ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author outlines integrative approach as a gestalt therapist, focusing on the philosophy and practice of dialogue. He argues that acknowledging our wholeness as persons with each other—mind, spirit, and always body—involves working in a radically intimate field. He suggests that speaking of bodies and intimate fields raises many questions, including those arising around intimacy and erotic experience, which cannot be explored here but are part of the complexity we live with. Brian Broom has written extensively on these themes; on what he calls somatic metaphor and meaning-full disease, where the body seems to express something more about a person’s self and existence. In a way, the controversy over Martin Heidegger’s involvement with the National Socialist Party has nothing substantial to do with MindBody healthcare. Heidegger, in his meditations on the question of being, wrote of a space he called the clearing: In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs.
