Reclaiming the Wisdom of the Body
- Meredith Futernick-Gerak, LPC, ACS, C-BSP, C-PAT
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
I hear from at least one client daily about how disconnected they feel from their body. Like we're just a head walking around without the rest of our physical self. In many therapy rooms, and certainly in daily life, the body often gets treated like a secondary character. A vessel. A vehicle. A thing we drag from one obligation to the next, while the mind does all the “real” work.
But in somatic and brain-body based therapies, we recognize a deeper truth. That the body isn’t just transportation for the brain. It's a living, responsive system full of emotional, sensory, and survival intelligence. And when we slow down enough to listen to it, the body starts speaking. Not always in words; but in heat, tension, stillness, fluttering, or tears.
The Mind-Body Disconnect
We live in a society that focuses on cognition more than embodiment. Rationality is rewarded; intuition and sensation are often dismissed. The result is a collective tendency toward disembodiment; a chronic disconnection from the internal cues that let us know that we’re tired, overwhelmed, hungry, grieving, or full of joy.
This disconnect isn’t just philosophical, it’s physiological. The prefrontal cortex, our center for rational thought, often overrides signals from the limbic system and brainstem; where emotional and bodily awareness resides (Porges, 2011). Over time, this suppression can lead to stress-related illness, anxiety, chronic pain, and emotional dysregulation (van der Kolk, 2014).
The Body as an Active Participant in Healing
In modalities like Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems; the body isn’t just included, it’s central. These approaches recognize that healing requires more than insight. It requires insight into the felt sense; that pre-verbal knowing that something has landed, integrated, or softened (Gendlin, 1978).
In Brainspotting, for example, we track eye position and subtle body cues to access the subcortical brain; where trauma and implicit memory are stored (Grand, 2013). The body leads. The therapist stays attuned. The client learns to stay present to whatever arises, even when it doesn’t “make sense.”
What Happens When We Start Listening?
When we stop treating the body like an afterthought and start treating it like a co-therapist, remarkable things happen:
Clients notice that their anxiety isn’t just mental. It lives in their gut, their throat, their shoulders.
A wave of grief might rise when someone naturally takes a big deep breath or sigh.
Old memories can surface when we pay attention to tension we’ve learned to ignore.
As somatic psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem writes, “The body... will always speak the truth. Especially when we allow ourselves to slow down and listen to it” (Menakem, 2017, p. 15).
Reintegrating the Body
Here are a few ways to begin treating the body as more than a rideshare service for your cognition:
Check in with your body as often as you check your email.
Ask: Where am I holding tension? What does this emotion feel like physically?
Practice “interoceptive listening.” Instead of interpreting a feeling right away, try noticing it. Stay with it. Trust that it has its own language.
Bring your body into therapy. Whether you’re a client or a therapist, let the body be part of the room. Track sensation. Allow movement. Ask, “What is your body trying to tell you right now?"
The body is not a vehicle. It is not an inconvenience. It is not a passive participant. It is a teacher, a truth-teller, and often the first place healing begins. So the next time your mind is racing ahead with planning, fixing, or analyzing; see if you can slow down just long enough to ask your body how it’s doing.
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