Dis-Eased Minds, The Body & Mental Illness Pt 1

We look so different on the inside.

Do we shy away from internal awareness, falling prey to the body's instinctive nature, in our experience of mental illness?

This post seeks to further explore the latest neuroscience research from the perspective of "body psychotherapy," and its approach to resolving traumatic experience.Trauma induced behaviors, often described by medical doctors as symptoms of a mental illness.

Are we converging on a much needed multidisciplinary approach towards the experience of mental illness, which does not give precedence to the disease model of mental suffering, favored by our hierarchically structured, healing professions?
Body therapists have understood the body's role in mental suffering for many decades, yet their often "intuitive" knowledge has been dismissed as unreliable compared to laboratory study.


Despite the 100 years that has passed since we first began to suspect a brain disease process and classify discrete mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, no empirical evidence of an actual disease has been discovered. Even the great advances in neuroscience research, enabled by a rise in technology have still not been able to confirm a brain disease process, yet they may be confirming body therapists “intuitive” knowledge by revealing the neurobiology of the nervous systems and bodily based feedback to the brain.

Below is excerpt from a paper by one of my favorite authors in the field of body psychotherapy, and a wonderful articulation of neuroscience and somatic psychotherapy. Please consider;

NEUROSCIENCE IN SOMATIC PSYCHOTHERAPY

ALINE LAPIERRE, PSY.D.