Working in Movement

Hearts and Minds is an article about heart disease, stress response and emotions in the current issue of US News and World Report. Unsurprisingly, there is a strongly suggested link between states of chronic depression or arousal and worsening effects of heart disease. The article opens and closes with the personal story of a woman whose deep depression after a second heart attach was ruining her family life, which mattered to her a great deal. Things improved for her dramatically after she "joined a support group and became a careful chronicler of her shifts in moods and her fragile dreams and expectations."

Good for her. This suggests that she successfully learned and applied some sort of cognitive therapy techniques. But thoughts aren't the only place these emotional states and the unbalanced state of the autonomic nervous system can be observed. There are also somatic patterns, noticeable physical sensations that show up, sometimes well ahead of the full-blown thing. Like any other bodily pattern, they can prove difficult to observe or develop an awareness of. All this suggests that body awareness work could be an ally in the search for preventive approaches to maladies like heart disease.