You don’t have to love everything your partner loves. But it can mean a great deal when you make an effort to understand.

Suppose your partner is passionate about baseball, while you couldn’t care less about sports. You might listen politely when they talk about a game, but you don’t really understand what they’re saying. After a while, you might stop asking.

Now imagine you learn the names of a few favorite players. You understand why a particular rivalry matters. You even remember that there’s a big game coming up and ask how it went.

You haven’t necessarily become a baseball fan. But you’ve communicated something important: I care enough about you to learn a little about something that matters to you.

And that can be a surprisingly meaningful expression of love.

Curiosity Is a Wonderful Beginning

In couples therapy, we often encourage partners to become more curious about one another.

Rather than assuming we already understand what our partner thinks or feels, we can ask questions. We can listen with genuine interest. We can try to understand experiences that are different from our own.

But curiosity becomes even more powerful when we follow through.

If your partner loves gardening, you might learn the names of a few favorite flowers. If they’re fascinated by history, you might become familiar with a period they especially enjoy. If they practice yoga, you might learn what they find rewarding about it.

As we become more familiar with your partner’s world, it becomes easier to be curious about it. We can ask better questions, appreciate new developments, and sometimes even discover that we enjoy aspects of it ourselves.

Building “Love Maps”

Couples researchers John and Julie Gottman popularized the idea of Love Maps: the knowledge we develop about our partner’s inner world.

A Love Map includes the important people in our partner’s life, their hopes and dreams, their worries, their favorite activities, and the experiences that have shaped them.

The Gottmans have even developed Love Map cards, with questions designed to help partners continue learning about each other.

I particularly like the idea that these maps are never finished. People change. Their interests evolve. New concerns and aspirations emerge.

The better we know someone, the more opportunities we have to show them they matter.

We can also extend the Love Map idea beyond knowing what interests our partner to understanding something about those interests.

Knowing that your spouse loves classical music is a beginning. Learning which composers move them, and perhaps listening together to a favorite piece, can create another opportunity for connection.

A Little Effort Can Mean a Lot

Of course, none of this should become another obligation or test in a relationship. Time is limited, and it’s perfectly healthy for partners to pursue interests independently or share them with friends. The goal isn’t to become involved in everything our partner does.

Instead, take small, occasional steps into their world.

You might ask your partner to explain something you’ve never understood. Read a short article about a subject they love. Watch part of a program together. Or remember something they mentioned and ask about it a few days later.

Sometimes the most meaningful gesture is simply bringing up the subject yourself.

That communicates not only that you listened, but that you remembered.

What Makes It Meaningful

Ultimately, what makes your interest in your partner’s interests is what those efforts communicate. When someone we love takes an interest in something that matters to us, we may feel appreciated and understood. And when we make that effort ourselves, we sometimes discover new dimensions of our partner—things we might otherwise have missed.

We don’t have to share all our interests to share our lives. But every so often, learning a little about something our partner loves can be another way of saying:

I want to keep getting to know you.

-Posted by Jonah Green

Jonah Green, a therapist at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, offers therapy for children, teens, couples, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, serving clients in Montgomery County, DC, and the surrounding areas.

The post Taking an Interest in Your Partner’s Interests appeared first on Jonah Green and Associates.

But learning doesn’t happen only when trainees play the therapist. They may learn just as much by inhabiting the experience of a parent, child, teenager, or partner—feeling what it is like to be misunderstood, defended, challenged, or genuinely understood by a therapist. They also learn by observing role-plays and noticing the small moments when a conversation becomes safer, more defensive, more vulnerable, or more connected.

This experiential approach has reinforced something I have come to believe after many years of working with children, adolescents, couples, and families: good family therapy is not primarily about teaching people to communicate correctly. It is about helping them communicate more fully.

Family Therapy Begins With Safety

One of the first things I teach therapists is that before we can help a family address difficult problems, we need to create enough emotional safety for family members to talk about them.

Families may come to therapy in part because they are having trouble communicating effectively. But communication problems are not always simply a matter of lacking the right skills. Family members may have important things to express but find their conversations quickly become organized around defensiveness and self-protection. Parents may criticize when they are worried. Teenagers may withdraw when they feel misunderstood. Partners may press one another for answers or retreat when they feel overwhelmed. Family therapy can help people communicate more effectively while also helping them understand and express the feelings, needs, and concerns driving these patterns. 

The family therapist’s first job is to help create a conversation in which people feel understood well enough to become curious about one another again.

One principle we emphasize in training is: When you feel yourself losing empathy for someone, become more curious about their experience.

That doesn’t mean agreeing with hurtful behavior or pretending everyone’s behavior is equally helpful. It means working to understand each family member’s experience—especially when someone’s behavior is making that understanding difficult. When someone in a family feels that the therapist has already decided that they are the problem, meaningful family therapy becomes very difficult.

Role-play makes this lesson especially vivid. A trainee playing a family member who is angry, guarded, or hard to reach may feel isolated when the therapist seems aligned with everyone else in the room. Conversely, a therapist’s small gesture of curiosity or understanding can make it safer to listen, reflect, and participate.

Helping People Communicate More Fully

Family therapy often helps family members communicate more effectively—using “I-statements,” listening without interrupting, and finding ways to express strong feelings without using hurtful words. These skills can make difficult conversations safer and more productive. But good communication involves more than how something is said; it also involves helping people discover and express more fully what they are trying to say.

In training, I encourage therapists to listen for what may be emerging underneath the words.

A teenager who says, “You never trust me,” may also be saying, “I want you to see that I’m growing up.”

A parent who says, “She doesn’t care about anything,” may be expressing fear: “I’m scared that my daughter is struggling, and I don’t know how to reach her.”

A partner who complains, “He’s too needy,” may also be acknowledging, “I know I’m not giving him the closeness he wants from me.”

Family therapists learn to listen for these hidden feelings, needs, hopes, and acknowledgments. We may reframe an accusation, slow down an interaction, or help someone find words for a more vulnerable feeling underneath anger.

The goal is not to replace a person’s authentic language with “therapy language.” It is to help people say more of what they actually mean.

Helping Families Move From Anger Toward Vulnerability

Anger can tell us that something important has happened or that an important need is unmet. But when families get trapped in anger, they can lose sight of the more tender feelings underneath.

Behind criticism may be disappointment.

Someone may withdraw because of fear of disapproval.

Controlling behavior may be a result of anxiety.

Repeated demands for attention may represent loneliness and longing.

One skill we practice in our family therapy training is helping therapists listen for these deeper emotions without dismissing the anger that brought the family into the room. When family members begin to recognize the hurt, fear, love, hope, or longing beneath one another’s defenses, the conversation can change.

The person who seemed unreasonable becomes easier to understand. And once people feel understood, they often become better able to understand others.

This is another reason experiential training matters. Playing the role of a family member can help a therapist feel from the inside how anger and defensiveness can coexist with love, fear, or longing. Observing a role-play can also make visible what is harder to notice during a difficult conversation: how one person’s self-protection can trigger another person’s self-protection, creating a cycle neither person intends.

Finding Strengths Helps Families Go Deeper

Family therapy should also help families remember what is working.

This does not mean minimizing serious problems or trying to make everyone “look on the bright side.” Families who come to therapy may already feel discouraged, ashamed, or frightened about their ability to repair their relationships. If therapy focuses exclusively on everything they are doing wrong, that discouragement can deepen.

So therapists also look for competence, affection, resilience, good intentions, successful exceptions, and moments when family members have already solved a small part of the problem.

Sometimes family therapists emphasize strengths not instead of going deeper, but in order to go deeper.

A family that begins to recover a sense of hope and dignity may become more willing to examine painful patterns, acknowledge mistakes, hear difficult feelings, and take emotional risks with one another.

Helping the Whole Family Work Better

Family therapy also focuses on more than individual family members’ feelings. We pay attention to what happens between people.

Who gets pulled into arguments? Who withdraws? Which family member tries to keep the peace? Does a child end up carrying tensions between adults? Can parents work together effectively? Does everyone have a voice? Are boundaries clear enough that children can be children and adults can take responsibility for adult problems?

A family therapist helps families develop ways of relating that make everyday family life work better.

Sometimes this involves helping parents become more coordinated and confident. Other times, it means strengthening the relationship between a parent and child. Sometimes it means helping family members step out of a repetitive cycle in which everyone’s understandable attempt to protect themselves accidentally makes someone else’s reaction worse.

The goal is not to create a family that never argues. Healthy families disagree.

The goal is to help families better remain connected while they disagree—and to repair their relationships when things go wrong.

Therapists Make Mistakes, Too

One reason I use role-play when training family therapists is that family therapy is complicated. Several people sit in the room, each with different experiences, and the therapist will inevitably misunderstand someone at times.

A therapist can try something, discover that it didn’t land as intended, hear how it felt to the trainee playing the family member, and try again. Observers can notice what helped the therapist recover the relationship. The mistake itself becomes part of the learning.

What matters is what happens next.

If I misunderstand a child, parent, or partner, I want to notice it, acknowledge it, and become curious about what I missed. A therapist’s mistake can become an opportunity to show families something they themselves need: relationships do not depend on perfect understanding. They depend upon our capacity to recognize misunderstandings and repair them.

That may be one of the most hopeful lessons family therapy can offer.

Creating Conversations Families Can Continue at Home

The therapist helps create a different kind of conversation: one with enough safety for people to become less defensive, enough curiosity for people to listen, enough emotional depth for important feelings to emerge, and enough hope for family members to try something different.

Over time, families increasingly learn to have those conversations without us. At its best, family therapy helps family members know one another more deeply, express difficult feelings more honestly, respond to one another more compassionately, and build relationships sturdy enough to withstand the inevitable stresses of family life.

That is much of what I hope therapists learn by doing, observing, inhabiting, making mistakes, and trying again in our training—and what I hope the families we work with will experience in their own relationships.

-Posted by Jonah Green

Jonah Green, a therapist at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, offers therapy for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, serving clients in Montgomery County, DC, and the surrounding areas.

The post What Makes Family Therapy Work? Lessons From an Experiential Approach to Training Family Therapists appeared first on Jonah Green and Associates.

The first day of school can bring excitement, anticipation, and… a whole lot of feelings. New classrooms, new teachers, new peers, new routines—and for some children, all of that change can feel overwhelming.

Some anxiety around a new school year is completely normal. After all, anxiety is one of the ways our minds and bodies respond to uncertainty and change.

Sometimes anxiety looks like, “I’m nervous about school.” Other times, it looks like a stomachache, a meltdown, trouble sleeping, or suddenly refusing to get dressed.

Signs & Symptoms of Anxiety in Children

Every child experiences anxiety differently, but you may notice:

1. More frequent outbursts or meltdowns
2. Stomachaches or headaches
3. Changes in eating habits
4. Changes in sleep patterns
5. Avoidance of school, activities, or situations that feel overwhelming
6. Increased reassurance-seeking, such as repeatedly asking what will happen or whether everything will be okay
7. More clinginess or difficulty separating

This list is not exhaustive, and you know your child best. Children don’t always have the words to say, “I’m feeling anxious.” Sometimes, their behavior is how they communicate what they can’t quite put into words yet.

Rather than focusing only on stopping the behavior, it can be helpful to get curious about what the behavior might be telling you. Is your child worried about separating from you? Making friends? Keeping up academically? Finding their classroom? Sitting alone at lunch? Managing a noisy or overwhelming environment?

Sometimes a behavior that looks oppositional on the surface is a child’s way of saying, “This feels like too much for me.”

So, What Can You Do?

You don’t have to eliminate your child’s anxiety. In fact, trying to convince a worried child that there’s “nothing to worry about” doesn’t always help.

Instead, the goal is to help your child feel safe, understood, and supported as they learn that they can manage difficult feelings and new experiences.

1. Create a Schedule

A new routine can be a BIG adjustment. A visual schedule can help make the unknown feel a little more predictable.

Try including things like:

• Wake-up time
• Getting dressed
• Breakfast
• Leaving for school
• School
• Homework
• Dinner
• Something fun or relaxing
• Bedtime

For younger children, pictures can be especially helpful. And don’t forget to include something they can look forward to!

You might even practice the morning routine a few days before school starts. Familiarity can make the first morning feel a little less overwhelming.

2. Check In

If you notice a change in your child’s behavior, gently let them know that you’ve noticed.

Instead of immediately asking, “What’s wrong?” try making an observation:

You might say:

“I’ve noticed you’ve been crying in the mornings. What’s going through your mind?”

“You seem a little quieter when we talk about school. Is something on your mind?”

“I’ve noticed your stomach has been hurting in the mornings. Sometimes our bodies let us know when we’re worried about something. I wonder if there’s anything about school that’s been on your mind?”

Sometimes, less pressure = more communication. Your child may need a little time before they can identify or explain what they’re feeling.

3. Validate Before You Reassure

When children tell us they’re scared, our instinct is often to make the fear go away.

“You’ll be fine!”

“There’s nothing to worry about!”

“You’re going to love your new teacher!”

Those responses come from a loving place, but sometimes children need something else first: to know that we understand.

Try:

“It makes sense that you’re nervous. There are a lot of new things happening.”

Or:

“I can understand why not knowing anyone in your class feels scary.”

Validation doesn’t mean agreeing that something terrible will happen. It means communicating: “Your feelings make sense to me, and you don’t have to handle them alone.”

4. Practice What You Can

Anxiety often grows when children don’t know what to expect. When possible, turn some of those unknowns into experiences your child can practice.

Depending on your child’s age and situation, you might:

• Visit the school or playground beforehand
• Walk or drive the route to school
• Look at pictures of the teacher or classroom
• Practice packing the backpack
• Role-play saying goodbye in the morning
• Talk through what lunchtime or dismissal might look like
• Practice what your child can say if they need help

You can’t prepare for everything—and you don’t need to. The goal is simply to make some of the unfamiliar feel a little more familiar.

5. Communicate Confidence

Children often look to the adults they trust for clues about whether a situation is safe and manageable.

That doesn’t mean you have to hide your own feelings or pretend everything will be perfect. Instead, try to communicate both empathy and confidence:

“I know this feels hard, and I believe you can do hard things. We’ll figure it out together.”

It’s possible to take your child’s anxiety seriously without letting anxiety make every decision.

Avoiding something scary can bring immediate relief, but sometimes that relief makes the fear even stronger the next time. When appropriate, gently help children keep moving toward school and other important activities so they can discover, “I was scared—and I was able to do it.”

And Remember…

Your child’s anxiety doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—and it doesn’t mean they’re not ready for school.

Transitions are hard!

Your job isn’t to make every uncomfortable feeling disappear. It’s to help your child know:

“I see you. I hear you. We’re going to figure this out together.”

If anxiety is interfering with your child’s ability to attend school, sleep, eat, participate in activities, or enjoy their day-to-day life, consider reaching out for additional support. Your child’s teacher, school counselor, pediatrician, or a mental health professional can help you better understand what’s happening and think together about ways to support your child.

You know your child best. Trust your instincts, stay curious, and remember that behavior is communication.

-Posted by Marci Hameroff

Marci Hameroff, a therapist at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, offers therapy for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, serving clients in Montgomery County, DC, and the surrounding areas. 

The post Back-to-School Anxiety 🎒✨ Helping Your Child Feel Ready and Supported appeared first on Jonah Green and Associates.

Couples often come to therapy wanting to feel close again, but they are not always sure where to begin. They may imagine reconnecting will require a week away, a perfectly planned date, or long conversations in which they finally say everything exactly right.

One of the most useful ideas in the work of John and Julie Gottman, who have spent decades studying relationships, is that connection grows through the accumulation of ordinary, repeated interactions such as warm greetings, brief, gentle touches, or words of appreciation. 

One kind of healing interaction involves responding to “bids for connection.” A bid is an invitation to share attention or affection. It might be a sigh, a joke, a question, or a comment about one’s day. Noticing and answering more of them can gradually strengthen a relationship. Other ways to nurture connection include affection, appreciation, curiosity, rituals, and repair, which offer other small opportunities.

Here are several practices couples can try. I recommend starting with one or two.

The six-second kiss

The Gottmans recommend regular kisses lasting about six seconds to create moments of warmth. Some couples prefer hugs, holding hands, or other gestures. The aim is moments of affection that feel good to both partners.

The stress-reducing conversation

At the end of a demanding day, partners often want different things. One person may want to talk, while the other wants to “decom. Or one partner begins describing a problem and the other immediately offers a solution, only to discover that advice was not what was needed. These different needs can create feelings of disconnection and frustration.

As an antidote, the Gottmans suggest setting aside about 20 minutes for a “stress-reducing conversation.” The conversation focuses on pressures outside the relationship: work, family, traffic, health, or the difficult email that arrived that afternoon. Each partner gets a chance to speak and listen.

The listener might communicate understanding with phrases such as:

“That sounds exhausting.”

“I can understand why you felt dismissed.”

“What was the hardest part?”

The listener does not offer advice unless asked. The purpose is to come alongside your partner and help them feel heard.

Specific Appreciation

Specific appreciation stimulates warm feelings and encourages more positive behavior. “I appreciated that you called my mother yesterday” tells a partner exactly what you noticed.

More examples:

“I appreciated that you washed the dishes without my asking.”

“That was thoughtful when you asked how my pain felt.”

“You were so patient with our son today.”

Ask a question you do not already know the answer to

We may know our partner’s history, routines, preferences, and familiar complaints, but we do not always know how their experience is changing from day to day.

Open-ended questions help people feel important, especially when they show an awareness of the other person’s life. Instead of “Did you have a good day?”—which can be answered with a single word—try:

“How did the presentation go today?”

“What do you think of the novel you’re reading?”

“You seem especially busy. What do you wish you had more time for?”

“What feels important to you about that?”

The Gottmans use the term “Love Maps” for our knowledge of a partner’s inner world: stresses, hopes, relationships, pleasures, worries, and dreams. A Love Map is never finished. Curiosity allows us to keep meeting the person our partner is becoming.

Couples looking for more prompts can explore the free Gottman Card Decks app. The book Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love also offers a structure for conversations about trust, conflict, money, intimacy, family, dreams, and shared meaning.

Respond to small bids

Imagine that your partner says, “Look at that cardinal,” while you are reading something on your phone. Underneath the comment may be an invitation: Share this moment with me.

Turning toward might mean looking up, following your partner’s gaze, and saying, “Beautiful!” It might also mean laughing at a joke, asking a follow-up question, or placing a hand on a shoulder when you hear a sigh.

We all miss bids. We may impatiently realize too late that our partner was trying to reach us. Connection does not require perfect attentiveness. It does benefit from recognizing that many exchanges carry a relational question: Are you there? Does my experience matter to you?

Create small rituals of connection

Another strategy the Gottmans suggest is the development of rituals. Rituals are helpful because they do not depend entirely on spontaneity. In busy lives, waiting until both people happen to feel relaxed, affectionate, and available may mean waiting a long time.

Rituals need not be elaborate. A couple might drink coffee together for ten minutes, take a short walk after dinner, text at lunchtime, or say goodnight with a hug.

Offer a small repair

All couples misread each other, become defensive, speak sharply, or lose the thread of a conversation. A repair is any attempt to interrupt the slide and find one another again.

Examples of reparative statements:

“That came out more harshly than I meant.”

“You have a point.”

“I’m getting overwhelmed, and I’m not hearing you like I want to. Can we slow this down?”

A repair does not resolve the whole disagreement. It helps protect the relationship while the disagreement continues.

Let the practice be small

Small experiments often work best, rather than ambitious plans that may fall short and lead to discouragement. Try one or two practices and notice what happens—not just whether your partner changes, but what happens inside you. Do you feel warmer, more awkward, more hopeful, or more resistant? Even awkwardness can be useful information. Uncomfortable feelings can be a sign that you are opening up and taking risks to strengthen your relationship.

Small practices cannot fully repair betrayal, coercion, addiction, or long-standing hurt. But repeated moments of affection, interest, appreciation, and repair can provide essential “glue’ for a relationship. In couples therapy, these practices can also help new ways of relating take root between sessions.

Readers who want to explore more Gottman-informed practices for closeness may appreciate John Gottman and Nan Silver’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, the Gottmans’ overview of the Sound Relationship House, and the Gottman Institute’s video channel.

-Posted by Jonah Green

Jonah Green, a therapist at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, offers therapy for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, serving clients in Montgomery County, DC, and the surrounding areas.

Another blog post that addresses Gottman-informed practices for closeness:

Look at That Bird: Turning Towards Bids for Connection to Improve Your Relationship 

The post Nurturing Your Connection as a Couple Through Small Moments appeared first on Jonah Green and Associates.

One of the most influential books in this movement is Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. Van der Kolk shows how overwhelming experiences—whether a catastrophic event or chronic emotional neglect, abuse, or instability—can become encoded in our nervous systems. Even after danger has passed, our bodies may respond as though it is still present.

Therapists often see this. Clients tell us, “I know I’m safe, but I don’t feel safe.” Their shoulders remain tense, their breathing shallow, their sleep disrupted, and their nervous systems on alert.

Not All Trauma Looks the Same

Many people think of trauma as experiences of combat, assault, or serious accidents. But trauma can also arise from growing up with unpredictable caregivers, living with criticism or emotional volatility, bullying, physical injuries, loss, or experiences of shame. Even the absence of consistent emotional attunement can leave imprints on the nervous system.

These experiences may lead to hypervigilance, anxiety, emotional numbing, intrusive thoughts, chronic muscular tension, or a persistent feeling that something is wrong—even when life is objectively going well.

The Rise of Somatic Therapies

This growing understanding has contributed to the development of somatic therapies such as Somatic Experiencing or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. These approaches, which have growing evidence for their effectiveness, help the nervous system rediscover safety, flexibility, and regulation. 

This development is deeply compatible with what Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centered therapy, taught decades ago. Emotional healing can begin when individuals experience safety, acceptance, emotional attunement, and authentic relationships. Somatic approaches extend these principles to bodily experience.

Where Qigong Fits In

Qigong (pronounced chee-gong) is an ancient Chinese healing practice that combines gentle movement, relaxed, rhythmic breathing, focused awareness, meditation, and imagination. It is used alongside Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to heal emotional and physical injuries and prevent disease. Growing bodies of research support the benefits of mindful movement practices like qigong for healing from trauma, as well as for stress reduction, improved focus, pain management, emotional well-being, and overall physical health. Its simplicity and approachability make it an excellent form of somatic healing. 

Qigong is a form of exercise, but it is not only about burning calories; it helps you gently and mindfully inhabit your body. It encourages practitioners to notice sensations with curiosity as they engage in relaxed, flowing motion. These qualities can help individuals regulate their nervous systems, be more connected to their bodies, and feel safe within themselves. 

What I personally appreciate about qigong is its extraordinary gentleness.

Movements can be practiced standing, seated, or even lying down. The emphasis is usually less on stretching or holding postures and more on fluid and mindful movement.

There is also a distinctive emphasis on “felt imagery.” You might imagine gathering energy (“qi”) from the earth, expanding through the heart, floating through clouds, or feeling tension drain downward. Whether one understands these images literally or metaphorically, they can help people shift into a calmer, more integrated state.

How Is Qigong Different from Tai Chi?

Qigong and Tai Chi are closely related. In fact, Tai Chi can be understood as a form of qigong because it cultivates many of the same qualities: mindful awareness, coordinated breathing, relaxed movement, balance, and whole-body integration.

Tai Chi’s graceful forms have been refined over centuries and offer tremendous physical, emotional, and meditative benefits, as well as martial applications. Many practitioners find it to be a deeply rewarding lifelong discipline.

For beginners, qigong may be a gentle, approachable entry point. Most exercises can be learned in just a few minutes and offer calming and grounding benefits from the very first session.

A Few Movements 

Different teachers use different names for each of these, but there are several movements you might find especially helpful:

Shaking the Tree uses gentle rhythmic shaking to release unnecessary muscular tension. Many people are surprised by how naturally their breathing changes after only a minute or two.

Parting the Clouds encourages expansive movements that open the chest while coordinating breath and attention. People often describe feeling more “spacious” inside.

Pushing the Waves uses smooth forward and backward movements that naturally synchronize with breathing. There is something deeply settling about its rhythm. Rather than fighting the current, the movement suggests working with it.

Qigong Can Also Be Relational

Although qigong is often practiced individually, it can also become surprisingly relational.

Partners can practice together, moving and breathing in synchrony. Families can learn simple movements as part of a daily routine. Parents and children may enjoy playful forms involving animals or flowing movements.

From a family therapy perspective, this is especially intriguing.

We often think of regulation as an individual skill. Yet decades of attachment research remind us that human beings regulate one another through co-regulation. 

Shared movement can become another way to foster emotional safety—not as a replacement for conversation, but as a pathway toward connection, belonging, and trust.

Sometimes talking becomes easier after bodies have first learned to settle.

A Few Places to Begin

If you’re curious about exploring qigong, here are several resources I have found helpful.

For readers, I highly recommend Ken Cohen’s The Way of Qigong, perhaps the most comprehensive introduction available. The Healing Promise of Qi by Roger Jahnke clearly explains qigong concepts and offers a range of tools, practices, and techniques.

There are also many excellent online teachers. Marisa Cranfill’s YOQI program offers a thoughtful progression from basic awareness to increasingly sophisticated practice. Anthony Korahais of Flowing Zen presents qigong in a clear, welcoming style. Ken Cohen offers numerous online lectures and demonstrations that beautifully combine scholarship with decades of practical experience.

A Final Reflection

Sometimes our culture encourages us to approach healing the way we approach everything else: work harder, think harder, solve the problem.

Healing from trauma asks something different of us: to slow down, to notice, to breathe, to experience our surroundings, and to find safety within our minds and bodies. Sometimes it begins with a slow breath or a gentle movement. For people whose bodies have learned to anticipate danger, this can be profoundly restorative.

Recovery rarely comes from a single technique. It grows through safe relationships, compassionate curiosity, and practices that help both mind and body remember that danger has passed. For many people, qigong offers one gentle path towards healing.

-Posted by Jonah Green

Jonah Green, a therapist at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, offers therapy services for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, serving clients in Montgomery County, DC, and the surrounding areas.

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