Somatic Psychology, PhD

CIIS’ Somatic Psychology Ph.D. is a unique online doctoral program that approaches psychology from the lived experience of being human, while incorporating scientific rigor in building a more insightful, effective psychology of the living person. Students explore the implications for understanding human complexities that emerge from serious, prolonged cultivation of direct bodily experience: breathing, touching, sensing, moving.

Somatic Psychology is at the heart of mind-body research, and on the frontier of exploration into embodied consciousness. Here the living body is the seat of consciousness and mind is the intelligence of the whole embodied person, woven from and into the fabric of a vibrant world. Whole-person psychologies expand the horizons of psychology to include the body’s ways of knowing and moving as an expression of the interconnected living, breathing systems of community, society, and world. From this perspective, it becomes possible to ask new and compelling research questions that lie close to the heart of what it is to be human. The future of whole person psychology lies in what the body knows.

The Somatic Psychology Phd. focuses on research and systematic, scientific knowledge building. The program aims to make early inroads into investigating the results of somatic practices for various improvements in human consciousness and the wellbeing of individuals and communities. We invite our students to recognize that research in somatic psychology is entering a pioneering phase, where their work will be to challenge the difficulties of initial research and develop new methods.