Four Interesting Facts About the Mind-Body Connection: Somatic Therapy San Francisco

As a somatic therapist in San Francisco, specifically a dance therapist, I often find myself educating people about the link between movement and emotion. While it it commonly accepted that our emotions often show on our face, there are other connections that can be made when we use movement to our explore how we feel Below are some interesting facts about the mind-body connection and how somatic therapy may be useful for healing.

Four Interesting Facts About the Mind-Body Connection—From A Somatic Therapist in San Francisco

1) The expressions on your face can influence how you feel.

That’s right, not only are your feelings expressed on your face but when you make a certain facial expression you can evoke the feeling associated with that facial expression, e.g. if you frown, you may start to feel sad. Researcher Paul Ekman discovered this while researching micro-expressions. So if you smile when you are not feeling particularly content, it may actually help you feel a bit better!

2) When we watch people move, the same neurons fire in our brain as if we were doing those same movements.

That means that our brain experiences seeing someone move as though we were moving ourselves. This can be the basis of empathy and can help us understand how people might feel, based on their movement. Here is a link to a wonderful article about dance therapy and mirror neurons.

3) Trauma stores in the body.

When we experience psychological trauma, the trauma often stores in our body in ways we can’t verbally express. Using a somatic therapy modality can help release the trauma that stores in the body and allows people to let go of psychological pain. Authors like Babette Rothschild and Bessel Van der Kolk discuss this phenomenon in several of their books.

4) How we move means something.

Dance therapists know that movement has meaning and by looking at body language we can gain insight into what may be happening psychologically for our clients. Many different dance therapists such as Marian Chace, for example, have worked to help finds ways of observing and interpreting movement (thought it always is important to check with our clients to see if our observations line up with their experiences.

I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about the mind-body connection. If these facts about somatic therapy San Francisco, or dance therapy specifically have you intrigued, please feel free to contact me at lisa@lisamanca.com. I would love to speak with you about how somatic therapy can help you heal.

References:

Paul Ekman

https://www.paulekman.com/

Rothschild, B. (2017). The Body Remembers. Norton & Company.

Van Der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the transformation of trauma. Viking.

Winters, A. F. (2008). Emotion, embodiment, and mirror neurons in dance/movement therapy: A connection across disciplines.

American Journal of Dance Therapy, 30(2), 84–105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10465-008-9054-y