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"Making space” through somatic practices of self-awareness and care
Published in Lacie White, Palliative Care Nursing as Mindfulness, 2022
Yoga, as a more ‘formal’ practice, can also help nourish awareness of mind, body and breath, and of their inter-connection. The value of yoga is discussed in a number of ways by nurses in this study: Going to a class and setting an intention, and being good to your body, you know and taking that time out for your mind ... something like yoga is a good combination of exercise and mental sort of focus. And rest almost.Yoga for me is when I slow down, because you have to—in the yoga I go to any way. It’s slow, slow yoga. So, that’s really good because I’m usually rushing around trying to fit things in. Hatha yoga can support unifying actions between breath, body and mind (Desikachar, 1999; Kabat-Zinn, 2013). In yoga practice one moves in and out of postures while engaging with the edge(s) of discomfort within one’s bodily frame. This requires learning to notice when the body is gripping or tensing, or when the breath is restricted or not flowing at all. One is encouraged to work within one’s ability, respecting and exploring embodied limitations, and, from those spaces/places in body, to breathe. Also, postures are performed to establish a sense of space and calm in the body. People are encouraged to work with their experience and, over time and with practice, spaces to move in body expand, and clarity and flexibility in body-mind is fostered.
Abortion, Disability Rights, and Reproductive Justice
Published in Joel Michael Reynolds, Christine Wieseler, The Disability Bioethics Reader, 2022
This process is also complicated by uncertainty about what counts as an impairment. Some forms of body-mind variation are diagnosable as pathology until social forces catalyze their recategorization into forms of mere difference. For example, homosexuality was a psychiatric diagnostic category until activism lead to its 1973 removal from the DSM (Drescher 2015). This illustrates one way that cultural understandings of disability are expressed through clinical determinations. But it also points us to how interventions at the level of knowledge, of presenting better information to combat bad information, are insufficient for the task of reckoning with the profound societal consequences of widespread genetic testing. Simply knowing more about the likelihood of flourishing with a particular disability (which, to be clear, is very likely—an entire body of literature points to the real potential for disability to be mere difference, rather than bad difference3) won’t correct for the structural ways that flourishing is hindered.
Training in Psychosexual Medicine
Published in Philipa A Brough, Margaret Denman, Introduction to Psychosexual Medicine, 2019
The commissioning document produced by the South West Expert Advisory Group (6) in 2016 states: People experiencing sexual dysfunction, if unable to access a Sexual Dysfunction Service, are very likely to access other services which will generally be unable to diagnose and/or treat the underlying problem, referring on to another service/specialist. It can also mean that people requiring sexual dysfunction interventions experience significant delays in accessing care and support as integrated patient pathways will generally not be in place.Differentiating between ‘sexual health’ and ‘non-sexual health’ aspects of sexual dysfunction is not useful or relevant in clinical practice, where both are clearly integrated in the same patient, professional and consultation. It is in essence ‘body-mind’ medicine and requires appropriately trained clinicians.It is the practitioner's training that will determine how they approach the patient and how many sessions they are likely to need and use for each patient, the latter having a cost impact.
Sexuality, sex therapy & somatics. In bed with the most likely bedfellows. So why aren’t they?
Published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 2023
In the past 20 years of somatic literature, much has been written on the wisdom of the body, but seldom in an erotic or sexualised context. It seems that bodymind (a generic term to describe the dynamic relationship between the mind and body as a source of healing) researchers, including the newest recruits of the ‘mindfulness’ and neuroplasticity movements are, like the rest of society, uncomfortable with explicit somatic explorations of eroticism. With the exception of Reich’s study of orgasm and subsequent writing in The Sexual Revolution in 1936 (Reich, 1936); Kleinplatz’s work on Optimal Sex (Kleinplatz & Menard, 2020) Resnik’s (Resnik, 2004) experiential work, and one study by Mize and Iantaffi (2013) embodied, somatic, erotic pleasure (as distinct from embodied sexual trauma), are conspicuously absent from theoretical discussions of the bodymind in clinical health and wellbeing literature. From its initial appearance in intellectual texts of the early 20th century, as decades progressed and human sexuality was studied, embodiment was spoken of with diminishing detail regarding its relationship to the experience of pleasure and the erotic (Barrat, 2010).
A qualitative inquiry comparing mindfulness-based art therapy versus neutral clay tasks as a proactive mental health solution for college students
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2022
Theresa Van Lith, Megan Beerse, Quinn Smalley
Mindfulness involves the practice of paying attention, moment to moment, on purpose and without judgment.13 Mindfulness-based Art Therapy (MBAT) incorporates mindfulness practices like meditation and yoga into the practice of art therapy.14 MBAT deeply embodies the theoretical orientation of the Bodymind model,15 an art therapy model for identifying the mechanisms of change activated through art therapy. In this framework, the emphasis is placed on the deeply interdependent relationship between the body and the mind; for example, neurocognitive research indicates that emotions are accessed through interoceptive and sensory mechanisms.16 MBAT research has typically been implemented to address physiological illnesses like breast cancer among women; these results demonstrated psychosocial adjustment and positive changes to cerebral blood flow.17–19 Unfortunately, this MBAT protocol consisted of 2-hour sessions weekly for 8 weeks, which is more time- and cost-intensive than even Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
The role of emotional processing in art therapy (REPAT) for breast cancer patients
Published in Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 2019
Johanna Czamanski-Cohen, Joshua F. Wiley, Noga Sela, Opher Caspi, Karen Weihs
Emotion processing is a potential mechanism through which reduction of depression and somatic symptoms in cancer patients can occur. Following the bodymind model of mechanisms of AT,21 we conducted this pilot study. Women in both groups reported enjoying and gaining benefit from participation. However, only women in the AT group reported getting in touch with difficult emotions and processing their experience with BC. The moderate to large effect sizes of the AT on increased emotion processing, which has been linked to increased mental and physical health following BC.4,8,13 The self-report narratives of the participants along with the examples of art made in each of the groups demonstrate the differences in the content of the groups and they indicate the intervention targeted the mechanism intended. It is of note that participants in the SHAM group expressed gratitude and benefit from participating, albeit a different benefit than targeted in the AT intervention.