Body-Based Healing & Physical Health
Somatic practices have become an integral part of the therapy landscape as we discover more about the nervous system and the mind-body connection. While physical health issues are often dismissed as outside the scope of therapeutic practice, many are inextricably linked with mental health issues. Here, you'll find articles exploring the relationship between our bodies and minds. Discover the role nutrition, holistic and body-based healing techniques, and approaches like Somatic Experiencing can play in addressing a range of mental health issues. Learn from Peter Levine, Dick Schwartz, Mariel Buqué, Eugene Gendlin, and others.
My Eating Disorder, My Attachment Trauma
A Therapist's Journey from Suffering to Healing and Understanding
Chronic Pain & Physical Disability
Articles in this section focus on work with clients whose bodies place ongoing, non-negotiable demands on their psychological worlds. They dive into complex topics, including grief over lost abilities, medical trauma, ableism, and how physical conditions intersect with depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns. Contributors explore practical frameworks and case-based reflections to help clients renegotiate their relationship with pain and restore agency.
Disordered Eating & Body Image
Body-image challenges that shape clients' relationships with food, weight, and appearance are often linked to cultural pressures, trauma, and anxiety issues. These articles highlight cases that look beyond symptoms to the underlying shame, control, and attachment struggles that drive them. Learn from experts in the field as they delve into trauma-informed, mindfulness-informed, and body-positive approaches, such as the Health at Every Size model, to address body-image concerns with clinical sophistication and cultural sensitivity. Gain the insights you need to help clients develop a healthy relationship with food, appreciation for their body regardless of weight, more flexible eating patterns, and gentler inner dialogues.
Holistic & Body-based Techniques
The mind-body connection has often been underemphasized in traditional psychotherapeutic practice, even as evidence mounts that nervous-system regulation and embodiment are central to lasting change. This category of work highlights clinicians who skillfully integrate body-based healing practices into their existing frameworks. Rather than treating these methods as optional additions, contributors show how approaches like Hakomi and Tapping can function as first-line approaches. These resources help therapists design embodied routines that clients can carry into daily life.
Somatic Experiencing
Drawing on Peter Levine's foundational contributions and the evolving field of somatic justice work (represented by practitioners like Prentis Hemphill), these pieces focus on cultivating body awareness as both an assessment tool and an intervention. These articles highlight how careful attention to the body can expand trauma treatment and restore a sense of aliveness and agency that talk alone often can't reach. Learn more from the creator of Somatic Experiencing and other experts.
Modern-day grind culture, with its roots in the profit-over-people mindset of chattel slavery, has normalized burnout as an inevitable part of life. How can... Read more
How long does it really take to change our minds with the help of a therapist—and our brains and bodies, too? Read more
The overlap between autism and eating disorders is poorly understood, even by many eating disorder specialists. Read more
When the world-renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing begins feeling persistent disturbing sensations come up from childhood, he realizes it’s time to... Read more
Learning how to tune into the subtle shifts that are going on inside us all the time can open us to a wholeness that I call the Authentic Self. Read more
In the midst of the psychedelic treatment revolution, have we forgotten about Stan Grof’s alternative to facilitating non-ordinary states of consciousness? Read more
Prentis Hemphill believes justice begins with nurturing authentic, body-based feelings, so people can embody their values and spread them throughout families... Read more
Sometimes, transformational growth happens when we least expect it. Read more
Therapists can help disfigured clients build the necessary skills to navigate the documented reality that they’re often avoided, judged, and asked invasive... Read more
As the world embraces the theory of how trauma is captured in the body, clinicians are introducing clients to holistic healing techniques like sound baths and... Read more
In the last few decades, pets who offer company and calm have become therapeutic tools to help people manage their mental health. Read more
A therapist shows how allowing her clients to physically move their bodies in therapy helps them process their emotions. Read more
Binge-eating disorder is the most common eating disorder, but it’s also the most underdiagnosed and misunderstood. Read more
Gabor Maté's newest book is a reminder of the many ways in which we are not our symptoms. Read more
From her book 'Body Aware' author Erica Hornthal shares mindful exercises that will help with self-regulation of your emotional thermostat. Read more
A new book by physician Haider Warraich reveals the untold story of chronic pain. Read more
Despite its pervasiveness, medical trauma often goes unrecognized. Read more
When our attempts to use logic and reason fail, therapeutic rituals can help clients connect to inner resources for healing. Read more
It's time to untangle weight gain and binge eating from trauma. Read more
Joanne Spence, a social worker turned yoga therapist and author of "Trauma-Informed Yoga: A Toolbox for Therapists," talked to Psychotherapy Networker about... Read more
If most chronic pain is maintained by complex mind–body interactions, how can therapists help treat it? Read more
Refusing to be defined by others can sometimes require an unexpected catalyst. Read more
Too often, therapists working with anger focus on controlling and preventing it, rather than finding constructive ways to use it. Bioenergetic therapy regards... Read more
When COVID-19 hit and many of us began stocking up on food and sheltering in place, I grew deeply concerned for my clients. How were they going to handle the... Read more
Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing pioneer, shares what it means to stay connected and courageous during the coronavirus pandemic, in this clip from the 2020... Read more
Research shows us that trauma is stored in the body. But how does this happen, and why? Here, trauma expert Janina Fisher explains, and shares how this... Read more
One of our biggest challenges is to realize that physical isolation doesn’t automatically mean emotional disconnection. We still have choices that enable us... Read more
Among the first to fully realize that humans have an innate psychophysiological capacity for overcoming trauma, Peter Levine developed Somatic Experiencing, a... Read more
Back in 1979, I was a young dance therapy intern at St. Elizabeth’s, the country’s first federally operated psychiatric hospital, which opened in 1855. St... Read more
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