ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on getting the right diagnosis and fixing the problem she forgot to “touch the hurt.” Her intuitive skills for touch and massage were largely ignored and she was on the road to burn-out. She explains psychology was not a good fit either, intuitively knowing that if someone was hurting, her natural instinct would be to reach out and touch; and she could not do that as a psychologist. M. Merleau-Ponty, the French psychologist and philosopher, describes a “lived body” concept; that our body is our living interpreter of the world, and it is our body that perceives and overcomes the divide between the mental and the physical. A former psychiatrist experiencing unrelenting buttock pain revealed her deep belief around the body as a vehicle: “It carries her mind around; that is all.” In 1997, she had a personal experience illustrating symbolically the MindBody connection.
