Body Psychology 101: An Introduction to the Somatopsychic Perspective

By Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT

A summary of the essential aspects of embodied consciousness. Topics covered include: neurophilosophy; psychological aspects of body form, and boundary; body image through the lifespan; physical attractiveness; emotions; personality; body image disturbances; treatment methods; aging; death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098398613

Book preview

Preface

Somatic Psychology is the in-depth study of the many aspects of bodily consciousness. Its purpose is to describe, explain, and understand the bodily experiences of oneself and others. The subject matter of Somatic Psychology is rich, intriguing, enlightening, and the essence of reality. While its breadth and complexity are addressed in Principles of Somatic Psychology: An Evidence-Based, Transdisciplinary Approach for the Holistic Healthcare Professions, this book is offered as a very condensed primer for quick and easy reading for those who are less educated in psychology, philosophy, neurology, anthropology, etc., but are interested in body consciousness and/or work with the physical body. The Principles book establishes the borders and contents of Somatic Psychology for mental and physical health professionals in great detail. The purpose of Body Psychology 101 is to provide a basic introduction to, and summation of, the essential points of the larger work. Reduced size offers the reader a very concise, but quite superficial overview of the fascinating topic of the psychology of the body. The interested reader will be further rewarded with the full depth and breadth of the subject by the Principles book. No citations are included in this work as it is my distillation and interpretation of twelve years of research and so the reader with more scholarly needs is referred to the larger work.

All experience—including sensations, emotions, and behaviors—is grounded in the body. Body consciousness arises from brain activity that channels and integrates sensations from the body and its inner chambers into the seamless experience of being embodied. Body awareness reflects a specific design pattern of the human body and its various features such as upright posture, bilateral sides, bipolar divisions of upper and lower, a body boundary separating an inner from the outer, and the space of the body and immediately around it. This ground awareness of being a body is called the body schema and is a uniquely personal experience. Body form comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and other variations. These experiential variations affect the body image which is the cognitive-emotional evaluation of body experience. Body image is the bedrock for identity and affects mental and physical health, emotional patterns as well as habits and behaviors. Body image is strongly influenced by social and cultural rules regarding what is attractive, gender appropriate, and, in general, normal. These rules along with body image, genetic predispositions, and behavioral conditioning determine sexual desires and mating behaviors. The form of the body shapes thinking and emotional experience as well as personality traits, beliefs, and attitudes. Thoughts, emotions, and body awareness affect how one experiences the body-self.

Body consciousness and body image are extremely vulnerable to disturbances such as bodily dissatisfaction and unhappiness; perfectionism and shame; objectification by the self or by others; psychological and physical injury, abuse, and trauma, and much more. Treatment for dysfunctional distress requires a holistic approach that addresses the physical body, its movement patterns, and body awareness. Complementary, alternative, integrative medicine (CAIM) provides many mind-body intervention techniques to restore the body image to health and well-being.

Finally, body consciousness changes over time as a person grows, ages, and eventually succumbs to death. Understanding and coping with bodily anxieties and infirmities becomes an ever-increasing concern as one gets older including how to spiritually transcend the failing body in the face of its end.

I welcome you to the fascinating world of the bodymind and our shared somatic reality.

Paul Shane

Brecksville, Ohio

June 6, 2021

CHAPTER ONE

Principles of Somatic Psychology

Somatic Psychology is the study of embodied consciousness and how it affects, and is affected by, a person’s psychophysical state and the external environment. It takes the holistic view of the person as a single, integrated bodymind and explores the manifold meanings of embodiment. Somatic Psychology is a corollary to General Psychology (i.e., Scientific Psychology) as taught at the undergraduate level at most colleges and universities, but emphasizing body experience rather than mental processes. Somatic Psychology provides a long-needed counterbalance to General Psychology which itself is far too constrained by Cartesian dualism. The goals of General Psychology are four-fold: describe, explain, predict, and control behavior. The goals of Somatic Psychology are more modest and humanistic: describe, explain, and understand the nature of embodied consciousness. The knowledge base of Somatic Psychology is interdisciplinary and is fed by a variety of sources including psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. From these empirically-based subjects come a group of supporting principles or basic beliefs about the contours of Somatic Psychology. Somatic Psychology explores embodied consciousness via a body of knowledge informed by three sources: Holism, Neurophilosophy, and the Somatopsychic Perspective. Holism is a very broad philosophical approach with many facets and comes in several different forms. Neurophilosophy is the combined viewpoints of neurology and philosophy of mind. The Somatopsychic Perspective is the combination the viewpoints of holism and neurophilosophy.

Holism

1. The nature of the whole is different than the sum of its parts.

2. All parts of a whole are inter-related.

3. All levels of a hierarchy of whole systems—from the sub atomic level and up—are interdependent.

4. Holism is both simple and complex.

5. Holism has its limitations.

6. The bodymind is the whole person.

7. The experiential space of the body relates to the greater space of the world.

Scientific Psychology as taught at the college and university levels is analytically reductive in its approach. This means it begins by breaking down a given psychological construct or behavior into its component parts and then measuring each part using some kind of tool such as naturalistic observation, survey, or laboratory experiment. It is reductionist in its method and point of view meaning it is believed that if the individual parts can be understood then one can understand the whole. The holistic approach disagrees with this notion. It is a philosophical perspective that sees every individual thing as an integrated whole. To separate a part or parts from the whole radically alters the nature of the whole. It proposes that the elements of the physical world are interconnected, interdependent, and mutually influencing.

Holism must be approached and applied cautiously. It is not a homogenous perspective as there are different variations. It is a philosophy rather than a means of methodical investigation like the scientific method. It is used more to frame a given phenomenon for a holistic description. It has both strengths and weaknesses and probably displays its greatest value when used in conjunction with the scientific method of investigation.

Somatic Psychology views the human being as a whole unit called a bodymind. This bodymind is the union of the body and the mind. Aristotle (384-322 BC) envisioned the person as a body-soul or synolon. He believed that the soul not only animates the body but gives it form as well. For Aristotle, the brain was a kind of radiator which cools the hot blood flowing from the heart; the center of consciousness. This view is now enhanced by Holism and recent theories in embodied cognition which see person as a system composed of a brain within a body within an environment. It sees the bodymind as a series of systems starting at the cellular level and rising up to the larger, more inclusive system of the world in general. It is now known that all thinking and emoting is a total body experience and there is no mind working in some ivory tower far removed from the body. More so, the body as a lived space includes not just the contents of the body extending from within to the physical surface, but the space around the body as well. This space is given its own awareness by the brain and shapes how we interact with the environment.

Neurophilosophy

1. The body is the ground of consciousness.

2. Embodiment is a Gestalt (whole) experience composed of sub-components of consciousness.

3. Consciousness has ten currently known characteristics.

4. Embodied consciousness is dependent upon neural integrity.

5. Embodied consciousness arises from a whirlpool of neural activities.

6. Embodied consciousness and its corresponding neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) drive the rhythms of somatic life.

7. Bodily sensations come in a variety of forms.

8. Embodied consciousness is paradoxical.

9. The body schema-image model is an essential means of understanding embodied consciousness.

10. The bodymind is a bioenergy system.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is well known as a philosopher, mathematician, and a soldier, but he was also an amateur anatomist who would purchase animal parts such as brain and other organs from his local butcher and then dissect them at home. From these efforts he came up with the idea that the mind controls the body via the pineal gland in the center of brain. Even though he was in error, Descartes tried to ground his philosophical speculation in neuro-anatomical evidence. He was the first to do so and many others, including ourselves