arcticorangutan on Nostr: Psychosomatic Inquiry: Everything we carry in our mind or broader experience is a ...

Psychosomatic Inquiry:

Everything we carry in our mind or broader experience is a reflection of some part of our body, we just may be unable to discern it.

Becoming increasingly conscious of this psychosomatic connection is a powerful way to resolve resistance or obstacles we encounter.

Once, at a meditation retreat with Peter Ralston, I told him that I was struggling with physical tension in my body and that this was preventing me from making progress during my meditation. He laughed, paused for a moment and then said: “Your body is your mind. They’re not separate”. While I had been convinced that my body was getting in the way of my mediation, the signals from my body or my resistance to them WERE indeed the meditation.

Conversely, seemingly psychological experiences are also experiences of the body, an insight best captured in Bessel van der Kolk’s seminal book “The Body Keeps the Score”.

One extraordinary therapist I recently reconnected with expressed this principle while he was studying my back: “Our front is what we show to the world. Our back betrays what the world has done to us”.