The mind and the body are not separate; physiology and psychology are deeply interconnected. Age-old wisdom has always intuited this, and yet in modern Western culture a deep split has grown between the body and the mind and created a false dualism. As a result, many of us tend to overidentify with our thoughts and minds and have become disconnected from our bodies.

 

The modalities offered at BodyMind Healing aim to redress the balance by bringing the body back into the picture. Working with the body-mind as a whole is a powerful gateway into alleviating physical and psychological problems and comes with many benefits.

 

The body is a source of inherent wisdom and intelligence.

Whether it’s a tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat, a jitteriness in the legs or a softness in the belly, the sensations coming from within the body are all valuable feedback about our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states. In our everyday language we often reference this body knowledge with phrases such as ‘I can feel it in in my bones’ or having a ‘gut feeling’ about something. Now neuroscience is providing evidence that this is not just a metaphorical truth. For example, it’s recently been discovered that there are neural networks in both the heart and the guts, with the latter being so extensive, it’s been nicknamed our ‘second brain’. Turning your attention inward and noticing what is happening in your body is the first step to living a more embodied reality. It’s a simple practice that underpins all of the body-orientated modalities at BodyMind Healing. It can help you understand what you are feeling and needing and connect with yourself more deeply. Often this is a source of raw data and a direct knowing that is more reliable because it hasn’t passed through the highly conditioned and socialised filters of the mind. It isn’t what you think you feel (or should be feeling) but what you are actually experiencing without the mental judgement or interpretation.

 

The body provides a more direct access to working with unconscious material.

Many everyday problems - like anxiety, depression and relationship difficulties - originate in our early life experiences and attachment issues. These took place before we developed language and were not embedded in memory through words but were somatised, that is, held in the body. This is why traditional talking therapies don’t always get to the root of the matter. Body-orientated psychotherapy, Conscious Connected Breathwork and certain forms of embodied movement, however, are all effective ways that can address difficulties at a level that are not accessible through words, including pre-natal experiences, birth trauma and otherwise deeply unconscious material.

 

Trauma treatment is often most effective when worked ‘bottom-up’ through the body.

New research into trauma and neuroscience has demonstrated that trauma has a physiological impact as well as a psychological one and changes the way the brain and nervous system operate. Somatically-orientated approaches to trauma outlined in pioneering books such as Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger, Babette Rothschild’s The Body Remembers and Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score all emphasise the importance of putting the body front and centre of effective trauma treatment. Instead of addressing trauma ‘top-down’ through the mind, a ‘bottom-up’ approach starts with bodily-based interventions. It pays attention to what is happening in the here and now on the level of sensations and movements, then connecting with feelings, and only later to understanding and meaning. In trauma-informed breathwork or Somatic Trauma Therapy, a client may be supported to allow suppressed bodily reactions to fear such as trembling to be discharged or physical impulses that were unconscious or not possible during the traumatic experience to be enacted and completed. Releasing incomplete responses to trauma that have been stuck in the body and kept the client in a constant state of threat (fight/flight/freeze), can help the client’s nervous system register that the trauma is over and start to reset.

 

Healing can take place without the mind needing to understand what is happening.

In such a mind-dominated world, it’s an under-appreciated truth that we don’t always have to consciously understand ourselves for change to occur. It’s possible for the mind, at least in in it’s intellectual capacity to analyse and process information, to be bypassed therapeutically. Generally it seems to be the case that for physical or psychological relief to be found, feelings do need to be consciously felt but working directly with and through the body means that sometimes there is no story attached to this process. In breathwork sessions, I have repeatedly witnessed clients report powerful shifts in their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states without it being consciously connected to a particular memory or narrative. By letting yourself simply feel your sensations and emotions and let them move out through the body, they can transform. All that is required of the conscious mind is to get out the way and let the body do what it knows how to do. Embodied movement practice supports this somatic process well: the body is moving, a rhythm is being surrendered to, a gesture is being made, and through this something is being resolved. The body gets to reorganise, new neural pathways are being created and a fresh way of being can unfold.

 

Embracing the body-mind connection opens up the repertoire of communication channels available.

While talking and using words to express and communicate our thoughts and feelings are undeniably powerful, they tend to be overvalued in Western culture (and the traditional therapeutic approaches that have grown out of it). Talking has disadvantages too; it tends to keep us in our theories about things and can be used defensively to distance ourselves from being in the present moment with intense feelings. Working with non-verbal channels such as sensation, movement, breath, vocalisation and imagery can support a more spontaneous, creative, playful and cathartic process. In the psychotherapy approaches I offer, using words to help clients get in touch with their feelings and help them make sense of their experiences plays a central role in healing. But when the body is invited into the conversation as well, therapy can go even deeper.

 

Whichever route we take, when we let our bodies do the talking we may be surprised at what they have to say. Old, buried feelings come to the surface and emotional blocks held in the body can soften and melt. Impulses that we have learned to inhibit can be experienced, allowing us to engage with with our deepest longing and needs. Strengths and resources emerge that we didn’t know existed. We remember we are, in fact, a body-mind and that this is where our wholeness and our aliveness lies.