Whole Body Psychiatry

Biological psychiatrists think that feelings are a function of the neurotransmitters firing in the brain.  So the study of the mind and the study of psychiatry has become the study of the biochemistry of the brain.

I believe this fundamental premise to be incomplete.  It is incomplete because it ignores the rest of the body.  Feelings are something we all intuitively understand.  We know when we are angry, sad or happy.  We experience feelings; we understand them intuitively and interpret them in the brain.

The brain is part of the body and the body is a whole.  We feel in our muscles, in our blood vessels, in our organs; in our body as a whole.  It is true, that without our brain, we can not understand what we feel; but we feel in the body none the less.  This is called a kinesthetic experience.

Let me make the case this way.  When my beloved dog died, I felt heartbroken.  I also felt pain in my chest that radiated into my left arm.   I had to tell myself that I was not going to give myself a heart attack because my dog died, even though I was very close to her.

When a friend died, I felt like something had been ripped from my chest and I had a gapping wound.  It was physical.

Something made me very angry and I felt as though my blood was boiling.  It was the first time I put it together that the phrase "it makes my blood boil" was referring to a kinesthetic experience of emotion.

We have many experiences like this described in our language.  We have heart-felt feelings; we have visceral reactions; we have gut feelings; we have whole body longing; we have whole body sadness; we have whole body sobbing; we have tissue/muscle memory; we feel love from the heart that can be almost palpable, certainly visible.

Feelings are a kinesthetic experience.  We experience emotions/feelings in our bodies.  We may interpret them in our mind/brain but we experience them in our bodies. This is why body language is 95% of communication and words spoken are only 5%.

Studying neurotransmitters as the source of our feeling of well being is limited.  If you want to understand your own feelings better, exaggerate your body language.  Exaggerate your tone of voice and your facial expression.  The feeling or feelings you are having will become clearer in your perception. 

The same is true if you want to understand someone else.  Imitate their body language and their tone of voice and facial expression.  You will begin to feel what the other person is feeling.  This can be very helpful in understanding someone and in communication.

So what do we do with all this feeling?  We experience it and most importantly express it.  We need to express our feelings so others can understand us.  We need to express ourselves so we can relieve our burden of carrying around unstated feelings. 

Feelings take a lot of energy to experience.  To hold them back, especially if they are very strong feelings like anger, takes a lot of energy.  We can become exhausted from it.  We can also become sick from it.

The important component of having feelings is to allow your body to feel them, your brain to understand them and your loved ones to share them.  Sharing how you feel with someone (done responsibly of course) is a great gift. 

If feelings are a kinesthetic experience how does eating affect our mood? How does the emotional stress of life make us sick?

The body is a whole.  That includes the mind, the nervous system, the organs, the muscles and the gut.  The body and the feeling of well being are in a state of homeostatic balance with each other; two sides of the same equation so to speak.

The equation is:  body <--------> mind.  They talk back and forth to each other.  The language used may be hormonal, biochemical, or cellular processes but there is intense communication. 

The most important component of this communication is that it is a two way street.  Not a one way street.  So having a positive attitude toward life, having loving relationships and a spiritual connection makes a big difference in how our bodies function; we are a whole.  The same is true in the reverse direction.  If we eat food that supports our biological processes and feeds our cells good nutrition for them to thrive on, our "feeling" will be good.  We will feel satisfied and have a sense of well being.  If we eat food that is not healthy and on which our bodies have to struggle to thrive, if we have unexpressed emotions, stressful lives with out relief and no sense of being loved, we will have a sense of being unhappy, perhaps depressed or anxious.

The point of holistic psychiatry is to integrate all of these things together.  Nourishing the body with whole food, hormonal balance and optimal biological functioning will nourish our sense of happiness and well being.  Implementing life style habits that promote sufficient rest, stress reduction, positive attitudes, self acceptance and loving relationships will support not only the feeling of well being but a healthy body. 

The body is a whole.