Perhaps becoming more aware of “the body in therapy” is an idea you have heard lots about in recent years and with which you agree in principle? However, as a potential therapy client or even an interested professional, you still don’t necessarily feel you have a complete hold on – why and how does the body actually matter in therapy?
I have spent the past few years immersed in this question – led both by a developing and widespread body of knowledge in Somatics, and following my own body, alone and in therapy, tracking the slow, winding journey towards making sense of the mind-body connection. Here I will share some of why this topic is the gift that keeps on giving.
What does Science tell us?
Western science and culture (and therefore “medicine”) has for so long separated Mind from Body.
Mind-body dualism was in part a legacy of Philosopher Descartes in the 1600s: the idea that the mind is separate to matter (the body). These ideas laid the foundations for Western healthcare systems which saw ‘doctors’ treat bodies and ‘therapists’ focus on minds. While there is little question that medical science has done incredible things to understand and treat “illness”, this separation has also undoubtedly limited potential for developing our understanding of the role of the mind in health, the body in wellbeing and all that comes in-between.
Psychological Therapy and the body
As a consequence, psychological therapy has had what can only be described as a ‘top down’ bias, emphasising mental processes and minimising the ‘bottom up’ processes (feeling and affect) emanating from our bodies.
Polyvagal Theory, developed by Stephen Porges, provides a modern map of the autonomic nervous system and a new understanding of the mind-body connection which places body feelings as central to our moment-to-moment experiences.
“The full range of experience, from trauma to joy, shows up in the body, and the autonomic nervous system tells this story” Dana, 2018.

Executive summary: it isn’t ALL about the thinking, people. For years, in fact, the wise knowing of somatics, and more recently, mainstream science has your back when it comes to “trusting your gut”, “listening to your body” and being led by sense and intuition. It’s WAY more about the feels than they’d have had us believe all this time.
Moreover, the way we look after ourselves and others around us significantly impacts our WHOLE health: physically, mentally, spiritually and relationally. Our minds influence our bodies via a series of chemical, biological and psychological processes that often result in a dramatic and immediate physiological change.
So HOW does the body connect to the mind?
Thinking, remembering, fantasising, feeling, believing, expecting, fearing, anticipating…. you can easily generate a response in the body. We already know this to be true:
🍋 Mouth-watering when you imagine biting into fresh lemon.
😢Tears rolling when you remember a lost loved one.
☺️Blushed cheeks when you recall that thing you said once in an interview
🦋 butterflies in your tummy when you play through an important scenario
❤️Sexual arousal. No extra detail required.
This communication between mind and body is happening all day long, mostly completely below awareness. If you’re tuned in to its messages, your body does a pretty good job of telling you what it needs, via cues such as: feed me thoughtfully and regularly, give me lots of water, take me outside as much as possible, allow me to move, play, rest, socialise, love and nurture me, help me to be a comfortable temperature, keep me safe. When conditions aren’t right for your body, and the usual hints it gives you, like yawns, shivers and aches don’t seem to be getting the message across, most bodies do have a way of ramping it up in order to be heard.
How does this knowledge inform the therapy field?
The science of traumatology and therapeutics has come a long way in the past decade. Along with the vastly developing science of Somatics and our understanding of the nervous system, there are a number of equally critically important academic fields offering therapists and humans hope for healing and wholeness.
As a psychologist I have been broadly aware of these areas since my undergraduate psychology degree 20 years ago, but no one theoretical framework has ever offered me a lens through which to hold them together in a coherent, organised structure, allowing me to integrate a wide range of knowledge and clinical experience with one guiding principle….
Until….
Therefore, I am beyond grateful to the team at Beyond Healing https://connectbeyondhealing.com/ for developing and delivering the finest quality training, therapy, consultation and community over the past few years. This groups’ exquisite attention to scientific rigor and human complexity has gifted me the most perfect opportunity to expand on pre-existing knowledge of attachment, neurodevelopment, polyvagal theory and the wider field of Somatics, and draw on these enormous areas of knowledge and wisdom into a completely accessible model for case conceptualization (formulation) and practical use in the therapy room, with the therapist-client relationship right at the center, just where it belongs.
Somatic Integration and Processing (SIP)
Their Somatic Integration and Processing model explores how suffering (physical/ mental/ spiritual distress) occurs as a consequence of a dysregulated nervous system, and the strategies we develop throughout our lives in the pursuit of balance and safety.
What this looks and feels like in the room
This isn’t another competing therapeutic modality, or even a new theory – it’s a bringing together of the prominent scientific knowledge and wisdom to offer a succinct way to organise and direct therapy, regardless of what healing modality or therapeutic framework you use. For me, one if its greatest gifts is the direction and specificity it provides when a client comes to therapy and wishes to focus on one problem or issue, but (like most humans), presents with a long and complicated history. SIP guides us to look with a magnifying glass at the problem, and ensure we are considering the following critical angles: attachment and neurobiological; Somatic and body-focussed and finally explicit memory and experience. Drawing on the new science of memory reconsolidation, SIP walks us towards a plan of action.
Moreover, the broader SIP concepts help us both (client and therapist) hold onto our humanity – by celebrating the beauty and value in the space between us as a space like no other – completely individual to the pair that we make; giving us permission to be entirely ourselves there.
This means that since I have been using SIP, I have opened up with flexibility to be myself authentically in therapy – attend to my own body as well as the clients, not just out of respect to it, but actually as a tool to learning and healing with the client. Obviously the extent to which I do this changes depending on every individual I work with, and takes nothing from the emphasis and respect I pay to professional and ethical boundaries, but it allows me to be me, rather than the objective “therapist” that sometimes folks expect to meet, which has the unfortunate bi-product of holding them firmly stuck in the objective “client” role.
As a therapist you can learn more about SIP and take the three-day foundation training by visiting https://connectbeyondhealing.com/. Or begin by listening into some of the intro conversations on the Notice That podcast https://emdr-podcast.com/.
As a client if you would like to learn more I would direct you to another podcast written by the SIP team, https://beyondtraumapodcast.com/ – where all of the key concepts are discussed in lots more detail with reference to accessing therapy.
Or, I warmly invite you to feel what I mean by making contact and discussing your needs.
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