Healing traumas with your body as a resonating instrument

Using IMS as psychosomatic movement therapy

Do restlessness and persistent tension in your body, your head or heart limit you in your daily life? Do you (regularly) feel that you have lost the connection with yourself. Do you suffer from fears, gloomy thoughts, burn-out or depression? Please know that the IMS movement method can also be effectively used as psychosomatic movement therapy.

Many physical complaints are caused by unprocessed emotions that block and hold tension in your body. By consciously listening to your body, following the movement impulses and expressing what is going on inside you, you can restore your natural balance from the inside out.

Is it for you? When to use IMS in a therapeutic context

IMS can be used as psychosomatic movement therapy when you want to improve your quality of life, when you are not feeling well, when you want to reconnect with yourself and/or when you are mentally hindered by unpleasant past events, however big or small. For example, if you have mental health issues because of a concrete trauma, but also for more general feelings of depression or anxiety and psychosomatic issues such as headaches, migraines, dizziness or balance disorders. To clarify: ‘psychosomatic’ means, that there are physical manifestations of psychological symptoms, for which physical examination has not provided a clear physical cause or explanation and regular treatments do not provide sufficient improvement. This is also called SOLK: Somatically Inadequately Explained Physical Complaints. What’s more, post-Covid patients and patients with NAH (Non-congenital Brain Injury) can benefit from IMS, too.

Should you wonder: IMS is suitable for everyone. Its effectiveness does not depend on your verbal, rational or physical talents or aptness.

If your body could speak, what would it say right now?

More about trauma and PTSD

A traumatic experience can be described as an event or series of events, for which one was not prepared and which was too sudden, too fast or too big, to allow for an adequate reaction at that moment. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD (PTSS in Dutch) occurs more often than you might think. As a psychological disorder is nothing more than a (delayed) reaction to one or more traumatic experiences that have not been properly processed. As they happen, these events invoke an enormous amount of energy to either fight or flee. This energy then nests itself in a ‘frozen’ state in the body, particularly in the autonomic nervous system. This causes the nervous system to become overwhelmed as it were. This blocks the natural recovery process and creates a disruption of body perception (and thus the perception of/connection with the natural Self).

PTSD can manifest as:

  • Anxiety, panic, palpitations, shallow breathing, excessive alertness or irritability, restlessness, insomnia

  • Depression, exhaustion, feeling of helplessness or powerlessness, loss of muscle strength

  • Dissociation: feeling that (part of) your body is not yours, limited spectrum of feelings

  • Denial: the trauma did not happen or is not important

How does IMS work as psychosomatic movement therapy?

Especially in the processing of trauma, it is very important to involve your body as an instrument for healing. With IMS you learn to recognize the traumatic tension stuck in your system by means of Grounding, Sound-Breathing (vocalization) and Movement, as well as discharge this tension in a gentle manner: since you let your natural, intrinsic movement speak for itself, it will never feel like being “too much” or overwhelming.

 

Central to the therapy is the experience felt in the body, the ‘felt sense’ or the awareness of physical sensations and impulses. By becoming aware of, for example, warmth, reddening, pallor, tingling, goose bumps, faster or slower heart rate or breathing and/or easing or stiffening of the muscles, you create the possibility to unload and step by step you get back to full movement.

As with ‘regular’ IMS sessions, we tune each therapy session to what you experience and need in the here and now, with me as your witness and your coach. At the beginning and end of each movement session, we ask the question, “If your body could speak, what would it say right now?” You will find that your answer to that question is the key to putting the way you experience your body into words. In this way you gradually learn to understand your own body language, to recognize your traumas and to (re)activate the self-regulating and self-healing system of your body.

 

Restore your natural balance from the inside out

(Re)activate the self-regulating and self-healing system of your body

Recconect with yourself and improve your quality of life

What my clients say

“During the sessions I feel an inner music, which I cannot hear yet, but I know it is there and I can move with it. That feels like coming home to my heart: it is who I am and where I come from. That’s how I get to know my body and how my body gets to know me. For the record: this goes beyond the physical body.”

 

“Moving from grounding feels especially solid to me, very rich. New, and at the same time very much in the now. As mine as an adult but also as something I know from my early years. A kind of reliving, of returning to the basics, to which I may give my full attention.”
 

“Romanie encouraged me to use my body as an instrument with sounds and noises. That felt a bit awkward at first, but I have experienced how it helps me: as if my body wakes up to give itself what it needs, embraces itself and may enjoy its voice again. Romanie is a kind of amplifier in this process. From her own sound she encouraged me to create and experience my own sound. Now I dare to trust that more. IMS works very subtly in everything. My body experiences happiness and the sounds now come naturally: it wants to sing and knows its own song now!”

 

“Now, I mainly move, or rather dance, to my inner music: with IMS I experienced how good it feels to dance from within. Of course, putting on music and dancing can also be fun. But if I really want to give my body what it needs, what I subconsciously ask for, then I need music that you don’t hear on the outside but rather feel on the inside. Dancing on a dance floor, thanks to IMS, for me now comes from an intrinsic movement, from contact with my own song, own grounding, own feeling of home. Without IMS, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“With IMS I learned to trust my body and therefore myself: I now let my body speak. The stories my body tells are always true and are never stuck to a structure. At the same time, I am now ‘firmly grounded’ when I move. I used to tremble, I could not tell my story well, I found it difficult to cycle through certain parts of the city. As I now move from a sense of being grounded all of that goes much easier: I can now access my source better. I can discharge and regulate tension energy and vibrations much better. I also experience more connection with nature wherever I am.”

 

IMS-session

€85,-
  • Individual sessionsof 1 hour in my practice in Rotterdam
  • Working according to the 3 principles of the IMS method
  • Support by phone according to your wishes and needs
  • Check your insurance for possible reimbursement

Plan your session

Yes, that's what I want

Location and duration

Circumstances of health and safety aside, we will typically work together in my studio in Rotterdam. If you are not able to visit my studio because of physical or other limitations, you can also choose an online set up.

And although no person, no goal and no process are ever exactly the same, most individual programmes take about 10 sessions of 60 minutes.