Somatic Therapy and the Mind–Body Connection: What You Need to Know 🧘🏾♀️✨
Key Takeaways:
The mind and body are deeply connected, with thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical sensations influencing one another.
Emotional experiences can show up physically, including through muscle tension, changes in breathing, restlessness, or fatigue.
The connection works both ways, as physical experiences and habits can also influence our mental and emotional well-being.
Somatic therapy can be adapted for virtual sessions, allowing therapists to guide clients through body-centered practices from their own spaces.
Small daily practices can build mind-body awareness, including mindful breathing, journaling, movement, and creative activities.
Mind-body awareness is a practice, not a test, and small moments of noticing can help us listen and reconnect with ourselves at our own pace.
Mental health and physical health have been treated as unrelated parts of our well-being. Historically, our bodies and minds were seen as entirely separate, with each understood as functioning independently [3]. Today, we have the growing understanding that our thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and behaviors are deeply connected.
At the same time, therapy is becoming increasingly accessible online, making it important to consider how body-based approaches can work in virtual settings.
This growing understanding of the mind-body connection is one reason somatic therapy has become a growing approach to mental health care. In this blog, we’ll explore what the mind-body connection means, what somatic therapy looks like, and some of the benefits this approach may offer. We’ll also look at how somatic therapy can be incorporated into virtual sessions and explore simple practices you can bring into your everyday routine.
What is the Mind-Body Connection?
While it can be easy to think of mental and physical health as two separate areas, our experiences are much more interconnected. Stress, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and physical sensations can all influence one another throughout our everyday lives. The mind-body connection describes the ongoing relationship between what we think and feel and what happens within our bodies [4].
Our thoughts and emotions can affect how our bodies function [4]. The relationship also works in the other direction. What we do with our physical body (what we eat, how much we exercise, even our posture) can impact our mental state [4]. Something as simple as getting enough rest, moving your body, or changing your posture can influence how you feel and function.
This doesn’t mean that physical habits can solve every mental health concern, but it highlights how closely our physical and emotional experiences can be connected.
Our ability to notice signals coming from inside the body is called introception. It provides the bodily foundation for regulating emotion, attention, and action, and can help us derive meaning from our experiences [2].
Paying attention to internal signals can give us information about what we are experiencing, whether that means noticing a racing heart when we feel anxious or recognizing a sense of ease when we feel safe and supported.
Every system in our bodies share a common chemical language, and they are constantly communicating with one another [4]. Understanding this connection can give us another way to think about mental health. Instead of focusing only on what we think or how we feel emotionally, we can also become curious about what is happening physically.
This broader awareness is one of the ideas that somatic therapy builds upon.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapies are based on the idea that our body holds and expresses experiences and emotions [5]. This perspective recognizes that difficult experiences may affect us in ways that are not always easy to explain through words alone.
A somatic view sees the body as the starting point for achieving healing [5]. Therapists may incorporate practices involving movement, breathing, sensory awareness, or other ways of noticing physical experiences. This doesn't mean that every somatic therapy session involves physical exercises or that clients need to have a particular type of bodily awareness.
Instead, somatic therapy can create opportunities to become curious about the relationship between what is happening emotionally and what is happening physically.
What are the Benefits of Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy may offer benefits by helping people become more aware of how their emotional experiences show up physically. Rather than trying to ignore or push away uncomfortable sensations, the goal may be to develop a different relationship with them. Somatic therapy is more about relieving the tension, as opposed to desensitizing people to it [5].
By incorporating awareness of the body into therapy, somatic approaches can support a more holistic understanding of mental health. It can enhance self-awareness, emotional regulation, and healing [1]. Developing greater awareness of bodily experiences may also help people make connections between what they are experiencing physically, emotionally, and cognitively.
For some people, this increased awareness can create opportunities to better understand their needs, responses to stress, and support greater awareness and connection with others, as research suggests [2].
How Somatic Therapy Can Be Done Virtually
If somatic therapy focuses on the body, you may wonder how this approach can work through a screen. While virtual therapy looks different from being physically present with a therapist, it still creates space for body-centered work. Online therapy allows therapists to observe body language, posture, and other non-verbal cues through video [1].
Therapists trained in somatic approaches can also adapt practices for the virtual environment, guiding clients through exercises they can complete in their own space [1]. This might include noticing physical sensations, exploring movement, or paying attention to breathing while remaining in a familiar environment.
Rather than being a limitation, the virtual setting can sometimes provide an opportunity to explore these practices where clients feel the most comfortable and supported.
Embodied online therapy demonstrates that profound, body-centered therapeutic work can occur even when participants are not physically co-present [1]. Virtual somatic therapy may therefore offer another accessible way to incorporate body awareness into the therapeutic process.
Practices to Try
You don't have to completely change your routine to begin incorporating mind-body awareness into your da
y. Small, consistent practices—such as mindful breathing, journaling, movement, or creative activities—can create opportunities to slow down and notice what you are experiencing. Even just prolonged exhaling can help us practice observing bodily experiences in a neutral, non-judgmental way [2].
If you're looking for a place to start, we've created a worksheet called the Embodiment Basics. The worksheet offers simple practices for building awareness, grounding, and a sense of safety at your own pace. You can work through the entire worksheet or choose one practice that feels supportive and return to it when you need it.
The goal isn't to do these practices perfectly or force yourself to feel a certain way. Instead, they can offer small opportunities to listen, notice, and reconnect with yourself.
References:
[1] Giampà, A. (2024). “Embodied Online Therapy”: The efficacy of somatic and psychological treatment delivered digitally [Review of the book Embodied Online Therapy, by A. Rizzo, E. Gatto, L. Calandi, & R. Alfa]. Advances in Medicine, Psychology and Public Health, 1(3), 164–169. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10901015
[2] Liu, Z., Wu, Z., Zeng, J., & Ye, H. (2026). Understanding mind–body experience from the perspective of interoceptive awareness: A 21-day embodied practice intervention. Behavioral Sciences, 16(3), Article 411. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16030411.
[3] da Silveira Coêlho, M. L., Wingenbach, T. S. H., & Boggio, P. S. (2022). Social and affective neuroscience of embodiment. In P. S. Boggio, T. S. H. Wingenbach, M. L. da Silveira Coêlho, et al. (Eds.), Social and affective neuroscience of everyday human interaction: From theory to methodology. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08651-9_3.
[4] Hart, P. (2026). What is the mind-body connection? Taking Charge of Your Wellbeing, University of Minnesota. https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/what-is-the-mind-body-connection.
[5] Salamon, M. (2023, July 7). What is somatic therapy? Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-somatic-therapy-202307072951.
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