As you read this, draw your attention to your jaw. Are you aware of any sensations? Are there areas of tension? Does your jaw feel tight or relaxed? Now imagine releasing any tension. What would that feel like? Next, bring your awareness back to your breathing and back to this article.
This may seem familiar. You might have scanned areas of your body before, checked where you may be carrying tension and been prompted to see if you can release it. This is just one example of approaches to build awareness of mind and body – and the connection between the two.
Exercises like this involve recognising physical sensations, how your body is feeling, what it is experiencing, and even exploring the physiological connection to the psychological. As you scan your body, you may notice emotions – perhaps anxiety, stress or sadness – arising in connection to bodily tension. The idea of this connection is behind what are known as “somatic therapies”.
A focus on the mind-body connection Somatic therapies (from the Greek word for body – soma ) focus on the connection between the mind and body , which makes it different to other psychotherapies. More traditional mental health approaches, such as cognitive behaviour therapy, raise awareness of the mind and its connection to behaviours. They often use talking to explore the mind, its emotions and thoughts, and prompt people to recognise and address negative thought and behaviour patterns.
Somatic therapies, in contrast, privilege the.