Body awareness and mental health: a body psychotherapy case study

Abstract

Dohsa-hou is a Japanese form of body psychotherapy that utilises body movement as a means of enhancing the psychotherapy process. Body awareness has recently been proposed as a potential contributor to therapeutic progress made in the course of body psychotherapy. This paper reports the utilisation of Dohsa-hou with a patient who had a history of outpatient and inpatient treatment for depression-related psychiatric symptoms. At the start of treatment, the patient had difficulty in releasing tension because of the harsh rigidity of her body; further, the patient did not know how to regulate tension. As the Dohsa-hou therapy progressed, the patient became aware of her tenseness and learned to self-regulate her bodily rigidity. Her severe depressive symptoms were alleviated along with the change in her physical rigidity. This study illustrates the process of the treatment and the contribution of body awareness to the therapeutic progress made.

Keywords:

• Body awareness
• psychotherapy
• movement
• psychological distress
• depression

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Osamu Imura for his helpful comments. The funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analyses, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Notes

1. ‘Modes of mind’ are three ways of emotional processing that affect subjective experience and processing of emotive materials (Teasdale, 1999). Each mode has a different function in the processing of emotions.