Becoming ‘Body Aware’: Bridging the Gap Between Mind and Body
Hello, my name is Conan Milner, and this is Words of Wellness, a show where we explore the many dimensions of health: from mind, to body, to spirit.
This mind-body connection is a subject I have returned to over and over again. It’s a bit of a buzzword these days, and kind of has a mystical new age flavor to it. But it’s much more than fad or fashion.
For many, the idea of joining mind and body is an alien concept. That’s because, for most of the past few hundred years or so, the mind and the body have been conceived of as separate entities, relegated to their own space and dimension. Philosopher René DesCartes is usually blamed for fostering this dualism, but many sources have helped to drive the wedge between these two fundamental territories even deeper.
This separation is particularly acute in modern medicine. It’s the way the system is designed. Doctors typically specialize in either the mind or the body. Crossover is discouraged and rarely, if ever, acknowledged.
But what if the separation of mind and body we perceive is merely an illusion? Imagine if true healing came from joining these two forces and depending on how the big pieces of ourselves overlap and influence each other.
This was always the understanding in ancient forms of medicine, where mood and emotional trauma were considered just as relevant in terms of diagnosing and treating an illness as physical symptoms, like pain and organ malfunction.
As ancient ideas seep back into our modern understanding, we’re watching the paradigm shift back, where mind and body are merging once again.
To get some understanding and perspective of the mind-body crossover and how it works, I’ll be talking to Chicago-based movement therapist, Erica Hornthal. Her new book “Body Aware” talks about the kind of therapy she practices, and offers concrete examples on how the mind and body are not as separate as we may think, but intimately and unmistakably joined.
You probably are familiar with the phrase “you are what you eat.” The idea is that your diet directly dictates the quality of your health. Likewise, Hornthal encourages people to consider that “you are how you move.”
Erica, thanks for joining me today. I wonder if you can start off talking to me about what you do: movement therapy or dance therapy. What is it, how did you get into it, and what kind of issues does it treat?
Erica Hornthal: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for that lovely introduction. It was getting me excited about the mind-body connection. And I work with it on a regular basis.
I’m a board-certified dance movement therapist. And more commonly, I think people associate with my other licensure, which is a clinical counselor.
Dance movement therapy feels like the definition is always evolving. It is a psychotherapy. It’s about mental health, wellness, that healing journey that we hear a lot about these days. But for me, it’s really about bringing on board where most of our communication is housed. It’s about using the body, using nonverbal communication, using our postures or gestures, to not just inventory how we’re feeling in the moment, but to also uncover how our movement habits and patterns are often what’s driving the mind-sets that are keeping us stuck in these unhealthy habits and patterns.
Dance movement therapy—while it can be dance, while it can be movement, while it can be more stationary and talk oriented—it’s the lens, it’s the intention of bringing the body into the therapeutic relationship, bringing it into the healing journey. So that we are not just relying on a small percentage that is voice, language, and tone, but actually, the bigger picture, which is nonverbal communication.
Conan Milner: Nonverbal communication: talking about these postures and gestures in regard to unhealthy patterns. One of the things you suggest to readers in your book is that we become conscious of how we move. And I want to delve into what this means. I think when most of us consider our movement, we exclusively think “exercise.” This is movement with a definite purpose. Perhaps we want to lose weight or we’re just doing it to have fun, but it’s movement that we engage in consciously. The kinds of movement you ask people to acknowledge are the movements we do unconsciously or habitually. So, tell me about our movement habits. How are they relevant and how can they keep us stuck?
Hornthal: In a general kind of introductory basis foundation, if you will, those are the patterns of movement that we engage in on a regular basis. That can be the way we exercise. It can be that 9 a.m. yoga class that we take every day or a couple of times a week. It can be our preferred seat settings in our car. That can be the way we brush our teeth. The way we write. The way we sit at our desk, while we’re typing up a note or an email. These are habits and movement patterns that we do on a regular basis.
Speaking to the unconscious movement habits, these are often how we exist. It’s how we hold our emotions, how we mismanage our emotions. It can be something like how we breathe, which we’re not usually aware of. It can even be noticing the habit of our heart, how it’s speeding up. It’s not something that we’ve listened to, or actually should even be hearing all the time, right? Doctors will say, if you’re that aware of your heartbeat, it might be because there’s something going on, and you might want to go in and get that checked out.
But just having knowledge and awareness of that natural rhythm in your body, which is usually on autopilot, it’s not something that we’re super tuned into. And it’s these kinds of automatic, unconscious movements that, honestly, even if they’re small, can actually have a big impact or can be signs and signals of a bigger picture of something that is misaligned with our wellness. And while we can’t necessarily change our heartbeat, what we can do is pay more attention and become more aware of how our movement is manifesting what’s happening in our body. Because chances are we’re noticing the emotions and the thoughts that are manifesting, which is way down the road.
The body’s already been expressing and feeling what you’re going through mentally. The idea is to backtrack and almost be able to pinpoint these small micro-movements that happen, that signal us to say, “Hey, something is going on here. I’m carrying my grief, my loss, my anxiety, my trauma. How am I doing that?” And when I uncover how I’m doing that, I can change the way I move in my body to then release, manage, and work through it, and maybe even let go of some of those places that are keeping me stuck.
Milner: You make me think that you’re somewhat of a body whisperer. You’re talking about how the body has these messages, and it’s our job, or perhaps yours as a therapist, to want to interpret what those messages are.
Hornthal: Yeah. I like that idea of body whisperer. And not that necessarily I’m the whisperer, but that we can all be our own body whisperers.
Something I say—whether I’m training, doing workshops or seminars, and certainly in sessions with my own clients—I always say that I don’t know what it’s like to be in your body, and you don’t know what it’s like to be in mine. And so, while we as humans often make judgments and assumptions, even if we don’t intend to, the idea is to try to not put too much meaning, or to make too many assumptions, or place judgment on how we’re moving. It’s just to become more aware of it, and to notice it, and to be curious about it.
Some of the movements, actually all of the movements that we’ve adapted to our first survival—even if they’re unhealthy, in a sense, or they’re maladaptive—we’re doing it to survive. We’re doing it to manage discomfort and disease. So, I appreciate that body whisperer idea, because I think everybody can be their own body whisperer. Because if we don’t listen—and this is kind of cliché—but when we don’t listen to the body when it’s whispering, we have no choice but to listen to it when it’s screaming.
Milner: Yeah, and that’s when you have real problems. One of the things I’ve learned from you, just because you helped me work on a story in the past on trauma, was that trauma is something that can get trapped in the body. This gave me an understanding of why traumatic experiences can sometimes take many years to resolve, or never get resolved, even after extensive psychotherapy.
The phrase you use in your book that I think really encapsulates this idea is “your issues reside in your tissues.” I wonder if you can explain how your mind, emotions, worries, thoughts, anxieties, how do all of these end up in our body? And what can we do to set them free?
Hornthal: I did not come up with that phrase. It’s kind of in somatic circles, if you will. The idea is that our issues reside in our tissues. And while I didn’t talk about this in the book specifically, because it’s out of my area of expertise (and there’s still a lot of research that’s coming out about it) but fascia, which are the connective tissues in our body, this is coming more into the big picture in terms of places that hold our experiences.
There’s been extensive research on molecules and receptors in the body, all over the body, that contain emotion. And that it’s not just a brain process, which I think in the past has kind of gotten us into trouble with regard to the mind-body disconnect, right? If mind is from the neck up—because that’s where all of the emotions are occurring—then of course, we’re going to focus there, but there’s more and more research [that suggests otherwise].
Again, like you had mentioned, I think indigenous practice has known this for centuries. But more and more modern-day research is showing that, wow, these emotions are embodied. And if we don’t address the body that houses them, if we never really work through those issues, and we just talk around them…
Books like “The Body Keeps the Score” have been instrumental in opening that up for people, and letting people know that, hey, trauma is embodied. And there are ways that we need to be looking at, or meeting, our body so that we can gently and compassionately move through these places, find that path to healing, or just meet our body where it is, instead of this shame-blame game that we play often.
The piece that I was interested in bringing into the picture, which I don’t think is talked about very much with regard to trauma in the body, is that when we’re triggered by either an experience of past trauma, or we’re experiencing overwhelm in our body, oftentimes what happens is, it triggers an old movement pattern, an old movement habit.
At some point, I imagine most of us have experienced being in a room with someone who’s not acting their age. And we oftentimes equate it to immaturity, right? That person is just a big kid. And while that may be true, sometimes it is a manifestation of a trigger. And when we are overwhelmed, when our nervous system is not regulated, we often revert back to younger patterns. We revert back to younger habits. So, we might have a 40-something that’s tantruming like a 2-year-old. We might have an older adult that is acting more like a teenager.
And there’s lots of different reasons why that can happen. But that, to me, was a big picture with regard to those movement habits and patterns that aren’t necessarily discussed. And again, it goes back to how our brains and our bodies become hard-wired, and how the trauma actually changes us. And if we want to really rework those wirings, not only is it a mind-set, but we have to rework the body as well.
Milner: When I hear people talk about rewiring a mind-set, they’re often referring to neural pathways and how new ones have to be carved. And I think that just makes sense to people in terms of how the brain processes things. But you’re making me think that this is a transformation that happens throughout the body.
Hornthal: Yeah. Take it outside of the movement for a moment. I kind of equate it to the way you travel places. We tend to have similar routes that we take when we’re going from point A to point B. We usually want the most efficient way. Or we look for the way that has the least amount of traffic. And that tends to be the way that we always go.
For me, this idea of building new neural pathways, or different connectivities, is about challenging ourselves and actually taking different routes, even if it’s going to take longer. Because it’s not about the efficiency of time, it’s about the efficiency of the thought pattern or the movement pattern. And the more we open up these diverse or more robust ways of moving, the better we are, the more capacity we have to manage our emotions.
Imagine your brain is this one path. And when we start to figure out detours, or drive in new ways, we’re creating more pathways, and more pathways give us more options. So, if there’s a crash, or if there’s an obstruction in the one way that I usually get from point A to point B, my system overloads. I think, “I can’t get there today. What will I do? If that path is obstructed, let me check the other 25 pathways that are available to me so that I can get to where I need to go.”
There may still be some overwhelm, but we’re able to maneuver and work through that. Hopefully, that gives listeners another way of thinking about it in terms of what a neural pathway looks like. Why would I want more to be more well-resourced? Because you have more options at your disposal simply by changing and adding to the ways in which you’re moving throughout your day.
This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here: theepochtimes
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Curtis Blow
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There seems to be basically two types of people in this world:
1. Those that eat based on taste and texture and seek satisfaction from the experience.
2. Those that eat based on health and fitness and see food as fuel.
The first group seems to be the vast majority for sure in the USA. This group tends to be overweight, obese and prone to type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, gout, metabolic syndrome and other avoidable heath issues. This group also seems to trust medical doctors for all their pharmaceutical needs. Life for this group is largely based on taste, convenience, comfort, instant gratification and mediocrity.
The second group seems to value health and fitness above the robotic motions of stuffing lousy food and drink into their mouths without thinking of the effects of doing so, both short term and long term.
The next time you observe people take a good look. I am in airports frequently and this is what I see:
People eating at all times of the day. Eating fast food, and sugar laden, low quality “food”. The bars are always full. Shoulder to shoulder they sit drinking 20 dollar beers and wine whilst chomping on fried garbage. Group 2 would simply not eat or bring some healthy snacks along in case they needed a bite.
The ratio of overweight folks to trim folks seems to be 20 to 1. And a fit, athletic person over 35 is a rare species not often observed in this setting.
I would increase the mental / physical division into 4 categories. Mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Viewing the self as 4 parts merged into one being is an effective way of ensuring that the whole is balanced and each need is properly met.
Life is what you make it. It can be a party where you “win” based on sloth and gluttony or it can be a journey of discovery and knowledge where every day is another opportunity to be the very best that you can be. Never too late to start that journey.
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Born Yesterday
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Agreed. The USA is like the Walking Dead. Zombies constantly on the hunt for more food. Three hundred pounders rolling along in their slob carts blocking the aisles at Walmart, slob cart full of Cheetohs, coke, corn dogs, bacon, doughnuts and cake. Then off to the pharmacy to pick up their ever growing prescriptions for ills created by over consumption of the zero nutrition glop that they eat.
The very concept of a proper diet and exercise does not even occur to these people. It’s like “Well, I’m over 20 and married so now things are different.” I’m in charge…..lets eat! I guess these folks don’t own mirrors. If they did the sight they see might just right the ship…….but sadly, I really doubt it based on the vast numbers of them.
Just sickening.
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Mr Crabs
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I have a theory. I always wondered why teens and twenty somethings usually look healthy and fit while most everyone else looks like 55 gallon drums full of lard.
My theory consists of two reasons being laziness and ignorance.
A young person is growing, active and requires a huge number of calories. At some point say between 17 and 30 things change. The growth stops and the metabolism slows way down.
Yet most people have become accustomed to 3 meals a day plus snacks. They used to be able to put it away. Eat tons of food and stay pretty slim. Then one day it all changes. No longer slim and fit the body accumulates mass tonnages of stored fat and the muscles atrophy from lack of exercise and movement.
Then they observe the other people around them and they see that they look just like the majority of everyone else so it becomes normal to them to be heavy and weak.
The laziness comes in as a factor in the lack of any physical activity. Sweating is not allowed. Breathing hard is foreign. Aching muscles are to be avoided at all costs. Why walk when you can drive? It also comes into play by selecting fast food over sound nutrition.
Ignorance is the lack of understanding that their body is overfed. The lack of reading labels on food, seeking sound nutritional knowledge, talking with fit people, understanding that they need only a fraction of the calories that they needed when they were young.
Most hot people are that way by the gift of good genetics alone. They look good effortlessly until about the late 20s. Then, like rotten fruit they just go bad. Some with strict diets and exercise can stretch it out to say 35. And then they give up and rot. Very few get it. Those that do make being fit and healthy a lifestyle. A daily routine. These are the very rare individuals who look and feel great at any age.
How often I see a pretty fit teenage gal with Mom at the store. Mom is a blob and daughter could be a swimsuit model. Yet they are only 25 years apart. That’s what 25 years of laziness and ignorance will do to the human body. Both could be swimsuit models if Mom decided to swim upstream and stop the insanity of the herd. But sadly that is not how it works. So the normal situation is Blobs galore.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Born and Crabs,
At least you and everyone recognizes the cause of being ‘over weight’. In a lecture (THE MEANING OF IT ALL), Richard Feynman stated: “The next aspect of science is its contents, the things that have been found out. This is the yield. This is the gold. This is the excitement, the pay you get for all the disciplined thinking and hard work.” Before quoting what he continued I want to make sure one does not overlook DISCIPLINED THINKING and HARD WORK. Especially–DISCIPLINED THINKING. Feynman often refers to the word: DISCIPLINE; Which one seldom reads, or hears, being used in conversations about SCIENCE. The clear issue about OBESITY is to prevent it requires DISCIPLINE and HARD WORK.
Feynman continued: “The work is not done for the sake of an application. It is done for the excitement of what is found out.” What is found out if one eats RIGHT and EXERCISES? You have to eat Right and Exercise to find out.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Rickson Greatie
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Here is a perfect example of the disconnect of awareness that the body has changed.
I must have watched hundreds of these fails. Go on youtube and watch fails. On every video there is a fat woman who thinks she can hold on to a rope swing as it swings out over a river. Every time like clockwork the massive body is just too much for the sponge bob T Rex arms to cling to the rope. The result is a spectacular face plant into the mucky river shore. Never fails to give me a good laugh. So predictable.
Sally used to swing on ropes all day when she was 15 and weighed 90 pounds with active muscles.
Now the 28 year old Sally hasn’t exercised in a decade and weighs 220. Do the math = FAIL.
Funny and tragic. Put so true.
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Howdy
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“There seems to be basically two types of people in this world”
“Agreed”
“Life is what you make it.”
“Mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.”
Nice viewpoints. Neither of you have a clue. You are no better than those currently trying to drive humanity into a (small) race of slaves for their own ends. Realize that other’s lives are not yours to dictate, nor for you to live.
Spirit has no place in a non-spiritual being, but I guess one can pretend one is. The big problem with spirit, is that just like anything else mortals do, there allways has to be an order of those who are spiritually better or higher, or more deserving of spirit. This is commonly witnessed in new age, or yoga circles. There is no such thing as a spiritual hierarchy.
Do something usefull about it and educate others if it bothers you that much.
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Howdy
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It seems all comments above me are of the same mind. Thus the current problem.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
You wrote: “Nice viewpoints. Neither of you have a clue.” and “It seems all comments above me are of the same mind. Thus the current problem.”
Who is “you” and who are you?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Howdy
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You are they that I quoted initially, then those that followed after I posted at that moment. Anybody after that time can work it out themselves that I don’t mean them.
I am me.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
As usual these days, I read the comments before I read the article. So before making this comment I have read it and it doesn’t change what I was planning to comment.
Which is the Curtis Blow’s comment is different from that of the article and that of the other three you have considered to be similar to Curtis’s.
If one cannot see this I doubt anything I might add will help you or anyone else to see what I see.
However, Howdy, who are YOU besides a person who seems not to associate with any group beyond the big ME, about which WE readers have no clue.
Have a good day, Jerry.
Have
Howdy
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“Which is the Curtis Blow’s comment is different from that of the article and that of the other three you have considered to be similar to Curtis’s.”
No, the theme of the comments are all the same.
We all see and understand things in our own way based on understanding, experience, and even ‘gut feeling’, unless one believes everything they are told of course. That being the case, you can’t see what I see, nor do you understand how I work Jerry, thus your questions. We’re individuals, yes? Yet many appear to think we are not. Even within the constraints of ones existence, don’t we all have a choice? Or are we ultimately driven by something else?
To all think the same is herd behaviour isn’t it? Currently a bad position to be in.
The comment not being about the article is of no relevance.
“However, Howdy, who are YOU besides a person who seems not to associate with any group beyond the big ME, about which WE readers have no clue.”
The only ‘big ME’ in this discussion is you Jerry. Your list of ‘accomplishments’ is often stated by you in your comments. It is an inferiority shield.
Why do I need a group? So I can ‘fit in’, or ‘be somebody of note’ perhaps? I couldn’t care less about that as you know, and as you have stated in the past that, what shall we call it, ‘life sciences’, are a difficult subject, I don’t expect you to get where I come from.
Correct, you have no clue and that is not only how it is meant to be, but how It will stay. Just consider me a loner. Better that way.
sorbet
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Men too. How many mindless men drink alcohol every night? How many smoke cigs? How many think pizza and ice cream are healthy meals? Not a single clue to what they are doing to their health. No concern. These are the ones you will see waddling around with massive swollen ankles barely able to walk as they enter middle age. Already suffering from congestive heart failure. Done and done. In the wild these folks would be dead very young. They live miserable artificially extended lives due to surgery and the upside down medical system that prolongs their agony with drugs that never cure anything.
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Howdy
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“They live miserable artificially extended lives due to surgery and the upside down medical system that prolongs their agony with drugs that never cure anything.”
Perhaps they exist to suffer?
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Mr Crabs
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Pretty sure the “current problem” are mass quantities of lazy and ignorant people chock full of never ending excuses being lied too on a continuous basis by a system that threw them all overboard 100s of years ago. You know, that system described as “those currently trying to drive humanity into a (small) race of slaves for their own ends”. “Do something useful about it and educate others if it bothers you that much”. I think many of the comments above are doing just that (perhaps in a tough love way but education and helpful information none the less.)
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Howdy
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Current problem is self important people Mr Crabs. Those who believe themselves superior enough to define what is the correct way of living one’s life based on their own ideals. Only those with a bad enough streak will get up and do something to eradicate the problem they see in a non-life-preserving, permanent way. Thus the current problem.
‘Fat’, ‘lazy’, ‘ignorant’, slob cart’, are good advice and educational? Tough love is a misnomer as well as an excuse.
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Mr Crabs
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One could ask a former fat, lazy, ignorant slob cart driver who is now healthy and fit what is the difference between now and then and if they were really honest they would proclaim that it was because they were fat, lazy and ignorant.
Yet you get lost on blaming people who feel superior to others as the issue. That is your very own imagined issue and not reality. The reality is the USA is the fattest nation on earth. Excuses and blaming people that tell it like it is is no solution at all. The time for touchy feely nonsense does nothing for the unfortunate obese person.
That is the big problem in this world. Too many touchy feely types, fat exeptance and not enough tough love. It doesn’t work for parents and it doesn’t work for society.
Meanwhile obesity, diabetes and sloth are an ever growing real epidemic.
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Howdy
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“Yet you get lost on blaming people who feel superior to others as the issue.”
Despite the surrender of the masses, who is doing the killing? The fact superiority of certain lives over others brought us to where we are now is undeniable.
“One could ask a former fat, lazy, ignorant slob cart driver who is now healthy and fit.”
Healthy and fit people still die suddenly, so ‘healthy and fit’ means nothing other than a man-made construct of an ideal condition to keep one under the thumb via another method.
I guess I’ll leave it here as unproductive. Thank you for the chat.
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John V
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IMO, there is no simple reason we as a people are overweight and more obese than ever. It doesn’t happen overnight, it has to do with prosperity, marketing, changes in how we work, how we are conditioned and also lied to by the government, which is tied to marketing. Portion sizes, processed foods, fast foods, drive thrus, Door Dash, lack of physical exertion in our daily lives, complacency and routines. Fat acceptance is also giving easy outs to people that really need to take charge of their lives if they want to be healthier and live better. I have struggled with my weight for many years, and personally, it comes down to exercise and portions for me.
My work is mostly sedentary now, I’m older and less motivated to put in the time to exert my body properly and frequently. I need to stay away from the restaurants that are literally everywhere compared to when I was growing up. Food, and bad food at that, is everywhere and too easy to consume. We get used to our condition and rationalize, which is defeatist, too.,
When I follow my plan, I lose the pounds and get back to where I used to be (mostly lol) But, it takes effort and commitment, and I fall off the path a little here, a little there, and there you go, slowly, quietly, I have put the weight back on.
My Dad had a garden and we ate fresh fruits and vegetables every day. He couldn’t afford or want to take me and my brother to McDonald’s 3 days a week. We ate real food and walked and biked everywhwere, and we were fit & trim all through our school years. We graduated, made money, and got conditioned the other way. And so it goes…
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Typhus
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Do you see the plan the globalists have for us & the world?
A return to basics…gardening would be solubrious.
But first the fight to survive the global cull induced by those hidden.
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