Introduction

Throughout the ages and cultures, the body has always played a crucial role in psychosomatic well-being. From yoga, as probably the oldest discipline that sees man as a psychosomatic unit, right through to healing forms well into the Greco-Roman era, each time the approach was based on the reciprocal relationship between movement or touch, on the one hand, and psychological functioning, on the other. Despite developments, such as psychosomatic medicine, psychomotor therapy, body psychotherapy or somatic psychology, a persistent dichotomy between body and mind gradually developed. With a transdisciplinary mindset, experiential bodywork tries to make a modest attempt to clarify part of the psychosomatic ground plan, to deepen some of its fundamental foundations and to build bridges. An exception on the somatic left-hand side of the spectrum is psychomotor therapy. This specialised form of physiotherapy has its roots in movement therapy and remedial gymnastics, developed as a holistic approach to psychiatric and psychopathological disorders and has a respectable, scientific basis.