MindBody Studies

It was a hot summer evening in rural Garrard County, Kentucky. I watched as what appeared to be an elderly…

In this article, I’ll use somatics, radical embodied cognition, ecological psychology, and my personal practice of nondual animism to root out the unexamined use of dualistic philosophical paradigms including Cartesian dualism, traditional cognitive science, and the ideas that underpin popular interpretations of the simulation argument.

In this article we build on these frameworks, and propose a model of yoga therapy that converges with Polyvagal Theory (PVT). PVT links the evolution of the autonomic nervous system to the emergence of prosocial behaviors and posits that the neural platforms supporting social behavior are involved in maintaining health, growth and restoration.

The latest research showed that changes in gut microbiota could affect the brain’s physiological, behavioral, and cognitive functions.

The brain is the central organ for adaptation to experiences, including those we call “stressors,” that are capable of changing brain architecture as well as altering systemic function via the neuroendocrine, autonomic, immune and metabolic systems.

As I read the ‘Handbook’ I was reminded that trauma and abuse need to be understood from a biological perspective and not solely from behavioral, sociological, and psychosocial perspectives.

Trauma impacts much more than just our thoughts and actions. Trauma is far-reaching and systemic—it cuts us to our bones.

Fascia, long ignored as just excess flesh to be cut away in search of the “stuff that matters”, like muscles, bones, ligaments, and veins, is now being acknowledged as considerably important to a holistic understanding of functional anatomy.

Somatic psychotherapy—also called body psychotherapy—focuses on the complex and profoundly powerful connections between body and mind and how those connections affect how we process and recover from trauma and other emotional distress.

Energy medicine is in some ways very basic to all experience and yet it is something that is quite difficult to speak about.

The very idea of “contemplative” psychotherapy may invoke some cognitive dissonance.

What is the link between Ideokinesis (and the many derived somatic approaches that use it) or other forms of visualization within somatic movement and VR?

The central mystery of human life is consciousness.

The function of the nervous system is to process information, and the brain is constantly changing – both functionally and structurally – due to the information coursing through it.