The body has a memory. It includes our sufferings, our conflicts, our joys and our fears that can have an impact on our health. Somatotherapy highlights the link between body and mind.

In the 1987th century, the French psychiatrist, Richard Meyer, invented somatotherapy and founded the European School of Socio-Somato-Analytical Psychotherapy in XNUMX. From “Somato” the body and “Therapy” care, “Somatotherapy” therefore means the body care. This is called a psycho-bodily practice that establishes a helping relationship through touch. This approach, which takes into account the whole person, makes it possible to combine many methods of psycho-bodily therapy in order to allow the patient to free himself from his blockages, to reconcile body and mind. We can undertake somatotherapy when a difficulty in life persists, when there is mourning, a separation, when we are depressed, anxious, when a discomfort has set in but also because the you lack energy and want to reconnect with yourself and face the problems that you may encounter in your life.

The debate over the mind-body connection has been around for millennia. How can the mind and body influence each other? From ancient philosophers and religions to modern science, views have differed. Plato spoke of “the soul of the body”, Descartes insisted on the preeminence of the spirit over the body, but did not encourage neglecting or ignoring the latter. Beginning in the twentieth century, medicine and psychology and neuroscience explored the notion of the body’s “intelligence”.

According to Antonio Damasio, professor of neurology at the University of Iowa (United States), the arbitrary division between body and mind on which all Western medicine has been based is over. He has shown that people who no longer sense bodily information, due to injury or disease, have disrupted intellectual functions, even if the cerebral cortex is intact.

Today, therefore, we know that the body and the spirit are neither the same thing nor two totally separate things: they are two different but very closely connected entities. A team from the University of Pittsburgh (United States) claims, in a published study, that, thanks to a new method of tracing, they discovered multiple cortical areas anatomically linked to the adrenal glands. Some of our actions towards ourselves or towards others can strengthen, or on the contrary, deteriorate our physiological balance. This sheds light on how mental states can alter organ function, a basis for psychosomatic illnesses. Dozens of studies have pointed out, for example, the

influence of negative emotions on the risk and evolution of cardiovascular pathologies (heart attack, coronary artery disease, etc.). Understanding these interconnections can help us enormously. 

A somatotherapy session begins with a verbal part: the practitioner must, by being actively involved, listen attentively to the patient, ask him questions about his symptoms in order to identify the problems he encounters, hear his life course. Listening that can continue over several sessions, which already allows the person to release blockages.

When the problem has been identified, the proposed work is adapted to the patient to meet his own needs. The somathotherapist makes his choice of body methods according to his specialties:

• massage;
• awareness of the body schema in space;
• movement ;
• dance ;
• breathing;
• hypnosis;
• Art therapy.

At the end of the session, it can last 1h30 to 2 hours, the practitioner lets the person rest for about ten minutes. Depending on individual needs and goals, somatotherapy can be a short therapy, lasting a few sessions, or become a longer therapy, up to a year or even two.

The mind needs the body to regulate itself, which is why the work on the physical complements that of the verb. The massage relaxes and invites you to let go little by little. The techniques used make it possible to tap into our own self-healing resources which releases the tensions, fears, anxieties at the origin of our discomfort and lack of self-confidence. Stress, for example, can be appeased better by breathing, muscle relaxation than by thoughts. A learning which, little by little, will turn into reflexes thanks to cerebral plasticity.

Releasing bodily memory puts us in touch with the emotions that are linked to it, such as anger, fear, sadness, joy, well-being. Somatotherapy is there to bring to the person the exploration of his problematic , which calls for a return of emotional, sensory, symbolic information to consciousness; remember and therefore relive memories.

A powerful tool for personal development and introspection, somatotherapy helps people become aware of conflicts, past situations and their impact on their daily, social, family and professional life and to free themselves from false beliefs about themselves. , to regain confidence and to overcome internal conflicts that harm freedom.