The Separation of the Body and the Mind

BOOM! And herein lies a fundamental problem.

Enter Descartes in the 17th Century and the idea of the mind and the body being separate, providing the foundation for the biomedical model for the next three centuries.

I feel we are still living with the ramifications of this. There seems to be so much disconnection from our bodies, disconnection from how our body is feeling at any given moment, if we are hungry or afraid.

How many of you don’t know that you are hungry until you are starving, that you are angry, until you are SUPER angry, that you have a sore toe until it is infected, that you don’t feel safe until it is too late?

The body holds so much wisdom. 

How can we separate the body from the mind? If I think something scary, my body responds. 

This is where therapies such as Hakomi, Focusing, and other forms of Somatic Psychotherapy are so powerful. They allow us to pause with the body, to slow down and listen. 

It is the lost art of being human.

Meditation is indeed an intrapsychic technology (the geek in me loves this phrase)! It has been practised for thousands of years and has embedded in it thousands of years of wisdom. I love that Western research is backing up and explaining peoples lived experiences with meditation.

I hold a vision for a world with more connection. Unity between parts of self, connection with nature, in a felt embodied and meaningful way.

Love, Jen

The Separation of the Body and the Mind


“One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that’s been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn