Bodymind - Interrelated Concepts

Interrelated Concepts

The present day understanding of bodymind both in a psychological, therapeutic as well as in a medical sense is that:

• The body, mind, emotions and spirit are dynamically interrelated.
• Each time a change is introduced at one level, it has a ripple effect throughout the entire system.

Bodymind therapy combines the strengths of "talk" therapy with bodywork, such as touch, postural alignment, or movement education and exercise to increase body awareness, also known as mind-body or somatic therapy. It helps people become deeply aware of their bodily sensations as well as their emotions, images and behavior. Clients become more conscious of how they breathe, move, speak, and where they experience feelings in their bodies.

The body holds all experience - including physical stress and emotional injury, as well as delights and exuberant experiences - stored in the body cells which informs and directs here and now responses to life events through the stored pattern of expectations and "rules about reality" acquired so far. In a bodymind therapy process, clients can become aware of and choose to change patterns of expectation and limitation that are more difficult to connect with so directly on the level of focusing on the mind alone. Unacknowledged feelings from past experiences are stored in the body and then unconsciously have a powerful effect on who you are, how you behave, and how you feel about yourself. Using the body as the gateway to awareness, buried feelings and memories can surface, freeing from old patterns and energy blocks that keep us feeling stuck and unable to live life to its fullest. Our mind may avoid certain emotions and memories, but our body remembers it all.

Bodymind therapy is a psychotherapeutic process that works on the relationship between the body and the emotional processes of the client, and is intended to address deep-seated and old patterns of relating to self and other, that are not easily accessible to change through talk therapy alone.