my brain and

heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about

how big of a mess

I have become

eventually,

they couldn't be 

in the same room

with each other 

now my head and heart 

share custody of me

I stay with my brain 

during the week

and my heart 

gets me on weekends

they never speak to one another

- instead, they give me

the same note to pass

to each other every week 

and their notes they

send to one another always 

says the same thing:

"This is all your fault"

on Sundays

my heart complains

about how my 

head has let me down

in the past

and on Wednesday

my head lists all

of the times my 

heart has screwed

things up for me 

in the future

they blame each

other for the 

state of my life

there's been a lot

of yelling - and crying

so,

lately, I've been

spending a lot of 

time with my gut

who serves as my

unofficial therapist

most nights, I sneak out of the

window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine

and collapse on my 

gut's plush leather chair

that's always open for me

~ and I just sit sit sit sit

until the sun comes up

last evening, 

my gut asked me

if I was having a hard

time being caught 

between my heart

and my head

I nodded

I said I didn't know

if I could live with 

either of them anymore

"my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow," 

I lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

"I just can't live with

my mistakes of the past

or my anxiety about the future,"

I sighed

my gut smiled and said:

"in that case, 

you should 

go stay with your 

lungs for a while,"

I was confused

- the look on my face gave it away

"if you are exhausted about

your heart's obsession with

the fixed past and your mind's focus

on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs

there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath

and in that breath

you can rest while your

heart and head work 

their relationship out."

this morning,

while my brain

was busy reading

tea leaves

and while my

heart was staring

at old photographs 

I packed a little

bag and walked

to the door of 

my lungs

before I could even knock

she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me

she said

"what took you so long?"

by jon roedel

Sadly, the kind of split described in the poem above can be common. In stress and mental illness, people can cut off from the body to cope with their pain. In American culture, we often try to think our way through our problems to a solution. My clients are frequently confused why they can’t shift a relational dynamic or make a change in their mental health through rational thought process and cognitive analysis alone. The idea that thought, emotions, sensation and the body’s processes are interconnected is foreign. Our felt sense or lived, present experience is left out of our lives and therapy. For many hearing one’s own intuition, recognizing the body’s reactions, feeling our hearts or listening to one’s gut has been lost. 

In somatic psychotherapy, the connection between the mind and body is thought to be core to our well being. Our emotions, thoughts, sensation, even physiologic processes are seen as influencing each other and connected. This is a fact, not just a theory. Psychological studies of couples show how their heart rates and blood pressures increase when in a fight. Think about how when you get anxious you might get warm or feel your heart beating faster. These are examples of how our physiology is impacted by emotions. The reverse is also true. 

Body based therapy includes the body in the therapy as a resource and guide for clients. It can support clients to find their center, manage anxiety, resolve trauma or give access to unconscious material that needs to be addressed. Body based therapy can support clients to develop resources within themselves to work with their inner reality.  For example, the ability to find a calm baseline when their nervous system is going into a fight, flight, freeze response. Or to be able to release tension from built up emotions or past difficult experiences. Our bodies can also lead us to creative ways to find healing, solutions the mind alone doesn’t have access to. Somatic therapy puts the body and its wisdom at the center of the therapy. 

Body based therapy asks that we come home to ourselves, in the here and now. Whatever we are feeling and experiencing in the present moment, has potential to resolve our pain. The ability to change our brains (called neuroplasticity) is something that happens when we can be with a felt sense of a new experience in the here and now. A felt sense is different from recalling or remembering something, as it includes tuning into the qualities that we feel in our body and senses.

It is not in our memories of the past or future predictions that change occurs. It is in the present moment, that we can re-write a past experience. This is experiential therapy. Experiential therapy uses the present moment in therapy to offer a healing experience, bring awareness to how we are being with others and find new insights. In order to change the ways we think, feel, relate to our reality, we have to experience something new, different or unfamiliar in therapy. These new experiences plant the seeds for us to have those experiences more outside a therapeutic container. This is the heart of making change. 

Mindfulness pairs well with body based and experiential therapy. Mindfulness is simply noticing all the parts of our experience in any given moment (thoughts, feelings, sensations, impulses, memories, imagery). Body centered therapy invites the client to bring themselves present in the moment and meet whatever is present with non-judgement, perhaps even curiosity, compassion or acceptance. Strengthening this kind of awareness can have many benefits, including regulating our nervous system. There is a plethora of research on the benefits of mindfulness on mental health as well.

Breath, movement and safe therapeutic touch can also be included in body centered therapy. I work with the breath and breathing to support nervous system regulation and embodiment. I also work with safe therapeutic touch in therapy. There is a lot to say about this topic, beyond the scope of this piece. More writing about this will be coming soon.  

Living a full, embodied life requires us to feel the range of our experience and this includes an awareness of the physical reality inside our skin. As in most therapy, the goal is to liberate the client from their limitations, allowing them to fully engage in rich, satisfying lives. Living in loving and peaceful connection with our body’s wisdom increases this potential.