What is Body Psychotherapy?

Body Psychotherapy is a holistic form of psychotherapy which incorporates the body within the psychotherapeutic process. Based on the idea that the body is directly linked to thought and emotions, Body Psychotherapy uses various techniques which enhance the awareness of our body and its direct connection with our thoughts and emotions for the restoration of pathological symptoms.

According to WHO (1946), health is not simply the absence of illness but a state of complete physical, social and spiritual well-being. Importantly, Marks (2015) broadened this definition of health to include psychological, cultural and economic attributes.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disease of the central nervous system in which the immune system attacks myelin –the protective coating around nerve fibers– and the nerve fibers themselves. The Inflammation and damage caused impairs nerve signaling to and from the brain and spinal cord, resulting in various symptoms such as fatigue, walking difficulty, numbness or tingling, spasticity, weakness, vision problems, bowel and bladder dysfunction, dizziness and vertigo, sexual problems, pain, cognitive impairment, emotional complications and depression (National Multiple Sclerosis Society-NMSS, 2018).

While the idea of health promotion appeared early in this century, the first published definition was provided by Lalonde (1974 in Kumar, 2012): “a strategy aimed at informing, influencing and assisting both individuals and organizations so that they will accept more responsibility and be more active in matters affecting mental and physical health”.

Computer modelling is a particular methodology which enables cognitive psychologists to accurately represent and test theories of how and why specific cognitive processes operate inside people (Mulhollard and Watt, 2001). The aim is to produce computer models which simulate human cognitive performance as concerns representation of knowledge and processes involved in utilizing it (Cohen, 2002).

The discipline of social psychology, though generally referring to the study of individual and social life, is not uniformly defined as to its scope, aims and research methods. This diversity is partly dealt with through the distinct perspectives found in approaching social psychological processes, with their particular assumptions, focuses, aims and methods.

Social psychology is generally concerned with the study of the relationship between the individual and the social world (Watson, 1996), yet the different approaches it comprises coming from either the psychological or the sociological tradition, place their emphasis, respectively, either on the individual (humanistic and experimental perspectives) or on how the social context helps to construct the person (social constructionist perspective) (Stevens, 1996).

In studying children with developmental difficulties, such as deafness, language impairment, dyslexia, and so on, psychologists have tried to understand the nature of these problems and to suggest appropriate methods for remediation and intervention (Bancroft, 1995).

What is the linkage between stress and bowel disease?