Ginger Clark, Ph.D. has had a private practice in psychotherapy since 1989 and has been licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist since 1971. She has led workshops in bodymindfulness since 1971. She stepped onto the bodymindfulness path in1968 when she experienced her first Esalen massage, which literally and figuratively, turned her head around. In the course of a head massage, she suddenly noticed that the thoughts which had long pervaded her consciousness had momentarily disappeared and with that realization she was thinking once again! However, the memory of that experience never left her and she vowed to learn how to foster a fresh experience of being alive in others.
Over the next 34 years she taught massage, anatomy, physiology and sensory awareness at the Massage School of Santa Monica, and created sensawareness massage. In 1979, she became a certified leader of Sensory Awareness under the tutelage of Charlotte Selver with whom she began studying in 1971 and in 1973 she participated in the first nine-month study group. (Sensory Awareness is the bodymindful practice of the direct experience of being, through attending to the sensations of contact with whatever is met in the moment, whether it is an activity such as breathing or standing or another person.) In the 1970’s she practiced meditation at Zen Centers in Los Angeles and in San Francisco.
In 1983 she completed her doctoral studies in psychology at UCLA, with an emphasis on the bodymind connection. She taught budding psychotherapists about the relationship between body and mind in the Master’s Program for Marriage and Family Therapy at Antioch University in Los Angeles in 2002. In 2004 she became a certified relational somatic psychotherapist (Certified Bioenergetics Therapist) and is currently in her sixth year with Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles. She is a member of CAMFT and Sensory Awareness F. She recently completed nearly 15 years of work on her book “Tuck Yourself In” which tells the story of the discovery of her bodyself voice as it unfolded through bodymindful practices and relational somatic therapy. This book (and companion recordings) invites the reader to try out three listening practices to heighten awareness of the bodyself voice and serves as an introduction to the process and benefits of relational somatic psychotherapy. Since she lives just 80 steps from the beach, she now has more time to delight in experiencing, not to mention photographing, the natural and artful surround.