Body, Heart and Mind

We experience our true human-ness when we are fully embodied - and engaging our bodies, hearts and minds. It is easy these days be distracted by and absorbed in the world of screens and tech which offer a much poorer experience of ourselves. Our world increasingly seems to value the head and our brain power over the heart and mind. And yet, if you think of what it is that ‘floats your boat’ and allows you to enter a flow state, I bet that at least some of those activities engage your hands and your body, e.g. crafts, gardening, caring for your car, sports, baking, socialising, etc.

That’s why I weave emobodied practices and activities into my groups and gatherings that are all designed to enhance creative, physical and emotional wellness.

And when clients come to me for therapy looking for change the body and heart play an important role alongside talking. Our experiences, memories, and patterns of behaviour are held not only in the mind, but also in the body. They may show up as tension or pain, digestive issues, sleep difficulties, addictive behaviours, or challenges in our relationships with ourselves, others and the wider world.

Talking alone doesn’t always reach the roots of these patterns.  Our ‘thinking’ mind often has a fixed narrative about who we are and how we do things - and it can be quite stubborn to change. The healthy self that we were born with learns from early on to listen to the thoughts, opinions and expectations of others and society so that by the time we reach adulthood we don’t often know any more what we really believe, value and want to protect. Or maybe we do, but the world we live in makes it hard for us to stay true to our values and what keeps us in our ‘well’ self.

A holistic, embodied approach allows us to work more deeply. We work with the sensations of the body, the thoughts that arise in the mind and the emotions felt in the heart, using breath, gesture, movement and emobodied play to bring awareness and change.

The heart often acts as a mediator between the body’s lived experience and the meanings the mind has made of it. When we listen to the heart, we can begin to reconnect with who we truly are. Therapy then becomes a process of supporting this inner wisdom and allowing it to come alive.