In this age of information, accumulating and analyzing knowledge is highly regarded. While thinking is clearly important, ‘over-thinking’ that may disconnect you from your body and the messages it may offer you can result in anxiety and stress. When so much value is put on our capacity to think, the body can be seen merely as a commodity, a useful vehicle to bring us from point A to B. And while we recognize the value of keeping our body fit and healthy, it seems we may have lost touch with it as a source of wisdom. Intuition, gut feelings, and flashes of insight are all deeply connected to our ability to sense and connect to our bodies.

Being aware of our inner world of sensations and emotions provides us with important and useful information when we navigate our relationships. Emotions are sensations and sensations live in the body. In addition, our nervous system provides built-in protection that has kept us and our ancestors safe. If our hand is too close to the fire, our body instinctively knows what to do to move it away; no thinking is involved! When facing danger, both animals and human beings can rely on the body to do what’s needed to keep them safe: fight, flee, or freeze.

In 2014, Bessel Van Der Kolk, researcher and psychiatrist, wrote the pioneering book The Body Keeps the Score on how trauma and overwhelming experiences affect the brain, nervous system, and the body. Just as the body can be an important source of wisdom, it can also hold the imprints of overwhelming experiences that we might not have had the opportunity to process. This may show up as reactivity, a difficulty to regulate emotions, irritability, anger, anxiety, depression, the feeling of not being good enough, lethargy, or difficulty setting boundaries or making decisions.

In overwhelming situations, the body and the brain keep us safe by numbing, spacing out, and even dissociating. Suppressing uncomfortable emotions and sensations is an intelligent strategy the brain and body use to keep human beings safe, when that is the only option available. Some people may have been too young to process overwhelming sensations and feelings or may not have been able to access support when these overwhelming experiences happened. Later in life, however, it is possible to reconnect to these stored sensations and feelings which can be experienced as tension, knots, contractions, and variety of other sensations, and sometimes even as chronic pain. These imprints from the past are knocking at the door asking to be acknowledged. Not to be relived, but simply to be revisited with care and compassion.

Until we can do that, the body and mind may not always feel like a hospitable place in which to live. This can sometimes manifest as unwanted behaviours, distorted beliefs, powerful feelings that we don’t quite know how to process, and physical sensations.

When an event in the present triggers sensations from the past, there are different ways to protect us from being overwhelmed. Some may be unhealthy, such as using substances, overworking, overeating, or spending too much time on our devices. Keeping uncomfortable feelings at bay by distracting ourselves, however, is short lived. In the long term it may rob us of our vitality, health, resilience, intuition, and potential, and may impact our relationships as well. Our body, brain, and nervous system may need help to recognize that even though overwhelming situations were experienced in the past, we are now safe.

How can we find a way back to the body?

We cannot think our way back to the body. The way back is through the body! This may seem counterintuitive, but it can be done at a pace that our system is able to tolerate while using inner or outer resources we already have or can develop.

Many psychotherapies now include body-based practices to support clients who have a history of overwhelming experiences (either as a one-time acute experience, or a series of experiences over a period). There is much we can do to gradually befriend our body. Bessel Van Der Kolk recommends simple body-based practices such as yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi, dance, movement, theatre, singing, drumming, etc.

Everyone is unique; what may work for one person may not work for another. Exploration requires patience, openness, and curiosity. In a world rampant with stress and challenges, finding the way back to our body may be the greatest gift we can offer ourselves. It will not only increase our capacity to face difficulties but also improve our relationships and our ability to come up with options we did not realize existed when facing challenging situations.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk is available in the AMI library: amiquebec.org/library

–Sylvie Bouchard, AMI counsellor
From Share&Care Fall 2026