How to use the Mind-Body Connection to improve your mental health

By Abby Wen Wu

As a little kid, I loved playing outdoors, like jumping in the rain puddles and watching the bugs crawl. As I grew up, academics and broader life trained my mind to forget my body and its surroundings. My world shrank and my focus was on the next thing that needed to be done and all the big-person responsibilities. My body became sluggish, my mind busy and narrow, and my emotions more turbulent.

As a first-generation Chinese American, I found myself a bit lost when it came to mental health struggles, partially due to the stigma within my community. In fact, in the end, it was body-based modalities which my ancestors were well-versed in that helped me the most.

The beginning of a life-changing journey

I grew up in an Asian household that never spoke about feelings and community that stigmatized mental health, and my path to body-centered healing was circuitous. I started my journey in high school focused on the mind, with self-help books and cognitive reframing exercises, but nonetheless stayed miserable. It wasn’t until I injured my back in college and desperately needed ways to avoid re-injury post-surgery that my search turned to the body. 

The first time I experienced the magic of mind-body connection was on a Vipassana meditation retreat. Almost quitting on the second-day because of back pain, the woman volunteering asked me to sit through one more session. As I quietly observed my body and thoughts and stayed with my fears, my back pain decreased by 80%, permanently. I was shocked to realize that my mind was inflicting pain on my body. 

The second life-changing body-practice I encountered was Focusing, a talk-based somatic therapy. Focusing helps to shift from incessant thinking, by slowing down enough to become aware of the sensations in the body and what it is trying to tell me. Each time was like peeking into an inner world where everything was clear with no confusion and a balming refreshment of calm. I desperately wanted more.

What is the mind-body connection?

What is the world of mind-body connection? Traditional Chinese Medicine is built on this ground and has for millennia perceived the mind and heart, from which all emotions emanate, as one system. While modern science is starting to validate the mind-body connection more, Asian therapy has centered this concept for centuries.

Each emotion corresponds to an organ, the lungs with grief, the heart with joy, the gut with excessive thinking, the liver with anger, and the kidneys with fear. This knowledge is built into Chinese culture and language. For example, when I was growing up, my grandma would warn me not to get angry often because it would hurt my liver. The word anger (sheng qi 生气) in verbatim means rising energy. 

Western allopathic and functional medicine are rediscovering the same truths. The most well-known psychiatrists and doctors in the field of trauma, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and Dr. Gabor Mate both speak about how trauma is stored in the body and can cause autoimmune illnesses, respectively. Allopathic doctors Dr. John Sarno and Howard Schubiner both point to how the mind can be the cause of chronic pain and illness. Functional medicine and microbiome research are also pointing to a gut-brain axis for treating depression and anxiety. 

Our emotions are energy (qi, 气) that originates and moves in the body. Thoughts create emotions and emotions create thoughts. It's natural to automatically suppress and stop the movement of emotional energy when it's too overwhelming or the environment isn't safe to feel. However, stuck energy will stagnate and solidify into heaviness in the body, leading to less aliveness, excessive thinking, background emotional tones of fear and / or sadness, indigestion, and over time possibly diseases. 

Cognitive practices are helpful but only touch the mental part of the equation. How many times have you tried verbal affirmations only to have the same feelings of worthlessness or helplessness resurface? Or understand why things are the way they are in your past but still feel the same way? That’s because the unprocessed feelings of grief and fear are still stuck in the body and want to be met and released. In my journey, I realized over time that healing is a process of subtracting and releasing the stuck energy from the body vs. adding or reshuffling the thoughts in the mind.

How to release trauma and stress from the body

To move energy from the body, TCM modalities like acupuncture use needles via meridians, and body-centered modalities use talk, movement, breath, touch, and sound. It’s natural for the body to want to release excess energy when the right access points are triggered and when there is enough safety and space. Safety comes from a therapist’s attention, being aware of one’s immediate surroundings, feeling gravity and the ground, and imaginal supports (e.g., memories of grandma or a loving pet). In this safe environment, it’s easier to bring our attention from the outside back to the sensations of our body (i.e., see, feel, hear), and give loving awareness to past incomplete experiences and thereby release them. 

As the healing process unfolds, the body becomes lighter, freer, and the way we perceive the world returns to the experiences of childhood, where life is filled with aliveness and our surroundings filled with magic.

Finding a practice that works for you is a process of discovering your uniqueness. The most popular modalities of somatic therapy today are Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Sensorimotor therapy, and NARM to name a few. Equally effective are adjunct practices like breathwork, yoga, bodywork/massage therapy, and dance movement therapies. My suggestion is to taste many types of practices and see what resonates for you. The key is to listen to your body and move at the right pace, with the support of the most fitting modality for you.

If you have any questions regarding how to start the journey, feel free to reach out via Anise Health or LinkedIn. I wish you a journey of ease for your mind and body and an ever-increasing feeling of interconnectedness with our world.

Abby Wen Wu

Abby Wen Wu is a 1st generation Chinese American. She started her career in finance, tech, and consulting. After experiencing a deeply transformational journey at 27, she now fully devotes her time to support others on their journey in somatic healing, embodiment, and reconnection to nature. She teaches classes on Returning to Your Body Nature, holds retreats for Continuum, and works with 1;1 clients. You can reach her at abbywenwu@gmail.com.