The science behind the concept of body intelligence

Those of you familiar with Mickel Therapy will recognise our use of the metaphor of 'Head intelligence' and 'Body Intelligence' and the hypothesis that conflicts between the two is what leads to 'dis-ease'. But is there any science to back this unlikely statement? Well, yes there is.

One of the forefathers of psychology, a William James and more recently Randolph Cornelius state clearly that emotion arises before and often without thought. In other words your mid-brain structures can be producing emotional responses to your environment without there being any activity in your thinking brain (left frontal lobe).

Metaphorically Mickel Therapy translates this into the Body (mid-brain structures such as amygdala and hippocampus) producing emotions that the Head does not pick up or act appropriately upon. When this happens the Body then 'turns up the volume' by sending symptoms to try and get your Head's attention so that you then hopefully respond appropriately to the emotional signal.

At a neurological level we would hypothesise that when mid-brain activity arises in this way then it creates 'unhealthy neural pathways' through the mid-brain structures especially the hypothalamus gland. We would hypothesise that this stimulates overdrive within the hypothalamus and this then creates the spiral of symptoms through the HPA axis and autonomic nervous system via the lateral medulla. Now before we lose your interest entirely with all this complicated language use - let's simplify and summarise.

Mickel Therapy has evolved to be able to train clients to understand mid-brain emotional activity and know what needs done when these emotions arise. (It is worth noting that because these emotions are not created by thought then they don't change by altering thought - this probably explains the lack of success of treatments such as CBT in most of the studies done on it).

In other words by increasing our clients awareness and coaching them in acting upon their mid-brain signals, it is likely that at a neurological level they are diverting the signal away from the 'unhealthy pathway' into a new 'healthy' one which heads towards the frontal lobe for appropriate action. The most exciting thing about this from Mickel Therapy's perspective is that we are showing clients how to make themselves well again through emotional awareness, emotional acceptance and finally emotionally empowered actions. A video interview on this matter with Professor Roddy Cowie and Dr Francis Teeney will soon be available.