Sexual Grounding Therapy ® (SGT) is an innovative movement within body-oriented psychotherapy

SGN is an essential addition to other current therapeutic methods. This therapeutic training is aimed at allowing participants to undergo personal development in experiencing their love in sexuality. First and foremost for themselves and also to improve contact with parents, partners, friends, children and grandchildren.

Love without fear or shame

To begin with, it is important that warm feelings of love and excitement can be fully accepted again, so that participants learn to approach their loved ones with a newfound confidence, without projecting their parents into the other. Once we have experienced acceptance of our sexual identity within ourselves, we can also take responsibility for our own sexual energy, such as excitement and satisfaction. We can express both the masculine and feminine sides of ourselves and experience internally that it is good the way we are.

We examine how the first experiences with sexuality were in the triangular relationship of father, mother and child, how our guilt, our fear and our dealings with them were formed here. When we reconnect with the sexually curious, innocent and excited child within us, very early and pure desires can emerge. But also when we remember the experience, our parents could not respond to it in the right way, were ashamed of it, got rid of it or got angry. Instead of them mirroring us, we copied their behavior and in doing so we developed fixed patterns, which we also repeat in our relationships with loved ones, children, employees, clients or students.

Restoration of Natural Sexuality

In a process of polarization, harmonization and transformation, we learn to feel the fixations in the primal love triangle with our biological parents in our body, to identify with them and then let go. In this way we can get rid of behavioral patterns and blockages that prevent us from being in direct contact with others: we learn to move from a triangular relationship to a two-way relationship with our parents and parents-in-law behind us.

In the therapeutic contact with the trainer, assistant trainers and therapists, participants learn to move through their fear and self-deception on the way to inner maturity. In experiencing the natural stages in sexual, genital-emotional development, these form the milestones on our journey. weg.

Exercises, role plays and interactions initiate a personal process in which group members support each other in everyone’s own natural development.

Sexual Grounding Therapy is a very effective form of self-development, which addresses sexuality and relationships in a clear, direct and pure way.
Participants report that Sexual Grounding Therapy provides lasting support for basic life themes, such as connection with the original naturalness and liveliness, restoring the sexual flow between head, heart and sex, the ability for lasting relationships and the sexual education of children.

The origins of Sexual Grounding Therapy®

Sexual Grounding was developed in the early 1990s by the Dutch psychologist and body-oriented therapist Willem Poppeliers. In his own training he experienced that the theme of sexuality was only treated theoretically and was often avoided. He thought this was a great loss and that is why he developed a method based on a well-founded theory of eight maturation stages within sexual development. Poppeliers was initially mainly inspired by the psychoanalytic work of Freud, the characterology within the body-oriented work of Reich and the Gestalt therapy of Perls. Later, the characterology views of Lowen and Johnsson were added. Their ideas form important building blocks for the theory of Sexual Grounding Therapy.
From the 1990s onwards, knowledge from Kernberg’s ‘ego psychology’ played an important role for him, as did Kohut’s ‘self psychology’.
Fairbairn’s object relations theory in particular became an important source of inspiration in the development of SGT.

In addition to the influence that this knowledge had on his ideas, he further developed some views from object relations theory; for example, the reconnection of the child with his parents, after the separation period based on object relations theory, is an important part of the theory of Sexual Grounding Therapy®.
This reconnection with the parents has a self-regulating effect on genital relational development.
Kernberg and Kohut’s theory about the ideal image have also been partially integrated into the theory of Sexual Grounding Therapy®, with an important addition: the ideal image is first functionally integrated into the body before saying goodbye to the ideal image.

A common thread in the theory and therapy is the correct reflection of sexual development that parents should provide to the child throughout life (within the different developmental phases).

The eight stages of development:

• from 4 to 14 years: Revelation
• from 14 to 24 years: Puberty and Adolescence
• from 24 to 34 years: Adulthood
• from 34 to 44 years: Genital-reproductive maturation
• from 44 to 54 years: Genital-relational maturation
• from 54 to 64 years: Genital-relational aging
• from 64 to 74 years: Genital-relational ‘farewell’
• from 74 years until death: Genital-relational dying.

In each phase, attention is paid to the relationship structure, the relationship content and the functions of the parents.
The relationship content is elaborated in more depth and is viewed in each phase from the perspective of:

• curiosity
• excitement
• innocence
• regulation

This theory is briefly described in the book: ‘Love and Sexuality in the perspective of relationships and generations (Poppeliers 2007)’.
Since 1998, this therapy has been offered in several countries. It is a process-driven, experience-oriented and body-oriented psychotherapy.