Exploring Body Psychology: Key Insights for 2024

Body psychology or somatic psychology aims to develop the body and mind simultaneously. Most importantly, it focuses on discovering and releasing the body, mind, and spirit. The combination of bodywork and psychology, which is body-centered, helps one accomplish this purpose of body psychology.

One important aspect of body psychology is body psychotherapy. As you can infer, this is founded on the basics and principles of body and mind.

Somatic touching, breathing, and other movement techniques address body psychotherapy’s main characteristics or techniques.

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Important Concepts of Body Psychology

Bodymind is the fundamental concept of somatic or body psychology and psychotherapy. So what does it represent? It illustrates the integration of thoughts, emotions, physical experiences, and sensations.

When doing the treatment, all the parts of a persona can be accessed from various treatment points for an effective and holistic curing approach.

Character and armoring: Armoring is a crucial point developed by Reich. He discovered that people tend to establish somatic armor or muscle tension when they need to protect themselves from physical and emotional pain.

The armoring leads to the development of character, according to Reich. He introduced five character types when he was developing the assessment.

Energy: This idea of energy implies the storing and releasing of energy and its impact on one’s personality, interactions, and experiences.

The treatment focuses on the entering, flowing, and releasing energy, pulsation and contraction of muscle, charge, and discharge of power from the body.

Body Memory: This is a debatable topic in somatic psychology or psychotherapy. However, many body psychotherapists believe that when memories cannot be processed through talk therapy, different traumatic memories can be released through bodywork.

Body or Somatic Therapy Techniques

When seeking treatment of body psychotherapy, the patient may find themselves going through the following sessions,

Talk therapy session
Body language reading

When the problems have been identified, the therapists will implement treatments accordingly. The treatment is selected based on the personality of the patient. Some of the techniques are:

Dialogue therapy
Movement or dance therapy
Somatic experiencing
Centering
Grounding
Breathwork
Contact and Bodywork

Body Psychology: Why do We Need Body Psychotherapy?

So, body psychotherapy is a holistic approach that ties the body and mind as one.

It is believed that many issues, such as traumatic or hurtful thoughts or memories, could impact the overall well-being of people, which is held on the body.

This can be observed through sleep deprivation problems, headaches, chronic pain, and fatigue. All these problems would also affect daily functions such as relationships, mood, and intimacy.

Therefore, in such a context, body or somatic psychotherapy could help these people affected by negative emotions or trauma to release their tension and thus feel positive.

Institutions That Offer Body Psychotherapy Sessions

Several health professionals around the world offer body psychotherapy. Some popular institutions where the Programs are available are:

International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis
Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute
Institute of Core Energetics
Hakomi Institute

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Universities That Offer Body Psychotherapy

Somatic Psychology, MA, California Institute of Integral Studies
Counselling MCouns, PgCert, PgDip, University of Edinburgh
Therapeutic Counselling MSc, University of Greenwich
Dance Movement Psychotherapy – MA, University of Roehampton
Dance Movement Psychotherapy (MA), University of Derby
MA – Dance Movement Psychotherapy, Goldsmiths, University of London
MA – Art Psychotherapy, Goldsmiths, University of London
Supervision in Counselling, Psychotherapy and Helping Relationships – PgCert, University of Salford
Somatic psychology, Meridian University
Somatic counseling, Naropa University
Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition MSc, University of Edinburgh, Psychology and Language Sciences
Master of Science program in Counseling with a Concentration in Somatic Psychology at Prescott College

Popular Body Psychotherapy Books

Now, we will share popular and best-selling 10 books on somatic or body psychology:

The Dictionary of Body Language: A Field Guide to Human Behavior by Joe Navarro
The Body Language by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease
The Psychology of the Body by Elliot Greene
Body Language Mastery by Brandon Cooper
Somatic Psychology by Linda Hartley
Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman
Positive Psychology and the Body: The Somatopsychic Side to Flourishing by Kate Hefferon
Mind and Body by George Mandler
The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry, and Medicine by Jemma Tosh
The Secrets of Body Language by Philippe Turchet

Final thoughts

Despite its debatable position, body psychology is a concept believed to be a practical and holistic approach. The idea brings together body and mind when healing or treating a patient.

Many body psychotherapists believe it is effective in myriads of cases where other techniques may fail. The ultimate objective of body psychology is to release negative emotions in holistic ways through body work.