She is a clinical psychologist, but she soon realized that human beings need a more comprehensive, integrated, holistic approach. After marrying a Portuguese man, the Spanish woman Maria del Mar Cervantes made Portugal her home, built her career, and became a pioneer there by opening a clinic and a school, Mentara, dedicated to Somatic Psychotherapy – a profession she is fighting to have regulated and independent. “"It's a matter of time."”, he said in an interview with Integrall.

Until that happens, he continues to blaze a trail, certifying hundreds of psychotherapists. At the same time, he pursues his goal of bringing psychotherapy to everyone through social clinics, offering consultations at affordable prices.

Integral: Mentara is an internationally certified space dedicated to psychotherapy and well-being. How many years has it been in existence?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: This space, as a company and school, has existed since 2006, and since October of this year, we have moved to new facilities. It was born with the purpose of offering something with a structured foundation because, in these areas of development, the work sometimes suffers from a lack of certification and accreditation. That has always been my goal: to have a foothold in the system so I can take care of it – it's not all bad, but there's a lot that needs attention – and at the same time, to have the freedom to do what I believe in. So, this school-clinic emerged in 2006, already with the necessary national and international accreditations, to offer the people who seek us something diverse and alternative, but at the same time, with a strong structure, both academically and transpersonally.

I often tell my students that I wish they had a language, first for themselves, and then to share with the world, in which they could speak with someone who works in psychiatry, who works in spirituality, with someone who works in neuroscience—basically, so that they could have an integrative approach.

Integral: Why Mentara?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Mentara emerged as a need to transform our existing name, which was much more classic – Center for Somatic Psychotherapy – and which was wonderful for the time it lasted, into something more comprehensive. Mentara is a word that can be said in any language, it has no direct translation, it combines mind and air, which speaks of breathing, which is how all body psychotherapy began – with the observation of breathing. In fact, everything in life begins with breathing: the first thing we do is inhale and the last is exhale. Therefore, Mentara arises from a simple combination – I love simple things – between mind, consciousness, and air.

Integral: Why did you decide to come to Portugal?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: I've been in Portugal since 1994, I married a Portuguese man, that's how love is, isn't it? When I met my first husband in 1990, I was 19 years old – very adventurous – and I thought it would be interesting to experience other cultures, and I really liked Portuguese culture. So, I decided to come here and I don't regret it at all, it's a very kind country. That's how I started my career, building it from a very young age.

Integral: At that time, was he already practicing psychotherapy?

“"Portugal needed a school with a backbone in the field of somatics."”

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Yes, I've always been a psychologist, always dedicated to psychotherapy. I've done a lot of training in NLP, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetics, biodynamics, biosynthesis, naturopathy, homeopathy, and osteopathy. At the time, I was already working with therapeutic groups, but since clinical work is very solitary, I also went to conferences, taught classes – I did a lot of things – and I realized that there was a lack, in Portugal, of a school with a backbone in the area I was working in, which was the somatic approach. Since there wasn't a school dedicated to the entire body-oriented, bioenergetic, and biosynthesis aspect – which were great inspirations for me – I decided to create one. I started to give space to what the school and the clinic are, to give internships to students, to carry out a whole process that took its time, until 2006, but, let's say, the school has been functioning since 1999, only, until 2006, it functioned in a more free way – the teachers came from outside, we arranged the hotels, the rooms, in other words, it didn't yet have a structure like it does today.

Integral: Could it be said that Maria del Mar was a pioneer in the field of holistic health in Portugal?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: I think I'm not the only one, obviously, there are more people who do this, but to really combine psychotherapy with the body, with medicine, with the transpersonal aspect, I can say that I was one of the first, but I don't narcissistically aspire to have a podium of anything, I'm not interested in that at all. What I am interested in is doing something interesting – we are all going to die, we all reach a finitude in this existence – therefore, more than considering myself a pioneer, I want to consider myself a person who helps people, in fact, to get somewhere.

“"Medicine needs us and we need medicine."”

Integral: But she blazed the trail and in that respect was a pioneer.

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Yes, in terms of providing structure, credibility, and creating a bridge to bring seriousness to this area, which was sometimes considered – and still is – strange, alternative, yes. It's not alternative, it's complementary. You can say what you want. Medicine needs us and we need medicine, so yes, we can say that, in that sense, it's complementary.

Integral: At what point in your life did this desire to look at human beings as a whole arise?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: I've dedicated myself to this since I was very young. I don't have the story of people who have a path, a profession, something happens in their lives, they want to change and then they embark on another profession. I've always had this desire, this vision; I don't remember myself any other way. In fact, when I was very little – and didn't yet understand certain things – I remember wanting to build bridges. I remember reading strange books; my father was a writer, very cultured, and he really opened my mind. I had access to books about everything at home. Since I didn't adapt very well in adolescence, it wasn't very easy for me. I spent a lot of time alone, reading and trying to understand the world, and because it was difficult for me to adapt, this gave me a wonderful time to look at myself and realize that everything is connected. So, what I found was to complement, expand, and teach me what was already inside me.

“"Self-knowledge begins with a healthy moment of selfishness."”

Integral: Did she start out as a self-taught individual?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Yes, and like anyone else, I think we have to be humbled to understand all this: we are all wounded souls. It was a bit like the story of Chiron, the centaur who, according to Greek mythology, was a healer who was once wounded and spent his whole life trying to heal his wound – something that never fully happens – but, while trying to find a cure, he found himself, learned to know himself better and to overcome himself. He was much richer for what he found along the way than for the healing of his own wound. So, to understand myself, to understand the world – I think (self-)knowledge begins with a healthy selfish moment – I started to get interested in these topics and then the possibility arose to share it and to be able to help others as a therapist.

“Mentara trains professionals and has a social clinic that serves people at low cost (…) the world has become very individualistic. It is necessary to give, collaborate, create community, help others”

Integral: Has Mentara been successful in fulfilling its mission of bringing psychotherapy to everyone?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: I think so. I always say that Mentara is like my fourth child. I have three children, and Mentara is like the fourth.

Mentara aims to train professionals and also has a social clinic that serves people at low cost. In other words, we guarantee internships for our students who then establish their own practices – it gives me immense joy that they have a professional future here, especially if they do good work – and, at the same time, they attend to people who come to us seeking help, for a symbolic price, much lower than the market price. These people can be accompanied by our colleagues, both privately and through the social clinic, through which we provide a service to the community.

Therefore, my goal is to train people who make a difference in the world, in society, in groups, in their different capacities, who touch people and, at the same time, help those who seek us out, because not everyone wants to be a psychotherapist. We have a very large clinic, with about 50 therapists. It's low-cost therapy, but with supervision. It is based on this therapy and the hours of service that our students obtain their diploma at the end of the course. They have to give a lot to be able to receive not only accreditation but also to understand that the world – which has become very individualistic – requires giving, collaborating, creating community, and helping others.

“"The goal of Psychotherapy, as a field, is to one day become an independent profession."”

Integral: When you talk about training professionals, are you referring to people who already have a degree in Psychology but want to specialize in Somatic Psychotherapy?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: We have national and European accreditation. The goal of Psychotherapy, as a field, is to one day become an independent profession, as Psychology once was, separating from Medicine. It's a process, but at the moment it's a specialization that lasts about five years. It involves almost three thousand hours of very solid training, personal transformation, and knowledge acquisition. Therefore, the entry requirements are a bachelor's degree, which can be in Psychology, Medicine, or Nursing, but people who don't have a degree in these areas, with a very concrete curriculum and an interview, can also apply, although they will then have to take some separate, ad hoc exams in psychopathology, developmental theory, and diagnostic techniques to be able to use clinical language. If they pass the interview, they can access the European diploma. What we want is for them to be mature individuals, obviously over 23 years old, who aim to undertake an extraordinary journey in which, in addition to the academic component, they themselves will be the subject of their work. It is a training very focused on the development of awareness, of the body, of what one has to give and also learning to give to others, but where the student is the main object of study.

Integral: How many people have graduated over these 20 years?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Hundreds. We have students here, in Spain, and in Brazil.

Integral: Who are the teachers working with you on your team? Are they from a wide variety of fields?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Yes, they are people from various fields. We have psychologists, psychotherapists, doctors. Some of them were even my students for a while. I love scouting for talent, I love it; if they grow, I grow. We all grow. So, it's a multidisciplinary team, but above all, they are people with very solid training and dedication.

“"The world has changed, but the body hasn't."”

Integral: Is serious training necessary in the field of caring for people?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Without a doubt, and that's what I think is missing because the path of humankind is to question oneself, to question what is happening. The world has changed, but the body hasn't changed; it's still moving slowly. Training is really needed on how to care, how to give, but also on the student's own well-being; self-learning is extremely important. A training where the student is passive hasn't made sense to me for many years. They have to collaborate, they have to do therapy, supervision, work on all the topics. This thing about memorizing is very important – I also love to read – it's fundamental, but much more needs to be done than that, and there are few schools doing it in the world.

“"Simply taking books home and taking exams is incredibly unproductive."”

Integral: Is this the teaching method that distinguishes Mentara?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Without a doubt. One thing we do here is that there's a lot of study, but also a lot of practice from day one: students begin to listen to others, to listen to themselves, to meditate, to observe themselves, to do individual psychotherapy. We have an integrated system where people, when they enter, enter to do deep self-development and deep study, and for that, we give them the necessary skills and tools. It's not just about taking books home and taking exams; that's absurdly unpedagogical. The exams here are dynamic, they are authentic immersions; there are monographs, there are research papers, there is sharing among colleagues, there are retreats, there are trips together. It's very important to realize that the way of teaching and receiving needs to be integrated; we don't just learn cognitively, we learn because we are touched and because we touch others, because we are affected and we take that home, into our lives; what is absorbed becomes experienced.

Integral: Should there be regulation in this area?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: The Portuguese Federation of Psychotherapy (FEPSI), which I founded with other colleagues, has been fighting for several years for the regulation of the somatic psychotherapist profession. This is an area that includes the body but also other psychotherapies – there are more than 21 modalities – and which is not yet regulated in Portugal. There is a struggle, similar to when doctors didn't want psychologists to be professionals. Now, it is the psychologists – who have their reasons – who don't want non-psychologists to be psychotherapists, but I believe it's a matter of time. For me, as a psychologist and psychotherapist, what needs to exist is not just a psychologist or psychotherapist, but a sufficiently solid training in psychotherapy to provide seriousness, adequate care, ethics, and a structured training to truly help people. Regulation will allow us to continue offering all of this, with the very high standards of the Psychotherapy Society and the World Council for Psychotherapy. Sometimes we need to explain to people – and even to many fellow psychologists – that a solid training in psychotherapy, which requires many years of study and dedication, is one thing, and a weekend course, where there is no dedication, understanding, or a process of excellence in developing good professionals, is quite another. Regulation is necessary, and that is what we do at Mentara – a five-year course – and we work together with the Portuguese Federation of Psychotherapy and also with the European Association of Psychotherapy.

Integral: What difficulties have you encountered in achieving regulation of psychotherapy as a profession?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: The difficulties stem from a lack of understanding, because often people don't know what a psychologist is, let alone a psychotherapist. Mental health and its processes are difficult to explain because we live in a society of productivity, consumption, giving our best, and leadership. At FEPSI, we spoke with politicians to explain the difference between psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy, to tell them that we are not witches – nothing like that – and they had no idea. Many were surprised and delighted. Therefore, it is a process that is not regulated, on the one hand, due to a lack of understanding, and on the other, because there are opposing forces, especially from the Order of Psychologists, which feels threatened – instead of seeing this as an asset, something we can work on together – and exerts a lot of pressure to be the ones coordinating and leading within psychology, when this is an area that has been functioning since 1994/1995. In the European Association of Psychotherapy (EAP), we are a group of thousands of people, spread across several countries, with schools of psychotherapy, who have long since reached this conclusion. Furthermore, we have the Strasbourg Code of Law, which states that anyone who is neither a psychologist nor a doctor can be a psychotherapy professional, provided they are enrolled in a school with high teaching standards.

Integral: How is that the case for you?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: As is the case with our organization, which has even higher standards than the EAP. But, in fact, the biggest obstacle, besides the lack of awareness, is the Order of Psychologists itself, which doesn't know us. I have invited psychologists from the Order to come here and understand what we do, and when they come, they are delighted. When you don't know something, you get a feeling of threat. So, there is a war, in a way political and also economic, because I feel they feel threatened, but we have FEPSI as a dialogue partner and we hope they will have a greater open mind – I think that will happen in the future – not so that they regulate us, but so that they don't prevent us from regulating ourselves. We don't want psychologists to regulate us. What we want is for them not to prevent regulation and for them to be our partners, because we are not against them, but they are somewhat against us.

Integral: Is Maria del Mar the president of FEPSI?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: No, I'm no longer in a leadership position; I'm the national delegate for the European Association of Psychotherapy – I'm the European representative here and one of the founders of the Portuguese Federation of Psychotherapy.

Integral: In which countries is regulation already in place?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: In Malta and Ireland, the remaining cases are still in process.

“"The psychologist works a lot on behavior, on what is visible, and the psychotherapist works on what is deeper."”

Integral: What is the difference between what a psychologist does and what a psychotherapist does?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Beyond what they actually do, it's also about how a psychologist is trained, as they have little clinical practice. It's more of a study-based job; individual psychotherapy isn't mandatory. Therefore, in a way – I felt this myself during my training – a psychologist knows many theories, is capable of making some kind of diagnosis, it's like a general practitioner who can rule things out and run tests – and that can undoubtedly make a difference – but a psychotherapist is someone who accompanies the person in the unconscious process, in consciousness, in the body, going much deeper, to the level of what's happening, it's not just behavioral. The psychologist works a lot on behavior, on what is visible, and the psychotherapist works on what is much deeper, on consciousness, on the unconscious, on values, on the organic part, on how the person gets sick, how they don't get sick, what breathing mechanisms they have, on body language, on transpersonal language, on systems language, that is, they have a very solid training to go deeper. The goal is not to reduce symptoms, but to create a life path, which is very different from working with visible behavior.

Integral: Where does the psychiatrist come in?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: A psychiatrist is a medical doctor; they practice medicine. When a person's symptoms disturb them to such an extent that they cannot lead a normal life, then a psychiatrist may be needed. We also integrate this into our school. I am not against medication, I am against excessive medication. I believe that to medicate a person, they must be suffering a great deal. The psychiatrist intervenes, using drugs, to regulate the person's chemical balance and help them reduce symptoms that may be unbearable, hindering their ability to work or sleep, and preventing them from leading a normal life.

“"A person's vision cannot be piecemeal. I don't go to the doctor with a liver complaint and leave my head or my heart at home."”

Integral: Returning to Mentara, your school approaches the person as a whole, it has a holistic view of the human being.

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Yes, without a doubt. In fact, it was one of the things that struck me from a very early age: we can't work with a person solely based on what they think, say, or emotionally express. We can't ignore why they get cancer, or have pain, or have vision or skin problems, and what usually happens to them when they're more stressed, what triggers more explosive emotions, why they restrain themselves, why they express themselves, why they have that tone of voice, why they dress that way, why they have that gesture, what their family is like, their origin, their culture, how they relate to the transpersonal, to death, to life. What can we know about their biology? I love Biology; I did a PhD in Psychosomatics and Neural Biology to add to all this knowledge. Therefore, understanding a person can't be piecemeal. I don't go to the doctor with a liver complaint and leave my head or my heart at home. I go with my liver, with my heart. So, it's very important that the doctor asks me how my life is going, but he doesn't. I can't go to a psychologist to complain that I have problems with my mother-in-law and have him not ask me what my values are, not work with me on breathing, on the body, not understand biology, attachment, safe spaces, trauma. Therefore, human beings are very complex, and including everything is simpler than it seems. We have to be attentive.

“"It is not known whether the body contains the soul or the soul contains the body, but it is the body that embodies the embrace, the anguish, the anger."”

Integral: Does the body speak?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Undoubtedly.

Integral: How does the body communicate with us?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: The body speaks what the mind lies about. The mind lies. The body doesn't lie. The body is constantly telling us how we feel: when we get more irritated, when we're in a place where we don't feel well, when we have a coughing fit in a meeting, which is a way of telling us that we're hearing something we don't want to hear and can't swallow. We have unconscious movements in our bodies, like children when, for example, they are very irritated and kick their legs because they want to run away at that moment, but they can't. The body is constantly telling us how we feel in the world. When I'm sad, I put my hand on my chest. When I forget something, I put my hand on my head. The body is always talking to us, and it's not known whether the body contains the soul or the soul contains the body, but it is the body that embodies the embrace, the anguish, the anger. At every moment things are happening inside us, and illnesses are the expression of all of that.

Integral: How do they interpret body language?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: We have a training program called Psychosomatics and Epigenetics for psychotherapists. It's another training program to understand the language of symptoms. We don't perform medical interventions because that's not the objective, but we understand how the illness reaches us, what it wants to tell us, what it compels us to do and what it doesn't compel us to do. What does fibromyalgia compel a person to do? It compels them to stop and understand what's happening in their life. For example, in people with fibromyalgia, we find similar patterns: very rigid, very demanding minds, where it's very difficult for them to change the flexibility of their thinking, and their body ends up screaming – obviously, this is a very simplistic explanation, but I'm just making an analogy. For example, in people with cancer, if we observe how their life was three years before, we'll discover many triggers. It's very interesting. I've been doing this in psychosomatics with my patients for many years – it's a safe environment where their defenses are lowered – and when I ask them why they think they got sick, they all know.

Integral: And why is that?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: People say, “It was when I separated, it was when I was fired, it was when my mother got sick, it was when I lost my friend,” because that's when they pay more attention to themselves, when they look less outward and more inward. At that time, they know everything. It's when there's a shock to the body, which is unbearable, unexpected, when one lives in solitude and has no solution, when one lives in isolation, absolutely dramatically – above all, dramatically – that the body suffers an impact and has to respond. Then, it begins to produce fear, anger, the organs begin to produce excessively or stop producing things that are needed, developing illnesses. As Carl Gustav Jung said, “illness comes to heal man, it comes to tell things.” It's good that we do something about it.

“"What is not expressed becomes perverted."”

Integral: How important is it for people to experience their emotions, rather than suppress them, in the process of avoiding illness?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Emotion is energy. If a person has a very strong emotion, for example, sadness, and swallows it, doesn't speak, doesn't ask for help, doesn't take a step back to understand how they are feeling, when they don't express it, what isn't expressed becomes perverse. It's one of the first phrases students learn here: "what is not expressed becomes perverted." What is not said remains inside, disturbed. An energy that doesn't expand, that doesn't find a way to share, becomes, like any other, imploded, and there are organs that share this: sadness usually goes to the respiratory tract, anger goes more to the liver and gallbladder, the impossibility of movement and rigidity goes to the bones – in a very simple way, this is what we work on here. By not being expressed, the organism has to give a response, it has to deal with what it is unable to release, and that's when the body expresses itself and the symptoms appear.

Integral: Have Mentara and Maria del Mar—and their integrative vision of health—already helped many people?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: What brings me the most joy is seeing the thousands of people we've helped at the clinic and the school. My greatest joy is knowing that this has been happening for a long time and that so many people are still coming to us.

Integral: What transformations have you witnessed in people's lives?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: Transformations in people's relationships or jobs, where they were becoming ill and had very serious symptoms, such as hair loss and skin problems, and who began to take a different path and feel more energy, more zest for life, more eroticism. The profession is what comes to mind, but I've also seen people where what was impossible became possible, people who moved to other countries and now dedicate themselves to living in a simpler place.

I remember a patient who, with the 2008 financial crisis, the subprime mortgage crisis, lost everything: his wife, his money, and he was terrified because he was very stressed, with many issues, and he arrived here in a very dramatic situation, practically penniless – of course we treated him – for him, the world was horrible, he wanted to kill himself, he had a very strong suicidal impulse. We worked to make him understand that all crises have danger and opportunity, and little by little, he understood that everything is temporary. One day, he was sitting with his son in a garden and they bought a cheap ice cream – he who usually bought very expensive things – and then his five-year-old son said to him: “you’ve lost your age” – which was his way of telling his father that he looked younger – and added: “I love you much more now, we can do this forever”.

Integral: Are these the things that define her?

Maria del Mar Cervantes: These are things that affect me because it's about the heart, it's about opening your mind, and it's about realizing that life demands much more than it seems, but we can be much happier by being much more profound and simple.

Source: Integral