life is chaotic and unpredictable and we do our best to stay present with the flow of experience. To the extent that the child’s body sensations and emotions are denied, devalued, ignored, or punished by parents, the child will find ways to avoid sharing them with others and eventually to avoid feeling them entirely.

is important in the short run because it helps us rise to challenges and mobilize our resources. If we can return to a more relaxed state soon after, allowing our parasympathetic nervous system to slow down our hearts and cool our bodies, normal recovery and restoration of our metabolic energetic resources will result in an ability to think clearly

In the suppression of urges, then, it is not just the brain but the neuromuscular system that is activated to contain the urge. If one is threatened but cannot fight or escape, the skeletal muscles in the arms, legs, and trunk that might have become fully active instead become tensed at a low level of contraction. If you’ve ever witnessed a cat (or

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

The body schema is related to the skeletomotor system and the parts of the nervous system that are responsible for making movements intentional (meaning that the movements are in response to our interoceptive needs and desires), coordinated (smooth linkages), and comfortable (without excessive effort, pain, or fatigue).

As infants, before we can speak and conceptualize, we learn to move toward what makes us feel good and move away from what makes us feel bad.

This process of mutual coordination is called coregulation, the ability to be and move with another individual in relation to a shared set of interoceptive sensations and emotions and in relation to the linkages and boundaries of each person’s body schema.

This and other research has revealed that the somatotopic organization of the brain is plastic. In neuroscience, plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to develop new experience dependent pathways in the case of impairment or damage.

Paradoxically, even though pain is meant to be a wake-up call, it is often treated like an unwelcome guest. All we want to do is get away from it or to have that guest leave as soon as possible. Pain often leads to suppression and absorption. Continuing to suppress pain in the absence of embodied self-awareness that leads to self-care, therefore,