Today, I expand on my earlier postings on body awareness as a tool for addressing emotional pain. I’ve learned many important and enlightening things during my treatment sessions, which I share here…and yes, they are helping.
- “Emotion Focus Therapy” – Becoming more aware of the complexity and nature of feelings.
- “Mindfulness” – Noticing what you are feeling and where you are feeling certain emotions in the body.
- Emotion Focus Therapy and Mindfulness go hand in hand. You have to be mindful of the body to identify what emotions are present.
- Identifying emotions combined with body awareness helps get to the core of issues and feelings. Understanding emotions helps to realize what needs changing so they don’t persist and perpetuate a problem in the body.
- Body awareness helps address and process emotions, and gives the associated energy an outlet.
- Gradual exposure to an emotion, such as with body awareness, will lessen the intensity and lead to a greater understanding of what is happening.
- Emotions can motivate people to take action and address them.
- Every emotion has a corresponding physical manifestation. This means that there is some sensation in the body occurring at the same time as the emotion (“I’m so sad my heart hurts.” “I’m so angry my stomach is churning” etc.). There can also be a chemical change in the body. Hence:
- The mind and body are connected. They are in harmony to protect you and are not fighting against each other. “Dualism is dead!”
- Remember, “It’s natural to have emotional ups and downs,” per Dr. Andrew Weil on Spontaneous Happiness. More
"The part can never be well unless the whole is well." -- Plato
