“ Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are two and one.”
- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Under the umbrella of Body-Psychotherapy there are several main psychotherapeutic approaches, which see body and mind as two interactive and equal parts of a whole being, rather than separate domains.
Our bodies are not just a vehicle for our brains, but are as fundamental to who we are, and have their own subtle intelligence. Where the brain may host vital aspects of thought, the body often holds the feeling. So Body Psychotherapy always addresses both mind and body.
Body-Psychotherapy has a long history exploring the way we hold ourselves and how our muscle formation can be affected by disruptions during different stages of early development. Over time, research in neurobiology and neuropsychology, as well as developmental psychology and other disciplines, has validated hypotheses put forward by early pioneers and shown more of the complexity and interactivity between body and mind, particularly during early development and attachment, and in understanding PTSD and trauma.
How does body psychotherapy work?
Anxiety, depression, and many other mental health difficulties have this in common - they come with an inherent difficulty in connecting with feelings, or even tolerating them. In body psychotherapy clients can come to know feelings through the body’s actual sensations, rather than ‘thinking through’ them. Supported by their therapist people can learn to recognise emotions and begin to explore or express them more safely and openly. There is a sense that we can safely survive connecting with anger, or sadness or grief, and also pleasure and joy, and let go of suppressing these. Our whole being can know this can be done. No amount of talking about fearful feelings can convince a truly frightened body that it is safe - it needs to experience the feeling of safety.
Equally, Body Psychotherapists can help clients learn to regulate emotions when feelings become too intense for comfort. Using techniques like movement, breathing or conscious shifts in posture, clients learn to move from heightened emotion towards calmer and more grounded states, or moving from feeling like powerless victims of emotion towards more grounded agency and authority in their own lives.
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”
What makes Body Psychotherapy different from other modalities?
Many psychotherapeutic approaches recognise the link between body and mind, and most aim to help clients identify what it is that is holding them back, or explore experiences that have had an impact on them. Body Psychotherapy is no different. The difference between the ‘Talking Cure’ and Body Psychotherapy lies in the idea that the body-mind connection is fundamental, not additional. The body is as important as the mind. A hypothetical example is of a client plagued by ‘feeling like a failure’. A conventional therapist might approach this with questions such as ‘why?’; ‘In what situations?’; ‘What does failure mean to you?’, and perhaps attempt to reframe the clients self-labeling towards a more positive attitude.
A Body Psychotherapist might ask; ‘How does being a failure feel?’; ‘Where can you feel this in your body?’; ‘Can you show me how failure feels?’; ‘Breathe right into the feeling - does it change? Worse? Better?’. So the client is helped to identify the physical sensation of ‘failure’, rather than stay with the label. Failure is a judgement. The feeling itself might be a tightness, sadness a sinking sensation. If the unpleasant feeling the client labels as ‘failure’ can be physically tolerated, it starts to hold less power and after quite a short time can be recognised and held when it emerges, so it can lead towards new changes, rather than trigger a familiar state of paralysis and defeat.
So in addition to understanding the origins of feelings, or reframing them in the way conventional therapy would, Body Psychotherapy uses a more process oriented approach to reach a new understanding, helping the client free themselves from the negative impact of unprocessed feelings.
“The body always leads us home…if we can simply learn to trust sensation and stay with it long enough for it to reveal appropriate action, movement insight or feeling”
What methods do body psychotherapists use?
Body Psychotherapy doesn't always involve touch. It often focuses on learning to recognise our felt sense, the feelings we are experience physically, and works therapeutically with sensation (body) and perception (mind) to integrate feeling and thinking, and release our aliveness and vitality.
Many techniques are similar to those used in other psychotherapy modalities, but with the added emphasis on the felt sense - bringing awareness or encouraging expression of emotions, tension or charge in the body. Touch can also be important in therapy, as in Biodynamic Massage.
Traditionally, Body Psychotherapy uses seven primary tools:
Language, Touch, Transference, Kinesthetic awareness (awareness of physical sensations), Restructuring (how we hold ourselves in our bodies), Emotional expression, and the Psyche-Soma (body-mind) correspondence.
As body psychotherapy can be an umbrella term for several body oriented approaches, methods and techniques can vary greatly between different styles of therapy. Some of the most common are:
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Breathwork
It can be said that to the extent we inhibit our breathing we are disconnected from the vibrancy of aliveness. Working with breath can support us connect with feeligngs, find a new emotional and energetic regulation, and help us process trauma and reconnect with a healthier sense of primacy and potency in our lives and relationships.
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Movement and Charge
This centres around working with the connections between the ‘vaso-motoric’ cycle and cycles of emotional charge and release, governing the way we process and regulate emotional energy in the body’s nervous system. Reichian thinking explores ways the human organism restricts and inhibits healthy emotional and energetic processing to manage trauma, and for the survival imperative, and how this can bring us to disconnect from the pleasurable streamings of life. Expression work through movement, dance and the voice can help restore healthy completion of emotional cycles.
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Massage
Following in the footsteps of Reich, Lowen and Boyesen, touch and massage can be used to support inner connection and presence, and help to dissolve ‘emotional armouring’, ‘deadness’, or ‘holding’ patterns in the body’s musculature. These are the physical manifestation of psychological and emotional conflicts that may have helped us survive hostile or less than ideal environments. While in the past they may have had utility they are often limiting us in the here and now.
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Body Scans, Mindfulness, Self-Awareness & Relaxation Techniques.
These are techniques that support clients to explore their felt experience in the world, find ways to regulate the nervous system more comfortably, and empower constructive change.
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Trauma and recovery
Body psychotherapists work on the principle that ‘The Body Remembers’ (Babette Rothschild, Norton 2000). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is experienced physically in the body and better treatment lies partly in understanding the workings of our physiology and learning to work with the body’s rhythms and cycles to restore self-regulation.
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Relationship in the Body; supporting people in their psycho-sexual development
With the advent of social media and constant access to comparison, coupled with the narrow definition of what constitutes beauty, body dysmorphia and general unhappiness with our bodies is an ever increasing issue. Body Psychotherapy can support a healthy challenge of these restrictive norms and assumptions, and a kinder, more diverse definition of beauty based on honouring the body. A more genuine and expansive sense of self and capacity for vibrant excitement and sexuality can emerge from this foundation.
"A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain"
— Llewelyn Powers (1926)
Many other body therapies, somatic techniques, and alternative medical disciplines also involve breath, touch and movement, and may be therapeutic, but may not involve psychotherapy in the body, and do not compare in depth and level of training required in Psychotherapy.
Training as a Body Psychotherapist involves theoretical academic requirements, several years of building skills in verbal and non-verbal communication, psychosomatics, body language training, and solid ethical boundaries, as well as developing a well-stocked metaphorical toolbox of therapeutic techniques and interventions to support clients through life changing process work.
Who can benefit from body psychotherapy?
“Traumatised people chronically feel unsafe in their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs and in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves”
This quote shows the importance of including the body in the therapeutic treatment of trauma, to help people who have long-term trauma restore a sense of safety, and move beyond ‘hiding from themselves’.
However Body Psychotherapy is not limited to the field of trauma. Anyone who would like to feel more alive and present in their life, or cultivate a better understanding of themselves, will benefit from Body Psychotherapy. Our upbringing, our sense of self or how we perceive our place in the world, affects how we relate with others, or how happily we can live in our bodies, or bear what they are telling us. The hierarchy of rationale over emotion in society teaches us to ignore the sensations we experience, and to ‘think round’ our emotions. Just as being emotional without rational thinking can be destructive, prioritising rationality and ignoring what our bodies are telling us we are feeling can lead to a joyless, empty connection with ourselves and others near us, and with the world around us.