.9–4.10).
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let's do that again in slow motion. You're about to answer him – what's the very first thing your body does?"
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: the client discovers a point of choice they did not know existed.
    • Signs of a problem: frustration or self-criticism at the slowness. Keep it playful and curious.

4.6 Activating breath work (deepening affect)

  • Purpose: Intensify feelings that are over-controlled or kept at a distance. Increased breathing or movement activates; Langlotz-Weis warns that breathing tends to intensify feeling, so cognitive embedding must follow. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103; Langlotz-Weis 2017; socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • When: When the client is stable but emotionally flat, intellectualising, or holding the breath against a feeling that is clearly near.
  • Screening first: This is breath intensification, so screen before use. The sources name caution with emotionally unstable, psychotic and severely psychosomatically ill patients. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017] Also screen for the following [synthesis]:
    • pregnancy
    • cardiovascular or respiratory illness, including asthma
    • epilepsy
    • panic disorder with fear of breathlessness
    • recent injury or surgery
    • severe dissociation
    • active suicidality
    • recent trauma without stabilisation
  • Steps [synthesis, except where marked]:
    1. Get consent and agree the stop signal.
    2. Have the client sit upright with both feet on the floor, or lie on a mat, whichever they prefer.
    3. Invite them to let the breath become a little fuller and deeper, into the belly and chest, without forcing. Use only a modest increase, for a few minutes at most.
    4. Keep inviting them to notice sensation, feeling and image (4.3).
    5. If a feeling emerges, let the breath support it, for example by letting the out-breath carry a sound.
    6. Stop immediately if there is tingling, dizziness, cramping of the hands, spacing out or panic, and switch to 4.8.
    7. Close with ordinary breathing and grounding, then talk through what happened (4.16). [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017, on cognitive embedding]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let the breath get just a little bit deeper – nothing forced. What's happening as you let more air in?"
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: a feeling arrives at a tolerable intensity and links to content.
    • Signs of a problem: hyperventilation signs, overwhelm, or numbing. These mean stop and regulate.

4.7 Body work for specific affects (anger, rage, grief, fear, joy, pleasure)

  • Purpose: Help the client feel and modulate a particular emotion through its bodily form. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019, which lists body work for anger, rage, grief, fear, joy and pleasure]
  • When: When a specific affect is blocked, or is felt only in an overwhelming or explosive way.
  • Steps: The sources only list these interventions and do not describe them, so the specific steps are [uncertain]. A general frame [synthesis]:
    1. Identify the affect and where it is felt.
    2. Find its natural movement or posture: anger often moves outward through the arms and jaw; grief often moves into the chest and throat.
    3. Allow a small, controlled version, such as a firm push, letting the voice say one word, or letting tears come with supported breathing.
    4. Modulate it in both directions (more, then less) so the client experiences control.
    5. Close with grounding and a talk-through.
  • Cathartic discharge (hitting cushions, screaming, kicking): No source attributes it to Downing. If you use it at all, screen as in 4.6 and also for cardiovascular disease, recent injury and impulse-control problems. Never use it with clients who are violent or at risk of becoming violent. [synthesis]
  • Example language (illustrative): "If that anger could move just a little – where would it want to go? Try it at maybe a tenth of its strength."
  • Watch for: The feeling becoming a manageable signal, which shows modulation is working. Escalation, or shame afterwards, means you should regulate, normalise and debrief.

4.8 Calming and regulating (down-regulation, support)

  • Purpose: Reduce overwhelming arousal. Slower breathing, slower movement and physical support calm. The aim is to restore the client's own self-regulation. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 100–101, 103]
  • When: Panic, flooding, dissociation, tearfulness that does not settle, the end of any activating exercise, and before the client leaves.
  • Steps [synthesis, except where marked]:
    1. Lower your own voice and pace.
    2. Invite a longer out-breath, without breath-holding.
    3. Direct attention to support: feet on the floor, back against the chair, the weight of the body.
    4. Orient to the room by naming things the client can see.
    5. Offer physical support where consented: the client's own hand on chest or belly, a blanket, or the therapist's hand (see 4.11). Geuter's case uses a blanket that calmed the patient. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 102–103]
    6. Once the client is calmer, ask what helped. That becomes a resource they can use themselves.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let's slow everything down. Feel your feet on the floor… let the out-breath be a bit longer… What can you see in the room?"
  • Watch for: Signs it is working: slower breathing, warmth returning, the client able to make eye contact and speak in full sentences. If calming does not work, see 5.3.

4.9 Boundary-schema experiment: pushing away (Wegschiebeübung)

  • Purpose: Explore and strengthen the boundary-setting (Abgrenzung) affect-motor schema, i.e. the bodily capacity to say "no" and to make space. Langlotz-Weis mentions a pushing-away exercise with a self-doubting anorexic patient, in the context of Downing's attachment and boundary schemas. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017] No published source gives the procedure, so the steps below are [synthesis].
  • When: For clients who cannot refuse, collapse under pressure, or feel invaded. Use only when they are stable enough for anger to come up.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. No-touch version first (default):
      • The client stands or sits with feet grounded.
      • They push slowly with both palms against a wall, a large firm cushion held by themselves, or into the air towards an imagined person placed at a distance they choose.
    2. Touch version (only with consent, see 4.11 for the full sequence):
      • The therapist holds a firm cushion in front of their own chest, or offers flat palms. The client pushes against them; the therapist gives steady, adjustable resistance and does not push back in a way that overpowers.
      • Agree beforehand where contact will be (palms or cushion only), how hard, and the stop signal.
    3. Start at low force. Ask about sensation, breath, impulse, image and any words that want to come (for example "Stop" or "No").
    4. Let the client vary the force and distance until it feels "right".
    5. Explore the old pattern that shows up, such as collapsing, apologising, laughing or giving up halfway.
    6. Repeat a few times, noticing what changes.
    7. Close by standing quietly, feeling the space in front and the feet on the floor. Then talk through it: what was new, and where in life it is needed.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Where would you like him to be in the room? … Now push towards him, slowly. What happens in your arms? … Is there a word that wants to come?"
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: the posture straightens, the breath deepens, and the client feels the strength as their own.
    • Signs of a problem: dissociation, sudden fear or tears, which may signal earlier boundary violations. Stop, ground (4.8) and process.
    • Contraindications: shoulder, wrist or back injury; recent surgery; late pregnancy (for strong pushing). [synthesis]

4.10 Attachment-schema experiment: reaching out

  • Purpose: Explore the attachment (Bindung) schema: how the client reaches towards others and what they expect to happen (the motor conviction). An example of this is Geuter's illustration of a person whose mother was depressed and who expects no response to their actions. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 97–98; Langlotz-Weis 2017 on Bindung] [uncertain: a reaching exercise is consistent with the schema model, but no published source gives Downing's procedure; steps are synthesis]
  • When: For clients who withdraw, cannot ask for help, or alternate between longing and giving up.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. The client sits or stands and slowly extends one or both arms forward, palms up or open, towards a point in the room or an imagined person.
    2. The therapist asks them to notice every micro-step: shoulder, breath, the impulse to stop or pull back, and the expectation of what the other will do.
    3. Explore the "stopping point" with live microanalysis (4.5).
    4. Optionally add words ("Please", "I need you") and notice the body's response.
    5. Option with touch (consent required, 4.11): the therapist meets the outstretched hand with their own, so the expected non-response is disconfirmed. Agree beforehand whether the therapist will meet the hand, and keep the contact brief and hand-only.
    6. Close by bringing the arms back in, letting the client feel what it was like, and talking it through.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let your hand reach out, as slowly as you like. What do you notice as it moves away from you? … What do you expect will happen?"
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: grief or longing surfaces and becomes bearable; the reach becomes fuller.
    • Signs of a problem: strong idealising or eroticised transference, or feeling rejected if the therapist does not meet the hand. Agree in advance and debrief carefully.

4.11 Supportive touch

  • Purpose: Use touch to support, give safety, comfort, hold, give resistance, or serve as a behavioural experiment. Holding a hand is one example (Langlotz-Weis notes this with depressed patients). [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • When: When words alone cannot reach a state of abandonment, fear or collapse, and the client clearly wants touch and has consented. Never use it as a routine.
  • Training and legal note: Touch requires specific training in body psychotherapy, regular supervision, and a check of what your licence, professional code and jurisdiction allow. Never use sexual or genital touch, or touch to breasts, buttocks or the inner thighs. [synthesis, in line with sources' emphasis on consent] Downing's own introductory workshops for therapists teach body techniques that need no physical contact (see 4.18). [source: istob forum page]
  • Consent steps: The sources stress consent before touch. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019] The full sequence below is [synthesis]:
    1. Explain the purpose and exactly where and how you would touch: for example, a hand resting between the shoulder blades, the client's hand held, or palms meeting.
    2. Ask openly. Make it as easy to say no as yes.
    3. Offer a no-touch alternative: imagined touch (4.12), the client's own hand, a cushion or a blanket.
    4. Agree a stop signal.
    5. Touch lightly first and check: "Is this OK? More, less, somewhere else?"
    6. Check in during the touch and remove your hand slowly when the client wishes.
    7. Afterwards, talk about what the touch was like, including any discomfort.
    8. Record the consent and the intervention in your notes.
  • Steps (example: hand on the back) [synthesis]:
    1. Sit to the side of the client, not in front.
    2. Place a flat, still hand between the shoulder blades.
    3. Invite the client to notice the support and what the body does with it.
    4. Stay for a short period, guided by the client.
    5. Withdraw slowly.
    6. Talk it through.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Would it help if I put a hand on your back while you stay with this? You can say no, and you can tell me to stop at any time."
  • Watch for:
    • Signs it is working: settling, deeper breath, feelings becoming bearable.
    • Warning signs: freezing, compliance, flashbacks, dependency, eroticisation. Stop and discuss; offer imagined touch next time.

4.12 Imagined touch

  • Purpose: An alternative to real touch: imagining being touched or held produces bodily responses. Langlotz-Weis links this to the Carpenter effect, i.e. measurable muscle activity when a movement or touch is imagined or observed. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • When: When touch is not wanted or not appropriate (trauma history, setting, legal limits), or as a first step towards it.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. The client chooses the imagined source of touch (a safe person, an animal, a younger self being held) and where it is.
    2. Guide them to imagine the touch slowly and in detail: warmth, pressure, duration.
    3. Track their body responses.
    4. Let them adjust it until it feels right.
    5. Close by letting the image fade while keeping the felt sense.
    6. Talk it through.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Imagine a hand that is entirely on your side resting on your shoulder. What happens in your body as you imagine that?"
  • Watch for: Intrusive images of abusive touch. If they appear, stop, ground and choose a neutral source. Signs it is working: the soothing transfers into everyday self-calming.

4.13 Following motor and locomotor impulses (scenic body exploration)

  • Purpose: Clarify the emotional meaning of a relationship by letting the client follow movement impulses (turning away, standing up, approaching) towards a represented person. Geuter describes the exploration of locomotor impulses as suited to clarifying the emotional colouring of relationships. This comes from Geuter's own case work, which builds on the affect-motor schema concept, not from Downing's text. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 98, 102–103]
  • When: When the client is working on a specific relationship and cannot find words, or keeps intellectualising.
  • Steps (following Geuter's case, paraphrased):
    1. The client chooses an object or figure to represent the other person and places it where it "belongs". In Geuter's case the boss was put up high on a shelf.
    2. The client takes a position in relation to it. In the case she sat on a low stool facing it.
    3. The therapist asks for sensations and impulses. The client noticed rigidity and an urge to turn away.
    4. The therapist invites the client to follow the impulse rather than interpreting it. In the case she slid down and crawled into a corner.
    5. The therapist offers support where needed. In the case the therapist covered her with a blanket, which calmed her.
    6. The client is invited to re-approach the scene when ready. In the case she stood up and found the figure now at eye level.
    7. Talk through the experience and transfer it to real life. She later set a boundary with her boss.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Where in the room does he belong? … And where are you? … What does your body want to do now? You can follow that, slowly."
  • Watch for:
    • Regression that becomes too deep: loss of adult perspective or dissociation. Keep dual awareness by asking the client to describe what they are doing as they do it.
    • Signs it is working: a change in the felt relationship (size, height, distance) and new behaviour outside the session.

4.14 Action dialogue (Handlungsdialog) and enactment in the relationship

  • Purpose: Use spontaneous impulses directed at the therapist as material for exploring transference and old relational patterns. This is the depth-psychological core of the body work. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103; Geißler & Heisterkamp 2013 introduction on analytic body psychotherapy] [uncertain: whether Downing uses the term Handlungsdialog]
  • When: When the client shows or reports an impulse towards the therapist, such as wanting to shake you, move away, come closer or hide.
  • Steps:
    1. Notice and name the impulse.
    2. Invite the client to observe what their hand or body wants to do. Geuter describes inviting the patient to watch what the hand wants to do. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103]
    3. If appropriate, allow a safe, symbolic or small version of the movement, with clear limits. In Geuter's example, a patient who felt the therapist had been absent wanted to shake him; the enactment was allowed and then explored. [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103]
    4. Explore together what the movement carries, for example old anger or a wish for contact.
    5. Link it to the client's history and to what happened between you. Acknowledge your own part where relevant.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Your hand made a fist just then, when I mentioned the break. What would it want to do? … What is it saying to me?"
  • Watch for:
    • Boundaries: no hitting the therapist, and no physical contact without prior agreement. Use a cushion as a stand-in.
    • Your own countertransference: irritation, protectiveness or seduction.
    • Signs it is working: the old relational pattern becomes visible and can be talked about in the relationship.

4.15 Body memory and counterconditioning (behaviour-therapy adaptation)

  • Purpose: Use bodily memory to reach feelings, and pair recall of a distressing memory with a calm, supported body state. This creates counterconditioning experiences (state-dependent learning). This is Langlotz-Weis's integration of Downing-derived body work into behaviour therapy, not Downing's own procedure. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019; Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • When: When memories carry strong bodily fear or shame, and the client is stabilised. Langlotz-Weis also uses related moves:
    • a body-check during anxiety exposure
    • body confrontation and "reconciliation" work in eating disorders
    [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Establish a calm resource state through slow, deep breathing and grounding.
    2. Have the client recall the memory briefly, staying at a tolerable intensity.
    3. Track body sensations as they come.
    4. Return to the calm breathing while still holding the memory in mind.
    5. Alternate between memory and calm state until the bodily distress lessens.
    6. Close with cognitive embedding: what does the client know now?
  • Example language (illustrative): "Keep breathing slowly and deeply, and let just the edge of that memory come in. What does your body do? … Now back to the breath."
  • Watch for: This is a form of exposure, so use exposure precautions:
    • Do not use it with unstabilised trauma, severe dissociation or active suicidality.
    • Stop if the client is flooded.
    • Signs it is working: lower bodily distress when recalling the memory between sessions.
    • In eating disorders, avoid any focus on weight or shape targets.

4.16 Verbal integration and transfer (closing every body intervention)

  • Purpose: Turn body experience into understanding and new behaviour. Langlotz-Weis calls this "cognitive embedding" and describes it as essential. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019]
  • When: At the end of every exercise, and again at the end of the session.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Return to ordinary breath and posture.
    2. Ask what the client experienced, in their own words.
    3. Ask what was new or familiar.
    4. Link it to their history: "When did you learn this?"
    5. Link it to current relationships: "Where does this show up?"
    6. Agree on a small everyday practice of the new micropractice, for example noticing raised shoulders in meetings and letting them drop once, or one slow out-breath before answering.
    7. Check the client's state before they leave.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Before we finish, let's put it into words. What did you notice? … Where in your week might that matter?"
  • Watch for:
    • Intellectualising too fast, which erases the experience. Slow down.
    • The client leaving activated, which means you should do more grounding (4.8).
    • Signs it is working: the client reports the new pattern appearing spontaneously.

4.17 Video microanalysis (Downing's parent–infant method; related, not core body work)

  • Purpose: Downing's affect-motor schema concept grew out of slow-motion video analysis of early interaction. He developed Video Intervention Therapy (VIT): a short video of the patient interacting with another person is reviewed together with the therapist, to prompt reflection on what is seen and to change specific interaction patterns. It combines psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural elements and draws on infant research. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; Downing's bibliography page; Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025; Padua VIT seminar flyer 2015]
  • When: Parent–infant and perinatal work (including parents with postpartum or other psychiatric disorders), children and adolescents (including autism spectrum disorders), couple and family therapy, individual therapy for a specific relational problem, and staff supervision. [source: Padua VIT seminar flyer 2015; Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025; Downing's bibliography page]
  • Steps: Downing's 2025 book structures a VIT session in four procedure steps. Only the chapter titles are documented here, so anything beyond those titles is [uncertain]. [source: Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025, table of contents]
    1. Before starting: decide how and when to begin with video sessions, and how to proceed if the patient is reluctant to work with a video. Material is short recordings of everyday interaction, ideally without the therapist present. [source: Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025; KJPD Thurgau VIT seminar flyer 2026]
    2. Preparation: the therapist prepares for the session (separate chapter). [uncertain: presumably reviewing the recording and choosing clips]
    3. Step one: start the session; Downing's seminars stress creating a positive, safe and productive working atmosphere. [source: Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025; KJPD Thurgau VIT seminar flyer 2026]
    4. Step two: show positive patterns, before any problematic ones.
    5. Step three: make the transition, then work with the "outer movie", the "inner movie", mentalization, and the relational effects of trauma. [uncertain: probably what can be seen versus what each person feels and thinks; inferred from the titles]
    6. Step four: plan for change.
    7. Observation skills the book teaches: watching the body alone, the language exchange, and spoken mentalization. VIT is adapted to age (toddlers, children, adolescents, parents). [source: Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025; KJPD Thurgau VIT seminar flyer 2026]
  • Watch for: VIT needs separate training; Downing's website lists a VIT certification, and LMU Munich offers a basic VIT certificate within its early-childhood training. Notice and use your own countertransference to what you see on the video. [source: Downing's bibliography page (navigation); LMU MUNIK training page; KJPD Thurgau VIT seminar flyer 2026]

4.18 Staying in contact with one's own body while relating (no-touch interactional techniques)

  • Purpose: Downing's introductory workshop for systemic therapists teaches body techniques that are easy to learn and need no physical contact. They help clients stay in contact with their own body while in a relationship, read another person's body language more accurately, and use their own body more skilfully in interaction. They are taught for work with adults, adolescents, children, couples and families. [source: istob forum page] The page names these aims but not the techniques, so the steps below are [synthesis].
  • When: When a client loses contact with themselves in relationships (going along, freezing, over-adapting) or misreads others; in couple and family sessions where nonverbal exchanges escalate.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. While the client talks to you (or, in couple or family work, to the other person), pause and ask them to notice one anchor in their own body: feet on the floor, breath, or the back against the chair.
    2. Ask them to go on speaking while keeping part of their attention on that anchor, and to notice what changes in voice, breath or the wish to look away.
    3. Ask the listener to describe what they see in the speaker's body in plain observational terms ("your shoulders came up") before any interpretation; then ask the speaker what it was. In individual work, you are the observer.
    4. Invite one small change in how the speaker uses their body, such as a slower out-breath, sitting more upright, or more or less eye contact. Let both notice how the exchange changes.
    5. Talk it through and agree one everyday situation in which to practise.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Keep talking to her, and at the same time keep a little attention on your feet. What happens?" / "Before you say what you think he meant, just tell him what you saw his body do."
  • Watch for: It is working when the client stays present and speaks more clearly under relational pressure, and partners read each other more accurately. Problems include self-consciousness or shame about being watched, and partners using body observations as accusations; keep descriptions neutral and brief. [synthesis]

4.19 Body-oriented parent–infant therapy (Heidelberg/Munich application)

  • Purpose: Downing's colleagues apply his body work, alongside video microanalysis, in treating mothers with postpartum disorders and their infants. Reck lists the focuses of body-oriented mother–child therapy as: building the mother's capacity for contact and attachment; widening the range of affect (including "high affective moments"); a kind relationship to one's own bodily experience; supporting expressive and perceptual capacities; exploring biographical background; and fostering the emotional bond. A chapter in Downing's co-edited inpatient handbook describes body-oriented psychotherapy and dance therapy on the Heidelberg mother–child unit (Morlinghaus 2012). [source: Reck 2017 slides, PTK Bayern; Downing's bibliography page]
  • When: Perinatal and infant mental health settings (outpatient or a mother–baby unit), typically combined with VIT (4.17).
  • Principles named for the mother–child work: strengthen the dyad with positive feedback; do not criticise; correct negative perceptions of the child; sensitise the parent to the nonverbal exchange; improve body and emotion perception; work on projections onto the child; observe the interaction and the relationship carefully. Reck lists these as principles of the treatment, not specifically as Downing's. [source: Reck 2017 slides, PTK Bayern]
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Start with the mother's own body: use 4.2 and 4.8 to help her notice her breath, posture and tension while she holds or watches the baby.
    2. Point out, with positive framing only, a moment where her body is already attuned (softening, mirroring the baby's face, pausing when the baby looks away).
    3. Invite one small bodily experiment while she is with the baby, such as a slower out-breath, lowering the shoulders, or slightly more face-to-face distance, and ask what she notices in herself and in the baby.
    4. Where tension or withdrawal is linked to her own history, explore it with her in her own session time (4.3, 4.4), not in front of the baby.
    5. Close by asking what she will take into everyday care.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Just then, when she turned away, you waited and let your breath go. Did you notice that? What was it like?"
  • Watch for: Shame and fear of being judged as a mother; keep feedback positive and specific. Postpartum depression, psychosis and suicidality need psychiatric assessment and a risk plan first; activating breath work is not used here. [synthesis]

5. Handling problems

The sources say little about handling problems beyond the cautions noted below. Most of this section is [synthesis] from general body-psychotherapy and psychodynamic practice; where a source applies, it is marked. Downing has written on starting therapy with difficult patients (Downing 2011, "Uneasy beginnings") and his VIT book has a chapter on patients reluctant to work with video; their content is not reflected here. [source: Downing's bibliography page; Routledge book page (Karnac) for Downing 2025] [uncertain]

5.1 "I don't feel anything" (low body awareness, alexithymia)

  • Treat numbness as a micropractice in its own right: a learned way of not feeling. Explore it with curiosity rather than pushing past it. [synthesis, consistent with Langlotz-Weis 2017 on slack paralysis as defence]
  • Start from the outside in:
    • points of contact (feet, seat, back)
    • temperature
    • small, safe contrasts (tense a fist, then release it) [synthesis]
  • Offer choices instead of open questions, such as "more like tight or loose?" [synthesis]
  • Lower the bar by validating very small observations. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017, on validating small behaviours]

5.2 Resistance to body work ("this is silly", shame, refusal)

  • Respect a refusal, and keep body awareness purely verbal for a while, for example by commenting on posture rather than asking for exercises. [synthesis]
  • Explore the refusal as material: what would happen if they did it, and who would be watching? This is the depth-psychological reading of resistance. [synthesis]
  • Offer observation-only options, or ones the client does on their own (e.g. the client's own hand instead of the therapist's). [synthesis]
  • Check whether your own enthusiasm for an exercise is making it harder for the client to say no. [synthesis]

5.3 Overwhelm, flooding, dissociation

  • Stop the exercise and switch to calming: a longer out-breath, feet on the floor, orienting to the room, the client's own hand or a blanket (4.8). [source: Geuter 2015, p. 103]
  • Signs of breath-induced hyperarousal (tingling, dizziness, cramped hands): return to slow, ordinary breathing. Do not use breath activation again until the client is stabilised. [synthesis]
  • Re-titrate: use smaller doses, shorter exercises and more resource work first. [synthesis]
  • If dissociation recurs, prioritise stabilisation and consider trauma-specific treatment. [synthesis]
  • Do not end the session until the client is oriented, and plan for the following days if needed. [synthesis]

5.4 Non-adherence to everyday practice

  • Shrink the task to one micro-moment a day, tied to an existing routine. [synthesis]
  • Explore the non-practice as an affect-motor pattern in its own right, for example "doing something for myself feels forbidden". [synthesis]

5.5 Ruptures, especially around touch and enactment

  • If a client reacts badly to touch or to an exercise:
    • name it openly
    • take responsibility for your part
    • invite their criticism
    • re-negotiate consent [synthesis]
  • Treat the rupture as a possible repeat of an old pattern, but do not use that interpretation to brush aside the actual injury. [synthesis]
  • Idealising, dependent or eroticised transference after touch: reduce or stop touch, discuss it within the frame, and take it to supervision. [synthesis]
  • Never continue touch when consent is unclear. Record what happened. [synthesis]

5.6 Screening and contraindications for activating work

  • Named in sources: Caution with emotionally unstable, psychotic and severely psychosomatically ill patients. Supervision and self-experience are required. [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • Added screening for breath intensification, stress positions, pushing and cathartic work [synthesis]:
    • pregnancy
    • cardiovascular or respiratory illness
    • epilepsy
    • recent injury or surgery
    • acute psychosis
    • severe dissociation
    • active suicidality or self-harm
    • recent trauma without stabilisation
    • substance intoxication
  • Active suicidality: Do a standard structured risk assessment and safety plan. Postpone activating body work. Use only grounding and stabilising interventions. Involve crisis services when needed. [synthesis]
  • Body work is not a medical treatment. Do not present it as a treatment for physical disease. Refer somatic symptoms for medical assessment. [synthesis]

5.7 Modality-specific difficulties

  • Reading meaning into the body too fast. Bodily patterns do not have fixed meanings. In Geuter's example, a symptom first read as character-typical turned out to be linked to a near-drowning memory. Ask; don't assume. [source: Geuter 2015, pp. 98–99]
  • Activation without integration. Breathing intensifies feeling, so always embed it cognitively (4.16). [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017]
  • The therapist's own bodily responses. Use your own sensations as countertransference information, and pursue your own body self-experience. [source: socialnet review of Langlotz-Weis 2019] [synthesis for the countertransference use]
  • Eating disorders. Body confrontation and "reconciliation with the body" are used by Langlotz-Weis, and Downing wrote on eating-disorder treatment (Downing 2002; its content is not reflected here). [source: Langlotz-Weis 2017; MAK bibliography] Avoid any weight or shape targets, coordinate with medical monitoring, and do not use activating breath work with medically compromised patients. [synthesis]
  • Setting and legal limits. In some settings and jurisdictions touch is restricted or inadvisable. Use the no-touch variants (imagined touch, the client's own hand, cushions or walls). [synthesis]

Sources

Online sources:

Books and papers cited:

  • Downing, G. (1996). Körper und Wort in der Psychotherapie: Leitlinien für die Praxis. Kösel. (Primary text; known here through secondary sources.)
  • Downing, G. (1995). Il corpo e la parola (transl. A. Menzio). Roma: Astrolabio-Ubaldini, 392 pp. (Italian edition; publisher description.)
  • Downing, G. (2000). Emotion theory reconsidered. In M. Wrathall & J. Malpas (Eds.), Heidegger, Coping and Cognitive Science (pp. 245–270). MIT Press.
  • Downing, G. (2002). Zur Behandlung von Essstörungen. Psychoanalyse und Körper, 1(1), 9–36.
  • Downing, G. (2003). Video-Mikroanalyse-Therapie: Einige Grundlagen und Prinzipien. In H. Scheuerer-Englisch, G. J. Suess & W.-K. Pfeifer (Eds.), Wege zur Sicherheit. Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag.
  • Downing, G. (2004). Emotion, body, and parent–infant interaction. In J. Nadel & D. Muir (Eds.), Emotional Development: Recent Research Advances (pp. 429–449). Oxford University Press.
  • Downing, G. (2006). Früher affektiver Austausch und der Körper. In G. Marlock & H. Weiss (Eds.), Handbuch der Körperpsychotherapie. Stuttgart: Schattauer.
  • Wortmann-Fleischer, S., Downing, G. & Hornstein, C. (2006). Postpartale psychische Störungen: Ein interaktionszentrierter Therapieleitfaden. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
  • Downing, G. (2011). Uneasy beginnings: Getting psychotherapy underway with the difficult patient. Self Psychology: European Journal for Psychoanalytic Therapy and Research, 44/45, 207–233.
  • Morlinghaus, K. (2012). Körperorientierte Psychotherapie und Tanztherapie auf der Mutter-Kind-Einheit in Heidelberg. In S. Wortmann-Fleischer, R. von Einsiedel & G. Downing (Eds.), Stationäre Eltern-Kind-Behandlung (pp. 157–161). Kohlhammer.
  • Downing, G., Wortmann-Fleischer, S., von Einsiedel, R., Jordan, W. & Reck, C. (2013). Video Intervention Therapy with parents with a psychiatric disturbance. In K. Brandt, B. Perry, S. Seligman & E. Tronick (Eds.), Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (pp. 261–280). American Psychiatric Publishing.
  • Downing, G. (2015). Early interaction and the body: Clinical implications. In G. Marlock, H. Weiss, C. Young & M. Soth (Eds.), The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology. North Atlantic Books.
  • Downing, G. (2025). Video Intervention Therapy: Help in Psychotherapy for Relationships. Routledge, 210 pp. (Contents page only.)
  • Langlotz-Weis, M. (2019). Körperorientierte Verhaltenstherapie. München: Reinhardt. (Known via the review only.)

Uncertain: Downing's 1996 book, his English body-therapy chapters (2004, 2015) and his BFT description pages are not reflected directly in this guide. So his own step-by-step body procedures, any phase model for the body work, and his original wording remain unverified. Interventions 4.1, 4.4–4.12, 4.18 and 4.19 have synthesised steps, built on the techniques and aims named in the secondary sources. The VIT step structure (4.17) rests only on the contents page of Downing's 2025 book and seminar descriptions.

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