“The body will again become restless
Until your soul paints all its beauty
Upon the sky.”
Any experience can have an impact that gets expressed physically – a trauma can impact us in the deepest physiological ways; depression or anxiety can change how we move in the world, how we feel about ourselves can become externalized through posture. In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk explains that, “Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body”.
Mind-body psychotherapy is based on the latest findings in neuroscience and integrative health, and takes into account all aspects of a person – physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. It addresses how thoughts and emotions impact our physical health and how physical health influences thoughts, emotions and our sense of who we are. It seeks to heal the source of issues rather than simply the symptoms.
My training in yoga and Pilates has allowed me to bring mind-body knowledge and experience into my psychotherapy practice. On a practical level I often incorporate elements of meditation, mindfulness, visualization or breathwork into sessions, to support the therapeutic journey by allowing access to felt experience. On a more subtle level, as a psychotherapist I am attuned to somatic experience and response, and find this often becomes a part of the therapeutic work.
