Organic Intelligence™ (OI)
Porter Witsell, OI™ Coach
I offer one-on-one therapy in person and online to adults, teens and couples.
While traditional therapeutic modalities focus on behavioral or cognitive change, I prioritize the signals and impulses coming from the nervous system while working with your whole being. In session we will practice redirecting habitual patterns of internal disorganization so that you can emerge from chronic stress, integrate adverse experience, and have more access to yourself.
Common Questions about Organic Intelligence™
What Is Organic Intelligence™?
Organic Intelligence™ (OI) is a positive reinforcement clinical model and theoretical framework to promote human empowerment, resiliency, and compassion. OI integrates psychobiological science, positive psychology, complex systems theory, with mindfulness, image work, and somatic awareness to restore the felt-sense experience of safety, wellness and wholeness. It is a descendant of Somatic Experiencing and shares a prioritization of working from the nervous system up, but differs in its approach to resolving trauma. Organic Intelligence, developed by Steve Hoskinson, focuses on fostering resilience and coherence by observing and supporting the body’s naturally occurring self-organizing tendencies.
How is OI different from other modes of therapy?
OI is a non-pathologizing modality that supports healing and transformation by interrupting harmful patterns related to stress/survival physiology and redirects attention and energy toward ease and increased capacity. Through the use of the free association conversation, sensory and somatic tracking, and mindfulness, OI can help clients integrate previously overwhelming experiences and trauma in addition to supporting a deeper experience of peace, enjoyment, and aliveness. The OI clinician strategically guides the client’s attention sometimes outward, sometimes inward, to keep the client within appropriate levels of activation and to facilitate emergence of increased systemic coherence.
What does and OI session look like?
One on one Organic Intelligence sessions are one hour long and can be done in person or online and largely happen within the framework of a free association conversation- whatever the client is wanting to talk about.
Within the free association conversation, OI clinicians perceive and work with verbal and non-verbal information from the client including involuntary movements, micro-expressions, changes in breath and respiratory rate, and other cues. to help the client to navigate away from chaos/overwhelm and toward increased ease and self-aware enjoyment.
The clinician will be in conversation with the client in an attuned, engaged way, and might ask the client in various moments to be with a sensation, to look around the room, to revisit a gesture, or describe an image they are seeing, all in a comfortable, non self-conscious way.
Where can I learn more?
The Organic Intelligence website has much more information: https://organicintelligence.org/