“Our bodies are not things we have—they are what we are.”
When I first started working with the Grinberg Method over 15 years ago, I was deeply impressed by the clarity and intensity with which this bodywork brought people back to their own perception. The idea that our bodies store patterns we can learn to interrupt struck me as not only powerful but profoundly emancipatory. And indeed, many people found access to themselves through this work, breaking free from old automatisms and discovering new scope for action.
But over time, I also became aware of its limitations. And not just that—I began to critically question aspects of the method.
Individualization of Suffering
Time and again, I encountered an implicit narrative in the work: “If you understand and interrupt your pattern, things will get better.” But what if the suffering doesn’t stem from an individual pattern at all? What if it comes from structural violence, trauma, or systemic disadvantage? I started to realize that the Grinberg Method left little room for these larger contexts. Suffering became something to be overcome through one’s own behavior. This can be empowering—but it can also isolate and alienate.
Self-Responsibility to the Point of Self-Blame
What I once perceived as self-empowerment increasingly felt like a burden I was unknowingly passing on to my clients. If something didn’t improve, the conclusion was often: You haven’t stopped your pattern enough. You’re making yourself a victim of your patterns. You lack discipline. An unspoken but pervasive idea of self-blame began to take hold.
The Body as an Object
In Grinberg work, the body is trained, controlled, and influenced. Even when the focus is on perception, there’s often an underlying goal: to get better, to become freer, to be more relaxed. I began to notice how this could foster an instrumentalizing attitude toward one’s own body—not a loving relationship with it, but a functional optimization.
Lack of Trauma-Sensitive Foundations
Many people who came to me carried deep wounds. Direct, body-focused work wasn’t always helpful for them. In some cases, it was overwhelming. I searched for an approach that worked not only with the body but also with inner safety, affect regulation, and attachment. And I found: AEDP.
AEDP—A New Relationship to Experience
In AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), the focus isn’t on eliminating symptoms. Instead, it’s about slowing down, bearing witness, and holding the experience together. Pain is allowed to exist. It isn’t judged or analyzed as a pattern. It’s brought into relationship. And this is exactly what I felt was missing in the Grinberg Method: the compassionate, regulating relationship. I’m not an expert about you. I’m with you. This has deeply transformed my own work.
Ethical and Structural Clarity
AEDP is a scientifically grounded psychotherapeutic approach with clear ethical guidelines, supervision, reflection, and language. In the Grinberg Method, such frameworks were either absent or, in my training, shaped by structures that raised significant red flags regarding power, control, and transparency. Much was left to the individual discretion of teachers, trainers, and practitioners. In work that goes so deep, this can be boundary-crossing. This, too, became increasingly clear to me.
What Remains?
I’m grateful for the years I spent with the Grinberg Method. It teached me how to accompany emotional processes through touch. It gave me a language for embodiment that no one can take away from me. But my path has led me further. Today, I work with AEDP, using a trauma-sensitive, relationship-based, and deeply human approach. If it feels right and meaningful for my clients, I also incorporate direct touch within this framework.
(The focus on interrupting bodily patterns by influencing breath, movement, and perception is central to body-oriented coaching, but not to therapeutic work.)
And if you, as a client, are reading these lines: You are allowed to feel seen in everything you bring with you. Not just in your patterns, but in your story, your pain, and your hope. I’m happy to accompany you—not as someone who knows what you need, but as someone who listens alongside you.
If you want to know more about AEDP, you can start here.
If you want to know more about the Grinberg methode, start here.
Avi Grinberg, Becoming Yourself: Body Attention and the Fulfillment of Potential, 2021
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