What is Body-focused Therapy?

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The body is an amazing entity and we easily overlook it. There is much knowing, wisdom, and memory in the body. We can tap into this.

The cells of the body are intelligent and have memory. When we go through traumatic experiences, the mind may check out as a self-defensive move orchestrated by the nervous system, but the body experiences everything and remembers it. The body is the unconscious and it has what we call unconscious or implicit memory. Such memory can manifest through imagery, a body sensation, or a feeling or sense of knowing. Much information and past experience can arise from our cells, events that the mind has forgotten or walled off.

Tapping into the body with our attention, we can talk to it and the body talks to us. It talks with imagery, sensation, emotion, pain, tension, and disease.

The body also contains our feminine energy as opposed to consciousness that is masculine energy. There is a subtle difference between the two. They are equally important and, of course, they are connected. Whether we have experienced trauma or not, working with the felt sense of the body will help us to be more present and be more of who we are.

The felt sense is a deep knowing we can access in the body. It is a holistic sense of what is going on in our environment and how we experience that, which includes information from our senses. It is a deep body awareness and wisdom.

Because of traumatic experiences, the body holds much energy, emotion, and memory that need to be connected to, worked with, and liberated, so that our life-force energy may flow freely again. In terms of trauma therapy, working with the nervous system (the body) can help us complete the defensive responses that were needed but we weren’t able to complete. An inability to protect ourselves can lead to a profound loss of self and boundaries, as well as an inability to connect with life and others and to be present and act in our lives.

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