As Jungian analyst James Hillman remarked, “Psychotherapy is only working on that ‘inside’ soul. By removing the soul from the world and not recognising that the soul is also in the world, psychotherapy can’t do its job anymore. The buildings are sick, the institutions are sick, the banking system’s sick, the schools, the streets - the sickness is out there.

It does, though. Obviously, our brains are in our bodies, and thus depend on body chemistry in order to work. Too much sugar, sluggish brain. Too much wheat, compliant brain. Too much artificial stuff, fearful brain. Too much alcohol and drug stuff, collapsed brain. But the impact of our bodies on thinking goes beyond this chemistry question. When we try to think inside a body we disrespect, it can hear only, ‘You don’t matter.’ And that assumption practically anaesthetizes the cortex.

The body, then, is the place where we think, not only because it contains our brains, but also because it tells us whether we matter.

What to do?

Consider these questions.

About the room:

What are three things you can do before your next meeting so that when people arrive they feel, just from the room, that they matter?

About the listener:

How can you communicate to your listener the importance of their keeping their eyes on your eyes so that their eyes and their face respond accurately to the micro signals of change in your thinking?

About your body:

What one thing do you know you need to do so that your body can say to you, ‘You matter’?

At my best, I see psychotherapy in the same light. Many people who come to therapy are disgusted with themselves for one reason or another, much as the Buddha was in his own time and in his own way. This disgust can take many forms: shame, fear, anxiety, or feelings of unworthiness are common expressions of it, but the possibilities are endless. Some people even develop what is called a “reaction formation” and seem the opposite of disgusted. They come across as prideful or conceited and unwilling to admit their faults or self-doubts. But these individuals are often just propping themselves up, creating a false front to mask their vulnerabilities, and somewhere inside they are troubled because they know they are not being real.

Mindfulness has proven very useful for people who tend to act out their feelings rather than experience them internally by encouraging them to reflect rather than react, but therapists like Marsha Linehan, the founder of dialectical behavioral therapy, have discovered that these very people, who seem so “emotional,” actually have very little idea what they are feeling. Linehan, a behaviorist, had the insight that such people are actually phobic toward their own emotions, that when they get an inkling of a disturbing feeling, they go into a kind of panic and, in running away from the experience, express it, or act it out, rather than experience it.

Mood and emotion are a whole-body phenomena that alters the body’s physiology and chemistry, as well as how that person feels and acts.