The European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP) affirms that mental health and wellbeing, personal dignity, equality, and freedom from discrimination are fundamental human rights. These rights are essential conditions for psychological, emotional, and social development over time and require respect for diversity in human experience and professional practice.

EABP recognises that discrimination, exclusion, intimidation, and repression—whether based on identity, capacity, health status, cultural background, or other protected characteristics—undermine human dignity and restrict sustained participation in social and professional life. Such conditions function as ongoing sources of threat and interfere not only with social structures but also with the embodied sense of safety, agency, and belonging that supports healthy development across the lifespan.

From the perspective of body psychotherapy, prolonged exposure to threat, fear, marginalisation, or enforced conformity is often associated with enduring physiological and autonomic patterns of protection, such as tension, constriction, dissociation, or collapse. When these patterns persist over time, they can limit adaptive and creative responses, reduce relational availability, and constrain expression, contributing to cumulative psychological distress and reduced developmental potential. Environments that promote safety, recognition, inclusion, and plurality are therefore central to long-term mental health and social resilience.

EABP understands wellbeing as arising from conditions that support adaptive and creative relational capacity, developmental continuity, and meaningful participation in shared social life. Freedom of expression and creative expression—both individual and collective—are essential to these conditions, as they enable learning, integration, and recovery over time.

EABP supports social, professional, and institutional contexts that uphold human dignity and recognise diversity as a fundamental and generative aspect of human experience. This includes respect for the diversity of body psychotherapeutic approaches, theories, practices, and research traditions, and for the ongoing development of the field. Our members work in accordance with ethical and evidence-informed practice, understood as inclusive of multiple valid forms of knowledge and inquiry.

EABP takes a clear position that all forms of discrimination, intimidation, repression, or institutional narrowing of participation and legitimacy are unacceptable. We affirm the right of every person and professional community to self-determination and to develop, over time, to the fullest extent of their capacity, consistent with human rights principles and professional ethical standards.