Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

The clinical implications are very clear and have been substantiated by research: teaching clients to pay attention to embodied self-awareness can assist them in changing their thought patterns to more positive and self-consistent ones, to elevating their moods, and enhancing the ability of their prefrontal cortex to link thought and feeling based

In the short term, suppression can be an effective means of homeostatic self-regulation because it alerts the body to activate defensive and protective means against the perceived stressor. Over the longer term, however, it is not an effective strategy and its continued use can begin to erode the very psychophysiology that makes normal self-regulat

Attention to feelings as opposed to attention to thoughts leads to a decline in rumination and depressed moods

A good cry is restorative, creative, and cleansing. It can help us heal and regain a sense of hope. However, a good cry is paradoxical: it is about pain and relief, despair and hope, loss and gain.

Self-awareness treatments for such individuals need to work with awareness of thought processes, suppressed emotions, and suppressed body movements encased in chronic muscle tension

Denial is the suppression of self-awareness of the possibly difficult and painful outcomes of one’s embodied experience, an experience of which one is aware. An example would be telling oneself that even though one feels hurt and abandoned, one “doesn’t need” a significant other who has decided to end a long-term relationship.

threatening events, especially if they are chronic, can fundamentally alter our embodied self-awareness.

open and healthy sexual communication requires awareness of and emotional engagement with one’s own body sensations.

The ability to recognize and respond to threats to our safety is a fundamental design feature of our physiology. Threat is the felt sense of fear that a person or her or his property or significant others are under attack and in danger of physical or psychological harm. The threat may originate from outside of ourselves or from inside our bodies.