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First, there is a sense in which somatic psychology and bodymind therapy have been practiced for millennia. For they inhere to ancient spiritual traditions, and are evident in indigenous methods of healing. In this sense, the bodymind perspective was occluded by the industrial developments of western technology along with the cultural structures of globalized capitalism. Some commentators also argue that, even before those developments, this bodymind vision of the human being was ideologically opposed by the hegemony of specific forms of Christian and Islamic theology, in the twentieth century, the bodymind perspective was also systematically and ideologically obscured by the development of behaviorist, cognitivist and psychoanalytic psychologies (which tended to relegate the body to a secondary status, as was discussed in Chapter 1). But despite these adverse developments, somatic psychology and bodymind therapy are manifestations of ancient lineages of wisdom that are perhaps now, once again, coming into their own.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230277199_5

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