The Body in Therapy

I spend a lot of time, both in and out of therapy, paying attention to my body and thinking about the body in general. I am fascinated by the doubleness of the body: it is both lived and felt from the inside, and, like other objects, scientifically observed from the outside. Both of these aspects of the body are crucial to our life, and my therapeutic work is all about combining them.

The Body, Scientifically: Safety and the Intelligent Animal Body 

Scientifically, contemporary trauma research has shown that our bodies are central to our emotional and psychological well-being. More specifically, our bodies are highly intelligent, and are constantly attuned to our intuitive sense of safety. In this way, our bodies are much like all other animal bodies. Imagine encountering an unfamiliar animal, be it a dog, raccoon, or bear. We have an immediate and intuitive sense of whether or not that animal is safe, scared, or aggressive. Similarly, when we encounter a person who is uneasy, anxious, or afraid, we see it in their face and body, and we feel it in our own bodies. Our bodies exude our current feelings about ourselves and the situation and are intelligently involved with the world of things and other bodies.

We are complex animals, so safety is also complex for us. A dog or a warthog may not need much to feel safe: food, shelter, and familiar beings are enough for them to have a visibly and palpably safe body. We, by contrast, live in complex societies, organized around institutions, money, and the division of labor. Thus safety for us is not just food, shelter, and friends/family; it is the balance of our bank accounts, the stability of our employment, and our sense of belonging in various communities. We are thus in a strange situation. On the one hand, we have ancient and primitive nervous systems, the same ones that all animals use to stay safe and alive. On the other hand, we use these ancient nervous systems to navigate highly nuanced social-political-economic situations. The fear of not being able to pay rent or a conflict with our boss thus can activate the same physiological reactions meant to flee, fight, or freeze in a life threatening situation. Our bodies are different from other animals in that they are both natural and cultural.

The Body, Lived from the Inside: The Felt Sense of a Safe Animal Body

The insights of trauma research are not very useful, however, unless we can learn to experience our bodies from the inside. It is vital that we learn to recognize the intelligence of our bodies, and the way they are attuned to our safety. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to recognize and feel our body’s intelligence. 

One of the main goals of therapy, I think, is to be able to recognize when we are inhabiting a safe animal body, and to be able to settle and soothe our animal bodies. (In an earlier blog post I wrote about having a ‘settled body’. I’m now exploring and enjoying the notion of having a ‘safe animal body’). When we have a safe animal body we are able to engage with others around us socially, think clearly and solve problems, and take in more details of our situation. When we have an unsafe animal body, by contrast, our perception is highly distorted, and we attend primarily to perceived threats and insecurities.

I rely heavily on somatic forms of psychotherapy that can help us learn to experience our bodies from the inside. In particular, Eugene Gendlin’s form of somatic therapy, known as Focusing, is of great interest to me. Gendlin coined the term ‘felt sense’ to describe the way our bodies have a holistic understanding of our situation, with all of its complexity and nuance. Gendlin describes the felt sense as “a special kind of internal bodily awareness… [a feeling] you do not at first recognize—it is vague and murky. It feels meaningful, but not known. It is a body-sense of meaning” (Focusing, p. 11). We may notice, for example, that a certain person or situation makes our shoulders tense up, our feet tingle, or we simply get a bad ‘vibe’ or aura about something. Learning to experience our ‘bodily felt sense’ of situations is crucial to having a safe animal body. All of the insights of trauma research and the significance of safety are meaningless unless we can learn to feel the safe animal body from the inside. Trauma researchers and biophysicists may call this ‘neuroception’, but I prefer to think in terms of the ‘felt sense’. 

Resma Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands offers a profound combination of these two perspectives. Menakem is a body-centered therapist with decades of experience and training. His book provides rich resources for developing awareness of our bodies. He shows how our body sensations and our ‘felt sense’ can cue us into feelings of safety and security that are difficult to consciously or cognitively recognize. More specifically, Menakem shows how somatic perspectives can be brought to bear on the urgent questions of white supremacy and police violence. Similarly, this talk by Seth Porges is a wonderful introduction to the intelligent nervous system that I often share with friends and clients. 

I am persuaded that attending to the body, inside and out, is essential to emotional awareness, psychological well-being, and our overall health. Scientific research into trauma and the intelligence of our bodies is vital to this understanding. But, more importantly, we must learn to feel, from the inside, our bodily felt sense of safety and well-being. Thankfully, Gendlin, Menakem, as well as many ancient wisdom traditions, can help us not only intellectually know but also experience and feel the deep wisdom of our bodies. Therapy is about many things and works in many ways. But I deeply prize the healing power of living in/with a safe animal body. 

References and Further Reading

Resma Menakem - My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Path to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, https://bookshop.org/books/my-grandmother-s-hands-racialized-trauma-and-the-pathway-to-mending-our-hearts-and-bodies-978194209447

Eugene Gendlin - Focusing, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/666175.Focusing

Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-the-score

Riley Paterson is a Self Space Seattle therapist who works with individuals who are healing from past traumas; who are looking to recover a sense of wholeness in the face of depression and demoralization, and those working to get a handle on anxiety. He is also interested in questions around queerness and/or gender.