Integral Approach | Praxis Martin Schmid

Resonance: Where differences make sense

Most people go to therapy feeling that something is wrong with them. They experience pressure, self-criticism, or difficult relationship patterns. In my work, it often becomes clear that such experiences are not rooted solely within a person. Experience does not arise in a vacuum. It arises within personal life worlds and relationships—with other people, in expectations, in roles, social positions, and contexts. It is only there that it becomes relevant, meaningful, and sustained.

Many psychological approaches consistently work “from the inside out”: Identifiable and isolatable dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are adjusted and corrected as best as possible to fit functional norms. According to this logic, difficult emotions in particular can be identified and specifically processed, and emotional blockages can be resolved with biohacks.

In my work, a different starting point and perspective has proven to be sustainably helpful: Many difficulties stem less from personal deficits or a lack of competence than from psychosocial, culturally mediated, and thus multifaceted patterns of relationships and meaning.

In various domains—work, leadership, parenting, or digital communication—intensive and constant self-management, for example, has become normalized. People are accustomed to treating themselves as a project: regulating, adapting, improving, present or avoid. The experience itself becomes, in a sense, the raw material—for self-optimization and functionality. This also encompasses relaxation, mindfulness, and recuperation. With smart devices and AI, this form of self-relationship becomes second nature, whereas in everyday life it is already an established practice and a reality through self-monitoring.

In my work, the focus shifts from a superficial scan—“What is right and what is wrong with me?”—to a deeper question: “What am I experiencing, and how do I actually relate to it?”

In my practice, which focuses on resonance and relationship, this contact itself—or rather, what happens at the point of contact—becomes tangible. Here, nothing needs to be performed in order to be perceived. This enables new experiences, first in the present moment, and new scope for action in everyday life.

Meaning Makes a Difference

“I need to learn to control my emotions better.”

Most people are familiar with this, often from previous therapy or coaching sessions: regulating emotions, reducing stress, changing thoughts, becoming calmer. Fatigue is then a problem to be solved. Anxiety is a state that must be controlled. Sadness is an obstacle that must be overcome. The relationship to the experience is then like that of a technician to a malfunction. In many cases, this is enormously helpful and, in crisis intervention, initially urgently necessary—but it falls short in the long run.

Many emotion researchers assume that emotions are something that arise in the brain and body and “happen” there. Stress arises—anxiety surfaces—anger flares up. It’s actually quite simple. The natural reaction is therefore obvious: to try, first and foremost or exclusively, to address, control, or regulate these feelings directly. Neuroscientific research (see Feldman-Barrett, 2024*) is increasingly drawing attention to something else, however. Emotions are not clearly defined states, circuits, or objects that can be localized in the brain, that “reside” there within us, or are “activated.” Rather, they can be understood in the embodied nervous system as experience-based constructs in real time.

This process is not based solely on bodily signals and memory, but also critically incorporates contextual information and learned patterns of meaning. In my work, therefore, culture and the learned, social system of meaning are contextual factors that cannot be overlooked in practice*.

Addressing the Elephant in the Therapy Room: Culture

You’ve probably experienced this too: You sense something unspoken, invisible in the room. It influences the atmosphere, the relationship, and the dynamics—what is possible, what can be said. Perhaps you also know that feeling of unease, where you don’t really know where to begin, even though it’s everywhere and takes up so much space. Almost tangible, yet so difficult to define. And so the elephant remains unspoken. Perhaps also because it is powerful, and we adjust to it long before we could address it directly. That is how I experience the phenomenon of culture in the therapy room.

But let’s get specific and look at it on a smaller scale: an elevated heart rate. First and foremost, this is a bodily signal. Whether it is experienced as fear, weakness, an inner adversary, or a source of motivation depends on what it signifies within a specific, learned, situational, and cultural context. In performance-oriented, fast-paced, and decision-focused living or working environments, easily readable binary codes are often prevalent: being strong or weak, functioning or failing, being in control or overwhelmed. When these codes are correspondingly rigid and crude, the nervous system remains on high alert—not because there is an objective danger, but because the respective patterns are associated with threat.

In other words: The meaning of what we feel is not fixed. It changes constantly as we experience and perceive the situation differently, more subtly, and with greater nuance. That is why therapy is not just about regulating emotions. It is also, first and foremost, about feeling them in a safe setting and understanding them within their contexts.

What meaning is linked to this feeling in this particular context?

What expectations are affecting me here? What position and role do I take in relation to this?

An example: In a therapeutic space of resonance, the association of exhaustion with failure in a work context can give rise to a need for distance and boundaries, for physical rest, or for an expression of sadness or grief over the life that was never lived. Various positions and dynamics can become apparent here, which can initially alter the experience by challenging the perceived lack of alternatives. This makes the following possible:

greater freedom in dealing with performance pressure and expectations
less people-pleasing, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and self-criticism
awareness of roles, relational dynamics, and identity
greater clarity about one’s own needs
less conflict avoidance

Relationships Make a Difference

Many forms of self-help - and most digital offerings as well - are primarily instrumental in nature.

They teach techniques that help people better manage their thoughts, feelings, or behavior. When people are under intense pressure or feel like they’re in survival mode, an instrumental approach to solutions is often the best option available. Digital solutions can offer helpful support in this regard. They can provide information, guide exercises, and assist with reflection. Yet they inevitably operate within a technical-instrumental framework.

A human relationship works differently. It is not merely an exchange of information. It offers the potential of a shared space of resonance. In this space, things emerge that cannot be fully simulated or substituted:

Embodied presence and vitality
Connection with oneself and others
Empathy and emotional attunement
The experience of being truly seen
Understanding chronic shame and guilt and experiencing them through mindful co-regulation

These experiences alone can already transform people and systems stuck in rigid patterns of meaning and relationship. Through a space where experience can be perceived, shared, and responded to differently. Resonance definitely does not mean escapism, harmony, or naive positivity.

Resonance-based therapy and counseling can be particularly helpful if you…

feel under intense pressure to constantly perform.
are very critical of yourself and feel you have little room for your own emotions.
repeatedly experience similar patterns in relationships, such as conforming or withdrawing.
feel stuck in certain roles that are difficult to break out of.
are constantly exhausted, even though from the outside you actually appear capable and “functional.”
think a lot about yourself but feel little emotional connection to yourself.
long for more meaningful connection with yourself and others.

We talk about your experiences so that you can speak from within your experience

In our sessions, we focus on two processes that are constantly intertwined:

We talk about your experiences—to understand the meanings, roles, and expectations that shape them. What patterns, dynamics, and previously unspoken “codes” operate unconsciously and automatically? What positions, messages, and voices evaluate the experience? What rules were learned, where, and how?

You speak from your experience—to (re)connect with what is immediately felt before it is evaluated, categorized, and reduced in meaning. Ambivalences and ambiguities are held and can be navigated: closeness and distance, attachment and autonomy, openness and protection exist in a productive tension.

Talking about experiences supports regulation, perspective, and clarity. Speaking from experience fosters presence, emotional embodiment, and psychological flexibility. When feelings are merely controlled, they remain under pressure. When they are perceived within a relationship, they begin to shift. However, resonance is not about losing the sense of control. It is about gently expanding the space in which you can respond more consciously.

Change occurs where difficult emotions and relational needs can be more consciously acknowledged, held, processed, and (co-)regulated—not where they are merely interpreted or explained. In this context, learning and change take place through concrete, experience-based processes.

Where curiosity meets the known

Resonance-based therapy creates a space where experience can be responded to within a relationship. A space where experiences do not have to be immediately interpreted, improved, or changed. Where feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations can emerge before they become a task or a “to-do.” In such a space, something new can happen: Instead of trying to know and control the experience, people begin to explore it. This shift—from "knowing" toward mindful exploration - is often the moment when new possibilities and meanings for feeling and acting open up.

In this space, for example, inner states that would otherwise be mutually exclusive can coexist and manifest differently: competence alongside exhaustion. Strength alongside a request for help.

This is supported by a shared presence in which different experiences are allowed to be there without one having to dominate or supplant the other. When this becomes possible, something changes in the way one can relate to oneself. The inner boundaries become more permeable—not dissolved, but more fluid.

Exhaustion no longer has to threaten competence. Vulnerability no longer has to undermine strength. This openness does not arise because you set out to achieve it. It arises because the relational field makes it possible.

Herein lies the active, responsive experience that inner encounter and relationship become possible without optimization—beyond working on oneself—sustained by a space that is more than the sum of its individual parts. Therapy thus becomes a learning space in which relationships (with the world) can be experienced in a more nuanced, secure, and vibrant way. Understanding and insight are, rather, a consequence of this therapeutic process, not its prior linchpin.

Patterns and dynamics arise and continue to arise in relationships—and can often only be experienced differently there and accordingly perceived as corrective. Ultimately, some changes cannot be “brought about” alone. Some experiences are only possible within human relationships, in encounters and connections. Not because of a lack of skills, mindfulness, or strength. But because certain inner experiences require a space that enables more than self-reflection and introspection. Such a resonant space is more than a supporting factor; it becomes the mediator of change.

“You are not the next project that needs fixing. You are someone who deserves to be met.”

Scientific Foundations: Practice and Poiesis – Resonance and Regulation

Resonance becomes possible when one no longer has to use one’s own experience (merely) as a means to an end or a tool. Here, the quality of attention shifts: not analytical, not instrumental—but mindful, embodied, and responsive. Aristotle already distinguishes between two forms of action:

Poiesis = Instrumental action aimed at producing something. The activity is a means to an end. The value lies in the result.

Praxis = Action whose value lies in the activity itself. These activities are not primarily means. They are ends in themselves.

Resonance* = An encounter in which something affects a person. It is responsive or answers.

The interaction can involve and also transform (a person encounters the world, other people, nature).

Such a form of resonance cannot be technically generated.

My systemic work is guided in particular by three scientific perspectives that are increasingly applied today in psychology and cognitive science:

Developmental Psychology
Embodiment & Embodied Cognition
Enactivism & Enacted Sense Making

All three approaches share a fundamental insight: human experience does not arise in isolation within the mind, but rather through the interplay of body, mind, relationships, and the shared world.

Developmental Psychology - Experience is Relational

Our sense of self in relation to others begins to develop as early as the first few months of life. Developmental psychologist Daniel Stern demonstrated that people experience forms of emotional attunement very early on—long before language develops. Attachment theory (John Bowlby) also describes how early relational experiences shape expectations regarding closeness, trust, and independence. Many strategies that people later develop to cope with stress and life—such as control, adaptation, or withdrawal—can be understood in this context. They are thus often meaningful responses to earlier relational experiences. Therapy, then, does not simply mean changing these strategies, but rather understanding the process by which they arose and, above all, facilitating new relational experiences.

Embodiment – Experience, Thought, and Meaning Are Embodied

Current research on embodiment shows that our thoughts and feelings are closely linked to physical processes. Emotions manifest themselves, for example, in breathing, posture, tension, or movement.

That is why my work also incorporates physical perception—for example, through mindful attention to internal sensations or the so-called “felt sense” (Focusing). Through this approach, new meanings and perspectives can often emerge.

Enactivism – Meaning arises through contact with the world

Enactivism describes the fundamental idea of modern cognitive science: We do not merely perceive the world—we generate meaning through contact and interaction with it. Accordingly, many changes arise not only from theoretical insight or technology, but from new experiences in relationships with other people and with the self.

What these perspectives have in common is this: People change not only through new thoughts—but above all through new relational experiences. This is precisely where resonance practice comes in.

*Since 2014, my psychological work as an author has been informed by cultural psychology and sociology. As a result, relevant contextual aspects, power dynamics, and their effects are appropriately incorporated into the therapeutic process.

*Cristaldi, F. de P., Oosterwijk, S. & Barrett, L. F. (2024). Predictive processing and embodiment in emotion.

In L. Shapiro & S. Spaulding (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition.

*Rosa, Hartmut (2016): Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Berlin: Suhrkamp