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Somatic Awareness + SFBT Workshop
Practical Skills Workshop

Somatic Awareness + SFBT

Integrating body-based awareness with Solution-Focused Brief Therapy
Experiential Skills-Based Practice-Oriented Clinical Application
01 • Orientation

Learning Outcomes

  • Use grounding and orienting before solution-focused work.
  • Develop flexible attention between internal and external experience.
  • Use somatic observations to deepen SFBT questions.
  • Integrate preferred future, exceptions, coping and scaling with embodied awareness.
  • Recognize and respond to numbness, cognitive over-processing and flooding.
  • Conduct a brief Somatic-SFBT intervention.
02 • Framework

The Somatic-SFBT Learning Cycle

ARRIVE → NOTICE → FOCUS → EVOKE → EXPERIMENT → INTEGRATE

ARRIVE

Establish safety, choice and orientation.

NOTICE

Observe sensations, posture, breath and movement.

FOCUS

Connect embodied observation to the client's language.

EVOKE

Explore preferred futures, exceptions and coping.

EXPERIMENT

Identify a small next action.

INTEGRATE

Translate the experience into practice.
03 • Somatic Foundation

Arrival & Grounding

  • Press both feet into the floor for several seconds.
  • Notice muscular engagement and then release.
  • Notice hands and sit-bones contacting the chair.
  • Scan the environment for colors, textures and light.
  • Notice support from the chair, floor and gravity.
  • Allow attention to orient outward whenever needed.
Practice — 3 minutes
Feet → Chair → Room → Breath → Present moment

Compassionate Self-Holding

  • Identify the emotional state present now.
  • Locate where it is experienced in the body.
  • Place a hand gently over the area if comfortable.
  • Relate to the experience with the attitude of supporting a friend.
“Notice what is here without needing to change it.”
04 • Attention

Attentional Flexibility

Narrow Internal

Focus on one sensation.

Global Internal

Sense the whole body.

External

Notice room, objects and people.

Observing

Create psychological distance.

Integrative

Move fluidly between internal and external cues.
Trainer cue
“Your attention is allowed to move. You do not have to stay inside the sensation.”

Attentional Shift Drill

6-minute practice
  1. Partner A discusses a neutral topic.
  2. Partner B guides narrow internal attention.
  3. Broaden to whole-body awareness.
  4. Orient to the external environment.
  5. Return to integrative attention.
  6. Switch roles.
Debrief: “Which attentional position increased your sense of choice?”
05 • SFBT Integration

Five Solution-Focused Moves

Preferred Future

What would better look like?

Exceptions

When is the problem less powerful?

Coping

How are you managing?

Scaling

Where are you now?

Resources

What or who supports progress?

Somatic Extensions

SFBT Move Somatic Extension
Preferred future “How would you notice in your body that tomorrow is a little better?”
Exception “What did you notice in your posture, breathing or movement when that happened?”
Coping “What tells you physically that you are getting through it?”
Scaling “What tells you that you are at 4 rather than 3?”
Next step “What small action could move you one point forward?”
06 • Language Skills

From “Why?” to Somatic Curiosity

Less Useful More Embodied
“Why are you anxious?” “How do you notice anxiety showing up?”
“What do you feel in your chest?” “Notice what happens in your chest as you say that.”
“What does your anger mean?” “See if you can stay curious about what you notice.”
“Where are you feeling that?” “You might notice where that experience resides.”

Future-Body Mapping

  • Describe the preferred future concretely.
  • Identify what the person would be doing differently.
  • Identify what they might notice in their body.
  • Identify what other people might observe.
  • Identify one small action that could begin the shift.
Three-column reflection
BODY → BEHAVIOR → CONTEXT

Finding Micro-Exceptions

“When was the difficulty even 5% less dominant?”
  • What was happening?
  • What were you doing?
  • What was different in your body?
  • Who or what supported you?
  • How could you recreate a small part of that condition?

Somatic Scaling

  • Use the client's 0–10 scale.
  • Ask: “What makes the number not lower?”
  • Ask: “What would +1 look like?”
  • Ask: “What would your body be doing differently?”
  • Convert +1 into a realistic behavioral experiment.
Formula
Current position → Evidence → +1 → Small action
07 • Clinical Pacing

Titration & Agency

  • Establish explicit permission to pause.
  • Work with small amounts of activation.
  • Return to external orientation or resourcing when needed.
  • Maintain relational companionship.
  • Do not force deeper internal attention.
“As soon as you notice that this is becoming too much, we pause.”

When Somatic Awareness Gets Stuck

Presentation Response
Fast cognition Slow the pace and allow more registration time.
“I feel nothing.” Normalize and explore qualities of “nothing.”
Low sensation Use concrete sensory cues such as hands, feet or neutral objects.
Flooding / fear Pause, orient outward and titrate contact.
Over-focus inward Widen attention toward environment and relationship.
08 • Practice Lab

10-Minute Somatic-SFBT Micro-Session

1 min: Orient & establish choice
2 min: Preferred future
2 min: Somatic marker
2 min: Exception / coping
1 min: Scale +1
1 min: Tiny next step
1 min: Feedback

Observer Checklist

  • Did the practitioner establish choice?
  • Was the pace slow enough?
  • Were questions invitational?
  • Did the practitioner avoid interpreting sensations?
  • Was the conversation solution-focused?
  • Was somatic awareness connected to observable behavior?
  • Was a small next step identified?

Sensory-Motor Loop

MOVEMENT / STIMULUS
↓
PAUSE & SENSE
↓
INTEGRATIVE MOVEMENT
↓
PAUSE & SENSE
  • Introduce a neutral movement or stimulus.
  • Pause and observe how it lands.
  • Allow an organic response.
  • Pause again and notice what changed.

Experience → Skill → Transfer

  • NOTICE: What did you observe?
  • NAME: What skill did you use?
  • LINK: Which SFBT move did it support?
  • CHOOSE: What would you change?
  • TRANSFER: Where can you use this next?
09 • Case Study Practice

Applied Case Studies

Case Study 1 — Anxiety at Work

Client:
“Every time I have to speak in a meeting, I become anxious. I just want to stop feeling this way.”
Step Dialogue Therapist Skill
SFBT Therapist: “Suppose tomorrow’s meeting went a little better. What would you notice yourself doing differently?”

Client: “I’d speak instead of staying quiet.” 		Preferred future
Somatic Therapist: “And as you imagine yourself speaking, what do you notice happening in your body?”

Client: “My chest feels a little more open.” 		Somatic observation
Integration Therapist: “What tells you that your chest is more open? And what might you do in the meeting that would be consistent with that feeling?” Somatic cue → observable behavior
Teaching Point
Begin with the preferred future. Then invite the client to notice the bodily experience of that preferred state. Do not interpret the sensation for the client.

Case Study 2 — Family Conflict

Client:
“Whenever my family argues, I shut down. I don't know how to handle it.”
Step Dialogue Therapist Skill
Exception Therapist: “When was a time recently when the argument happened but you managed to stay present, even for a short time?”

Client: “Last Sunday. I actually stayed at the table.” 		Exception question
Coping Therapist: “What were you doing that helped you stay?”

Client: “I was breathing slowly and keeping my feet on the floor.” 		Existing resource
Somatic Therapist: “As you remember that moment now, what do you notice in your feet or breathing?”

Client: “My feet feel heavier.” 		Somatic tracking
Next Step Therapist: “What might help you recreate even a small part of that experience the next time?” Small behavioral experiment
Teaching Point
Identify an existing exception, discover what the client was already doing, then use somatic awareness to make that resource more observable and repeatable.

Case Study 3 — “I Feel Nothing”

Client:
“I don't feel anything. I just feel empty. Nothing is going to change.”
Step Dialogue Therapist Skill
Scale Therapist: “On a scale from 0–10, where 10 means things are going as you would like, where are you today?”

Client: “Maybe 2.” 		Scaling
Resource Therapist: “What makes it a 2 rather than a 0?”

Client: “I still got out of bed and came here.” 		Evidence of coping
Somatic Therapist: “As you notice that small difference, what do you notice in your body—even if the answer is ‘nothing’?”

Client: “It feels like a heavy blankness.” 		Normalize and explore
Integration Therapist: “Can you notice what that blankness is like without needing to change it?”

“What's one very small movement from 2 to 3 that could happen in your day?” 		Somatic awareness → +1 action
Teaching Point
Do not force the client to “find a feeling.” Normalize “nothingness” and explore its qualitative properties without imposing an interpretation.
10 • Closing

The 60-Second Somatic-SFBT Protocol

1. ORIENT
Look around.
2. NOTICE
What do you notice in your body?
3. SOLUTION
What would +1 look like?
4. EXCEPTION
When has that happened?
5. SCALE
Where are you now?
6. STEP
What tiny action comes next?

Final Integration Practice

Facilitator instruction
Have participants work in pairs. One person is the client, one is the therapist. The therapist must use at least one preferred-future question, one exception or scaling question, and one somatic observation question.
Experience → Awareness → Choice → Small Action
Somatic Awareness + SFBT Workshop