Body-Based Practices
UNDERSTANDING BODY-BASED OR SOMATIC THERAPIES
“Every thought, feeling, and sensation within your body throughout the day offers you an opportunity to love. Good or bad, whatever you experience is a lesson or a reminder to connect with love.”
― Aletheia Luna, Awakened Empath
BODY-BASED PSYCHOTHERAPY AND HOLISTIC HEALING MODALITIES
Professionals at The Body-Based Mindfulness Center approach healing and recovery from the foundation that the body, mind, and spirit are intricately connected. Our mental health providers bring the physical body into focus within your therapy session and our holistic providers work fully to support you in your commitment to getting in touch with and reigniting a healthy relationship your body through practices such as dance, massage, yoga, self-defense, etc.
What does Body-Based mean?
The term body-based refers to active and experiential practices that work directly with the physical body and its connection to mind, mood, movement, and relationships. Body-based practitioners guide and also educated clients on how to use their breath, track sensations, engage facial expressions, experiment with emerging gestures or impulses to move, notice imagery and language, identify energy flow, and more.
Body-based can describe an approach to psychotherapy or can refer to touch therapies, bodywork, and other holistic healing approaches. Body-oriented modalities that engage some form of touch or manual pressure to your body could include massage or reflexology. Other body-oriented or somatic therapies might include movement and bodily expression such as in dance, tai chi, or self-defense.
The Body-Based Mindfulness Center offers:
Body-Based Psychotherapy and somatic therapy interventions:
Body-based psychotherapy, also referred to as body-oriented or somatic psychotherapy involves increased awareness of the impact of experience on the current bodily state. Mental and emotional states are said to generate from the body and also to be held, experienced, and expressed through the body. All providers at The Body-Based Mindfulness Center utilize trauma-informed, mindfully focused, and body-oriented interventions in each therapy session.
Our providers are able to help clients cultivate the capacity to pay more attention to the physical reactions of anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic illness, etc. Traditional approaches to counseling often focus only on retelling the story of events that occurred in the past; focusing on thoughts or behaviors and how to change them, discussing current work or relationship problems, etc. Many clients have found these approaches simply haven’t worked because thoughts and behaviors are only part of the problem and just talking about these things week after week does not cause changes at the deep body-mind level.
Anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic-illness, and other conditions that bring people to therapy are also problems of emotional dysregulation, distressing bodily sensations, faulty perception of time and space (ie. flashbacks, dissociation), so it makes sense to bring the physical body and its experience into the practice of counseling and mental health. Our mental health providers invite clients to actively practice somatic skills and engage in therapeutic interventions that address habitual patterns. We focus on habits that reflect resilience and health as well as those that have become stuck or problematic.
Click HERE to request an appointment with one of our mindfulness-informed, body-based mental health providers.
Why add Body-Based Healing Modalities to your trauma recovery journey?
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health lists the following practices as beneficial for mental health conditions. The NCCIH reports that the following healing modalities are growing in popularity: massage, meditation, mindfulness, movement therapies, relaxation experiences such as breathing exercises, guided imagery, and progressive muscle relaxation, t’ai chi, qigong, yoga, healing touch, etc.
We know that not all things therapeutic happen in mental health therapy. We also know that mental health therapy has limits and is meant to come to an end eventually. That is why we invite clients to engage in body-based healing modalities that have the potential to become the foundation of what we call forward-facing wellness or self-care habits. These habits have been shown to improve mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.
Although those with mental health related symptoms inherently know that massage, yoga, and other holistic and complementary healing modalities are shown to improve one’s wellbeing, we also know that the fluorescent lights, the loud music, and the overabundance of people can be upsetting, triggering, and overwhelming. We understand that people struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic illness, etc. often find it too activating to go to a gym, join a dance or yoga class at a studio, commit to a 10-week self-defense class, attend spiritual functions at church, a temple, etc., or go to a spa for a relaxing massage. That is why we provide all of these options through our partnership with The Body-Based Mindfulness Center.
The holistic providers at The Body-Based Mindfulness Center utilize trauma-informed, mindfully focused, and body-oriented interventions in each healing session.
Click HERE to learn more about and sign up for a trauma-informed holistic modality: