Join our new Live Master Practitioner Webinar Series

featuring the chapter authors from Experiential Therapies for Treating Trauma,

(Routledge Press 2024, Senreich, Straussner & Dann)

The Experiential Psychotherapy Institute also makes learning easy with video tutorials!

Take me to…

3 ways to participate:

Goals of the Experiential Psychotherapy Institute:

• to increase awareness of experiential psychotherapy among the worldwide community of therapists and coaches

• to cross-pollinate ideas and techniques between practitioners of like-minded experiential schools

• to introduce experiential modalities and techniques to practitioners who have not worked experientially before

• to direct practitioners towards in-person trainings through the official organizations representing each school.

Which therapies are included:

A range of experiential psychotherapies fit the criteria for inclusion on this site.  In fact, there are so many amazing experiential schools that there will are likely to always be more that are not represented here than those that are. The list of included therapies will continue to grow as additional schools of therapy are brought to our attention and as new ones are developed.  

We will constantly seek out additional video tutorials on each experiential school but if you are aware of video resources that you feel should included for a particular therapy, please contact us and let us know.

What’s an Experiential Therapy?

The therapies highlighted on our site all share the following 5 characteristics:

1. Experiential - Meaning these therapies don't just talk cognitively or intellectually about a client's presenting symptom.  They attempt to access implicit knowings or meanings about self or the world that are held in different parts of the mind than just the prefrontal cortex.

2. Mindful - each of these therapies encourages the client to bring mindful attention to aspects of their experience in the present moment

3. Noninterpretive - the therapist doesn't take the role of interpreter of the client's experience, rather guides the client to recognize meanings, knowings and patterns on their own

4. Non-counteractive - the therapist doesn't suggest counteractive solutions designed to push back against the client's presenting symptoms (ie: "if you're depressed, why don't you schedule a pleasurable activity each day?")

5. Warm and relational - all of the above create a warm, relational field that generally has the effect of helping the client feel attuned to, validated, reflected, held, understood

Why work experientially?

There is a very particular, almost magical moment in any experiential psychotherapy session when we stop talking about our clients’ issues and take the leap into actively guiding them through an experience to help them explore their situation in a new way. That may take the form of prompting them to visualize a relevant situation, to speak something important out loud, or perhaps…

Why video tutorials?

Although each contributor to this site specializes in particular forms of experiential psychotherapy, we find that nothing deepens and enriches our work more than studying the theories and techniques of other schools. Any time we watch a video — whether a didactic training, a demo session, or an interview with an expert — it invariably brings…