Body Awareness: a phenomenological inquiry into the common ground of mind-body therapies
Wolf E Mehling, Judith Wrubel, Jennifer J Daubenmier, Cynthia J Price, Catherine E Kerr, Theresa Silow, Viranjini Gopisetty, Anita L Stewart
Philosophy Ethics and Humanities in Medicine January 1, 2011 DOI: 10.1186/1747-5341-6-6 via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractBody awareness is a key element in mind-body therapies such as yoga, Tai Chi, and mindfulness meditation, yet its meaning across these approaches is not always clear. Through focus groups with leading practitioners and their patients, the study finds that body awareness is understood as an inseparable part of embodied self-awareness, realized through action and interaction with the environment. It is seen as an innate tendency of the organism toward self-organization and wholeness. Patients experience a progression toward greater unity between body and self, mirroring a philosophical concept of embodiment as a dialectic experienced at distinct developmental levels.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Practitioners and patients of mind-body therapies |
| Citations | 465 |
| Key finding | Body awareness is understood as an inseparable aspect of embodied self-awareness, realized in action and interaction, and patients progress toward greater unity between body and self. |
Abstract
Enhancing body awareness has been described as a key element or a mechanism of action for therapeutic approaches often categorized as mind-body approaches, such as yoga, TaiChi, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, Body Awareness Therapy, mindfulness based therapies/meditation, Feldenkrais, Alexander Method, Breath Therapy and others with reported benefits for a variety of health conditions. To better understand the conceptualization of body awareness in mind-body therapies, leading practitioners and teaching faculty of these approaches were invited as well as their patients to participate in focus groups. The qualitative analysis of these focus groups with representative practitioners of body awareness practices, and the perspectives of their patients, elucidated the common ground of their understanding of body awareness. For them body awareness is an inseparable aspect of embodied self awareness realized in action and interaction with the environment and world. It is the awareness of embodiment as an innate tendency of our organism for emergent self-organization and wholeness. The process that patients undergo in these therapies was seen as a progression towards greater unity between body and self, very similar to the conceptualization of embodiment as dialectic of body and self described by some philosophers as being experienced in distinct developmental levels.