This article outlines a synthesis of the principles and basic movement patterns of Aikido, a modern Japanese martial art, and systemic sculpture work as applied in family therapy. Both are systems for dealing with conflict, seemingly in very divergent fields.

I have been developing the following concepts and practical applications over many years in my work as an therapist in individual and group settings, a supervisor with health care professionals, and of course, as a student and teacher of Aikido. My journey to this point was anything other than a standard career as a clinical psychologist. I hope that, through the case studies and anecdotes provided, the reader finds his/her way to both an intellectual understanding of and an emotional connection to a written description of what I normally present in experiential trainings and workshops lasting from two to five days.

A “therapeutic” battle…

I started working with people in a therapeutic context over 25 years ago while I was attending a program for my master’s degree in counselling psychology. At that time I was doing 24 hour shifts in a halfway-house in southern California, a few miles from the Mexican border. It was actually an outstation for the psychiatric hospital in downtown San Diego, the residents a colourful mix of older street alcoholics, younger people from middle class backgrounds who had been pushed over the edge from psychedelic-drug overdoses, and garden variety paranoid schizophrenics. Some were coherent, some not, all were heavily medicated.

One guy was a burned-out Hell’s Angels type with a permanent mean and bleary-eyed glare, named Ron. He would stomp around the complex, a shabby former motel in the classic “U”-form, kicking up dust with his worn out boots. He only seemed to light up when he got a chance to provoke one of his weaker fellow residents, and his favourite victim was a squat Chicano man named Alphonse, whose paranoid hallucinations were complicated by epileptic attacks. One of my first weekend shifts, in which I was alone with about 50 residents (California in those days was considered a model in forward-thinking psychiatric health care!) I came into the day room to find the two of them going at it. Alphonse was literally foaming at the mouth, his tormentor laughing and swatting him on the back of his head, dancing lightly away when his prey would launch a flailing, stumbling attack. In my innocence I stepped between them, yelled at the bully Ron to go outside and tried to hold and soothe Alphonse, which earned me a bite on the finger and a shredded T-shirt. As I let go of him he ran out of the room into the courtyard, where his more agile opponent slugged him again, eliciting a scream of anger and pain. I was getting desperate to get this situation under control; my adrenaline level was up in the stratosphere. I knew one or both of them would have to be hospitalized, and I had already sent one of the more lucid residents to call the clinic.

My only plan was to try to keep the two of them apart until help arrived, at the same time I wasn’t eager to get bitten or god knew what else. In the meantime Alphonse, becoming increasingly apoplectic, had pulled off his belt and was trying to whip Ron with the heavy buckle. I grabbed the nearest thing that seemed at all applicable in the situation, a long-handled mop, still somewhat damp, reeking of mildew and disinfectant. I poked and jabbed at Alphonse, who had shifted into the slow burn of a bull just before the charge, so he would go after me instead of Ron (who backed off to watch the fun). The scheme worked in a way, except that Alphonse got so frustrated that he used his belt buckle to slam a few holes in the hood of my car. In our circling dance we had arrived in the parking lot. Fortunately it was a beat-up old Ford, so the damage was hardly noticeable. When the police arrived we were both standing there panting, me with a bleeding finger and ripped shirt, holding the mop in front of me like a cattle prod, Alphonse with his belt dangling at his side, eyes bulging. The cops climb out of their patrol car, assess the situation, and one asks: “So, who is the patient?”

I don’t remember exactly what happened next, except I do remember laughing. More than any other reason I suspect that is why I didn’t end up spending the night in the locked psychiatric ward …

After that “kick-off” for my career as psychologist and psychotherapist, I was prepared for almost anything. Since then I’ve never had such a dramatic encounter in my therapy practice or my work as a trainer and supervisor in various clinical and organisational settings. But still an element of often intense conflict and encounter recurs, certainly not constantly, but again and again as clients and group members feel their needs are not being met or we are not properly understanding their situation (as was obviously the case with Alphonse).

The Essence of Conflict: Ambivalence and Multi-valence

On an energetic level we understand conflict as a situation where two forces are colliding or trying to move apart in diametrically opposed directions. In the human arena, however, conflict starts on the intrapersonal level. When you say “white” and I respond with “black”, then I have made a choice, and that occurred within me. I felt something in response to your “white” and chose, maybe not so consciously, to move against it. At least in theory I could give in and let you have your way. In fact in most cases I could just say “OK! You win! It doesn’t really matter.” Seldom are the issues over which we battle matters of life and death.

This means simply that all conflict begins with inner conflict, so called ambivalence, which suggests the physical model described above happening inside our bodies. Naturally humans are complex beings, so often we have inside our heads (Shakespearean would say in our breast) many competing voices and urges all demanding attention. The essential challenge for the individual in a perceived conflict situation, is to become aware of his/her own inner conflict(s), resolve these first and then go on from a literally new, clarified position or “standpoint” to deal with whatever the external situation is presenting. In theory simple, but of course, putting that into practice is not. In my work with groups and individuals, I have seen over and over again that once people do the admittedly difficult work and achieve an inner resolution, the outer work is at least half done. The outer problems, if not directly solved, can be dealt with much more easily. We solve problem with increased grace and ease when we are relaxed, and relaxation can be described as a state of resolved inner tension.

I believe all therapists/helpers start out with ambivalent feelings about what they are doing. They want to help and feel positive about this intention, and at the same time they are somewhat afraid and uncertain, with good reason. There are a lot of unknown variables when working with individuals seeking help, and these factors can increase geometrically when dealing with a group or team. Unfortunately what often happens is that the helper, in trying to protect himself and deal with conflicting feelings, walls himself off behind a veneer of “professionalism” that too often separates him from the people he wants to help.

In my search to resolve my own inner conflict of wanting to help others, but at the same time being afraid of them as well as being afraid of doing something wrong, I turned to practicing meditation and visualisation before my work with clients and groups. Sometimes though, I was wearing a mask of peacefulness while on the inside I was still nervous and trying to hide it. As if the people sitting across from me didn’t notice! This kind of protective wall can be in itself more hindering than helpful. I felt intuitively that something was missing, though I couldn’t then say what that something was.

Aikido

In the early 80s I attended a weekend course about family communication in the countryside north of LA. It was a mixed group of professionals and lay people, and a mixed curriculum of mainstream family therapy, communication exercises and a dose of new age spirituality. Somewhere in the middle of the workshop, the trainer cleared an area and introduced a friend of his who came out wearing a white judo jacket and a black long skirt. I remember thinking, “what is this (or he) supposed to be?”

This new guest was an Aikido-sensei, or teacher; what he demonstrated with a few of his students was totally fascinating and new for me. The sensei would let himself get attacked in various ways by his students, sometimes they would throw punches or kicks, try to grab him or even hit or stab him with a broom handle. Each time he would, seemingly without strain or apparent effort, disarm his attacker and bring him under control. A major difference to other martial arts that I had experienced or seen in films was that there was no hitting, kicking or other kinds of intimidation, humiliation or defeat imposed on the “aggressor”. As the demonstration went on, it looked more and more like a fun dance, the spectators and the participants were smiling and laughing. The Aikido teacher explained that his goal was to blend with his “apparent” attacker, become one with him and find a way at the physical level to transform the “apparent“ conflict situation to one of togetherness and harmony. He kept using the word “apparent”, because, he said, an attack is merely a matter of perspective. We can also perceive a thrown punch as a gift of energy, provided we are relaxed and awake enough to “receive” the gift in an appropriate manner. We were encouraged to try out a few simple movement patterns, and also to experiment verbally with responses to apparent verbal attacks, responses that include the attacker and offer possibility of unity.

This experience motivated me to try out Aikido in my home area. I began training regularly in the mid 80s. At some point along the way, I noticed something was changing for me in my work as a therapist and group leader. It is not easy to put in words exactly what that difference is, but if I had to pick a single word to describe the change, then it would be “safety”. I was feeling more relaxed, at the same time more engaged with the people coming to me. My sense of involvement grew. I noticed that I enjoyed challenging their assumptions, and it seemed I could feel when they were “asking for it”, wanting to be called for some inconsistencies or just plain nonsense. The work became more fun for me and I am sure for my clients and groups as well. I felt more alive and in flow with them.

I believe this comes from learning to deal with confrontation on a regular, physical basis on the mat, and that this practice translates in time to the psyche.

Sheldon Kopp, at the very beginning of his bestseller, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”, uses the metaphor of being (sometimes) in a kind of Judo match with his clients when they come in for therapy. He writes about having to be awake, agile and in skilled in psychic self-defence in order to avoid getting caught in their mind games.

Kopp’s comparison of psychotherapy to Judo has some similarities with the Aikido-therapy synthesis, but what he describes has a somewhat cold and defensive ring to it. If successful, he has managed not to get “caught”. As with my attempts to protect and calm myself with meditation, the therapist may feel better, but there is no enhanced connection to the client.

In Aikido we are actively seeking to join or entrain with our partner. It is a warm, connecting encounter that allows the other to change and move. In the therapeutic setting, the therapist is moving with the client, and can feel, detect course changes immediately and respond in the interest of the client, himself and their relationship. This can mean slowing down the process, guiding in a new direction etc. This parallels with the activities “pacing and leading” as described by Bandler and Grinder in their early NLP work.

Systemic Sculpture Work with Groups and Families

Sculpture work with families was first made popular by the American family therapist, Virginia Satir in the 1960s and 70s. The principles are quite simple: Couples and families were asked to build a human sculpture using themselves as the raw material, the clay. The sculpture should reflect how the people saw themselves in relationship to one another. The families were instructed to use gestures such as pointing, looking away, kneeling or crouching, protective postures etc. to demonstrate what they perceived as the prevailing mood and hierarchy in their family system. Often differing sculptures would emerge, and a learning process occurred in the act of finding a solution that included all the family members’ perceptions. The resulting plastic, three-dimensional product was (and is still) an extremely useful tool to help family members understand each other and find ways to change together in positive ways.

Sculpture work has the added benefit of helping people become more aware of their emotions and physicality. It supports them in learning to trust their bodies and feelings as instruments that can give them useful information about our situation and our inner life.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Bert Hellinger, an Austrian psychotherapist, added a fresh wind to this procedure in that he started using non-family members, for example group members, as his raw material, and only one actually involved participant would then make his or her sculpture out of these strangers. Both surprising and moving was the discovery that the sculpture participants, knowing only little or even nothing about the problem situation being dramatized, would often report emotional and bodily responses in their assigned positions that accurately paralleled the experience of the Real people involved.

As I began doing psychological supervision with teams of health professionals in the early 90s, I found this form of dynamic problem montage could often bring a new perspective into problem situations that had been not solvable through normal discourse and analysis. The Ps could more readily laugh at themselves and their situations, and an unconscious learning, a willingness to try out new possibilities using a physical awareness not previously available.

My first lesson in therapeutic sculpture happened, as is so often the case, in an unusual setting. I didn’t recognize its value for months, if not years.

…. I am sitting at the feet of the guru, and it is a great honor to be here. I have been chosen…It is December, 1982, in Puri, southwest India. This afternoon the air is hot, sticky, and motionless. Everyone is sweating freely, the women wrapped in Saris, the men in baggy pants and loose fitting cotton shirts. The shaded veranda should be a little cooler than the glaring sunlight on the gravel drive, but the devotees crowding around us, pressing forward and craning to see the spectacle ,babbling and laughing, exude a pungent, palpable mist that robs any possible feeling of relief or refrigeration. The Guru has instructed me to demonstrate my “healing powers”. Somewhere along the way I was foolish enough to mention that I do breathing therapy with my clients in Germany, and now I am supposed to show him! Lying on his back is my “subject”, a most reluctant Indian man, large in height and girth even by western standards, with heavy rimmed glasses with lenses like the bottom of coke bottles. He won’t take them off even though he’s supposed to keep his eyes closed, and now and then he sneaks a sideways peek in my direction. He has a reputation for disliking people from the west and makes no effort to disguise his discomfort. His respect for (and fear of invoking the wrath of) our Baba is stronger than his revulsion and humiliation. Of course he doesn’t speak English, I have no skills in Hindi or Urdu or whatever his language is, so all my finely tuned therapeutic instructions ( “breathe deep…relaaax on the exhale….let go of your body---surrennnnnder to gravity….”) are being translated by one of the Indian men who speaks a little English, and that is a generous estimate. He mostly wobbles his head with a big grin every time I ask him if my instructions are reaching the “patient” with any degree of accuracy. I am feeling cramped, my field of vision and overall awareness shrinking, my own breathing shallow and strained. If I could only shut that all out and do a good job!

After what was probably about 5 minutes of this struggle, but which seemed like an hour to me, our Baba breaks it off, strands up, frowns and shakes his head with a loud

“No good!”

He sweeps off the veranda followed by most of the entourage. I am dumbfounded and near paralysis. What had happened? We shouldn’t stop now, we had hardly gotten started. I knew I had somehow messed things up, but I wasn’t sure how or what to do next…

Like I said before, I don’t know exactly when, but sometime later I realized he was telling me with a physical picture, a warm human “sculpture” experience, that to do good healing work with others, I needed to make sure my setting, my subject and myself all fit together. Even if the “Guru” says go, I have to learn to trust my god-given senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch etc as well as plain old common sense. If I had just paid a little more attention to my gut reaction and listened less to the voices in my head, I would have probably recognized how ridiculous (and ridiculously funny) the situation was.

A beginner’s guide to practical Taoism…or How Aikido enhances sculpture work

Recently in a supervision group of family therapists, one woman was reporting on her work with a couple that had recently separated and the ensuing custody fight over their nine year old son. It was fairly evident from how the therapist was describing the interactions that she had a biased stance, and she even admitted that when her colleagues gave her that feedback. The intellectual understanding didn’t seem to help her much though. At one point in her narration she said, “ I’d really like to set this guy straight, just tell him to back off and stop harassing his wife,…“ Before she could go on I interrupted her with “Wait, show us that!” At first she was confused, so I asked her if she would be willing to make a 3 dimensional picture of what she was describing. She picked out 4 “actors”, i.e. one for each of the family members and one portraying her self. Then she moved them around so they represented this scene where she is giving this father a piece of her mind. We saw the mother and son standing next to each other, the father is standing across from them, and the substitute therapist is standing between the two parties, facing the father with her arms extended in front of her and her palms raised in his direction. The therapist forming the sculpture instructed the “father” to act like he was reading from and writing on a note pad, the “mother “was arranged in a fighting stance, left hand balled in a fist and right had help up with the index finger extended. The “son” just stood there observing.

Then I asked the players to just feel their bodies, notice tensions or discomfort, and report on these feelings and accompanying thoughts:

-The “son” said he felt lonely and a little sad, not really connected to what was going on.

-The “mother” said she felt like fighting, but underneath she felt scared and further uncertain because she couldn’t really see her ex-husband.

-The “father” reported that he was so busy defending himself and discounting the “therapist”, by ticking off facts from his note pad, he hardly felt his body and had very little awareness of the other “family members”.

-The “Therapist” said she was aware of anger and tension in her body, at the same felt uneasy about not being able to see the “mother” and “son”.

Our “artist”, when looking at her work, saw immediately, as did the rest of the group, that from her position in the sculpture it was impossible for her to help that family.

She was astounded at the intensity of her feelings in the situation, knew she was following some personal inner agenda, but couldn’t say what that was.

I asked her to go stand in her place in the sculpture, and when she was there for a few moments, standing in the blocking pose with arms outstretched, I asked her if that position felt familiar. After about 2 seconds her face lit up and she said “ I know what this is about” and went on to describe the fights she had with her own father when she was a teenager. The whole process took perhaps a half an hour. Her body knew the answers. From the moment she clearly felt and saw the cause of her reactions, she could relax and move out of the way.

In stepping aside and just being there for the family, the other participants noticed they too immediately were freed to look around and also experience a complexity of thoughts and feelings about their situation. In the safety of a third person whose role was to assist and guide and not take sides in the fight, the participants reported the following:

The “son” said he felt no longer sad, but rather curious about what would happen next;

The “mother” said she still wanted to fight it out with her “ex”, but that she felt safer, and more confident of a positive outcome;

The “father” remarked that he could no longer use his note pad as a defence, and like his son, his curiosity was aroused. (1.footnote)

The development illustrated in this sculpture work demonstrates one of the basic principles of Aikido, namely: Get Out Of The Way!

To control a force moving in your direction, especially a strong one, the first step is not to tense up and try to block it (you might just get mowed down!) but rather to first step aside, and then learn to connect and move with it. But to be able to do all that you have start from a place of relaxed aware inner calm.

Centering –

A second equally important tenet in martial arts is to stay centred, both physically and emotionally. This means maintaining a flexible, dynamic balance, even or especially when the events and people around us are getting chaotic and unpredictable. This of course takes a lot of practice to reprogram our organism to stay calm and move elegantly and appropriately in reaction to stress. This is also a prerequisite in doing group work. In sculpture exercises it is absolutely necessary for the facilitator to be operating from a calm receptive center, perhaps comparable to the eye of the storm. Only in this state is it possible for him or her to have all receptors open and respond fittingly to the whole visual, auditory, tangible and sometimes even olfactory palette being presented.

We often start Aikido training with the following exercise: Either standing or kneeling, we hold our hands in front of our bellies, shoulders relaxed, palms facing inwards. With a long, slow inhale we let the hands and arms rise up and apart, imaging that the movement is happening by itself. The image can be of strings attached to the backs of the hands, and the hands being pulled like those of a marionette. Or, and I prefer this image, a ball of energy, like an expanding balloon, is pushing the hands and arms apart. If you try this four our five times, and then intentionally raise and lower your arms using muscle power, you will probably notice a difference. In the first case most people experience their arms as light and the motion as practically effortless. In the second, the arms are felt as being more solid and heavy the experience is more one of working or exertion.

Actually in this simple exercise demonstrates two basic principles of Taoism.

The first is that everything comes out of nothing.

The second is that the universe happens without our trying. (Ref. Laura Perls’ “Don’t Push the River”)

Related to principle number one, atomic physics showed us that most of material existence consists at least at the atomic level as empty space. Solidity is an illusion. Everything is moving all the time.

To point two: Life happens, worlds evolve and disappear. We are just a part of this huge movement. Our little beings don’t have much influence on the big plan. So why worry so much, everything is happening anyway.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t participate; of course we need to be involved with our lives. It’s just that more we try, and let ourselves get caught up in effortful ness and struggling to make things go the way we think they should, the more we block life’s energy and the less can happen. When we trust the flow we allow space, the state of being that comes out of nothingness, and then things can happen on their own. When the melodic voice of our new found love calls us from across the street, we turn our heads, our whole bodies move flowingly without thinking or trying. It just happens.

I compare this difference between stuck-ness and flowing-ness, to stone and water. Water doesn’t fight with the resistance it meets along its way; it just flows around the boulders. And with time the boulders wear down.

As a preparation for sculpture work I will often ask participants to take a few minutes and get the feeling of flowing through the exercise above. Starting out of this feeling of empowered lightness, they become quite sensitized to the blocked energy, struggle and tension that characteristically emerge in sculpture work as a problem situation is given a physical form. 

In another example, a social worker was trying to help a single mother deal with her wayward and precocious 14 year old daughter. The girl was cutting classes in school, staying out past her curfew to hang out with a group of older teens of whom the mother did not approve, and basically ignoring and/or resisting her mother’s efforts to set limits. The social worker said the mother acted helpless and depressed when she would tell of her troubles with her daughter. She said “ I feel so sorry for her, I wish I could help her.” The social worker said her efforts to influence the daughter to be more considerate and obedient had up to that point produced minimal results. We asked the social worker to make a model of her relationship to this family and the sculpture looked like this:

The “mother” has her arms folded across her belly and is looking at the floor;

The “daughter” is standing across from her “mother”, her arms are folded across her chest, her body turned somewhat away, and she is looking away over her shoulder;

The “social worker” is standing next to the “mother”, looking at the “daughter”, with one arm on the “mothers’” shoulder, the other arm outstretched with the palm up in the direction of the “daughter”. Her upper body is also leaning slightly in the “daughter’s” direction.

The “daughter” said her defiance was even increased when she saw this woman ganging up with her mother against her;

The “mother” said she didn’t notice much, the hand on her shoulder was indeed nice, but otherwise she was too preoccupied with her worries.

Interestingly, when I asked the colleague playing the social worker how she felt, she complained of lower back pains and said the whole situation felt burdensome. However,

her colleague, the woman who was actually working with the family, reported feeling fine when she stepped into her position! I asked her what she meant and she said she “felt” she needed to be there, that she “should” help the poor woman. It took a while to get her to differentiate between what she thought was right and what her body was actually feeling, (Just like the author at the feet of the master!) When she did start tuning in to what her body was telling her, she had to admit she felt somewhat uncomfortable. She didn’t know where or how she “should” stand (another symptom of trying to solve problems with the head alone) so I suggested she move around the room and pay attention to her body, and to any changes or reactions she notices in the other two participants. When she got to place a little back from and between the “mother” and “daughter”, she said “I can stay here, this is OK”.

We all noticed that the “daughter” was no longer looking away, but sneaking peeks at

the “social worker” out of the corner of her eye. Her shoulder also had moved somewhat in the direction of her “mother” and the “social worker”, she still felt resistant, but was also a little interested in what would happen next. The “mother” had raised her head slightly and was looking back and forth between the “social worker” and her “daughter”. She said she felt a little more alive, and was vacillating between a budding curiosity and remaining sceptical.

Footnote:

A further interesting aspect emerged through this work: When the therapist stood in the circle between son and father,(picture a) the mother reported feeling somewhat left alone and defenceless. When the “therapist” then stood between “mother” and ”father“, (picture b)the mother felt better, but then the son said he didn’t like that so much, preferring the therapist next to him. The ensuing discussion revealed that the actual therapist perceived all the members of the family as being quite needy, and recognized through the sculpture that perhaps the job was just too big for a single therapist to handle. The session ended with the therapist asking one of her male colleagues if he would be available to do co-therapy with her and the family

Picture a	Picture b

Summary

When we practice or observe Aikido at its best, we don’t see some great martial artist defeating, annihilating his opponents, who then lay crushed and immobile on the ground. Rather we witness an open give and take, a flowing together, going apart, connecting and disconnecting. Sometimes someone falls or rolls on the ground, only to continue the

motion back to her feet and again connect to the other(s). Even when one person is controlling another in a grip or lock, the purpose is not to hurt the other, and if done right, the effect is more like a stretching and massage exercise, rather than a punishment.

This is paralleled in the work integrating aikido body and energy awareness into sculpture work. The participants gain a physical knowledge of when a relationship allows the parties involved to move and change together, and when this is blocked.

The most fascinating aspect of this work is its simplicity. It simply works. In almost every situation where I have experimented with this model, the participants could easily get into their body sensations, playing the parts of total strangers and having physical and emotional responses to their assigned roles. The ineffective positioning of the participants becomes instantly evident; possible alternatives offering enhanced options evolve naturally. The participants often report that they prefer this kind of work to intellectual analysis, which may result in understanding but often offers no way

out of presenting problems. Members of my supervision groups often report further that after a sculpture session, things start moving in a more efficacious direction in their work with the portrayed clients, groups and families.

Of course there are no magical solution being presented here, but the working conditions, the atmosphere in which change can happen has been enhanced enormously. We could say stone has changed to water. And that is Aikido, transforming a stuck and contrary encounter to one where situations, emotions, and people can come into the flow.

Basic Principles–Starting Requirements – Ground of Being

Aikido 

1. Establish Dynamic Inner Balance 
2. Opening to and Meeting Partner
3. Blending With Partner 
4. Take Control of Flow
5. Direct Flow to Most Beneficial Outcome 

Systemic Sculpture Work

1. Conflict Description
2. Visualization
3. Sculpture Development
4. Participants Feedback
5. Development of New Enhanced Positions

May 2004, Hünfelden, Germany

Suggested reading:

- The Tree of Knowledge; Humberto Maturana und Francsico Varela; Shambala, 1992

- Changing with Families; Richard Bandler, John Grinder und Virginia Satir; Science and Behavior Books; 1976

- Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Gregory Bateson; Chandler Publishing; 1972

- How Can I Help; Ram Dass and Paul Gorman; Alfred A. Knopf, 1985

- Aikido in Everyday Life. Giving in to Get Your Way; Terry Dobson and Victor Miller; Berkeley, Cal. 1993,

- Abundant Peace: The Biography of Morihei Ueshiba, Founder of Aikido; John Stevens; Shambala Publications, 1991

- Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing; John O. Stevens; Eden Grove Editions, 1989

For those who can read German:

- Zweierlei Glück; Bert Hellinger und Gunthard Weber; Carl Auer Verlag, 1992

David Sikora, M.A. Psych.	Langgasse 27 65597 Hünfelden Germany	Tel. 0049-6438-921537 e-mail: catsujinken@gmx.de Website: www. praxis-sikora.de
	I was born in NYC in 1950, attended the City University of New York, (BA 1973) and Goddard College in conjunction with the San Diego Institute for Transactional Analysis (M.A. Counselling Psychology 1978). I have been living in Germany since 1984, and my postgraduate training includes Gestalt therapy, NLP, systemic family therapy, Lomi Body Work, and clinical hypnosis after Milton Erickson. I have a private practice for psychotherapy and family counselling in my home, and also work as a psychological supervisor and trainer in various private and public health and educational institutions. I have been practicing Aikido since 1986 and teach in my own dojo in Limburg, Germany.