On the last day of the course ”Psychosomatic-Oriented Physiotherapy” at Karolinska Institute, Inger Ström, an inspiring teacher as well as a licensed physiotherapist and psychotherapist, emphasized an ongoing paradigm shift where the body’s language and messages are increasingly coming into focus. With her passion for the body’s significance for health, capacity to mentalize, and treatment outcomes, she highlighted the unique role that physiotherapists can play in this shift by guiding patients to notice and understand how their own body ”speaks.”
This topic is an excellent fit as an initial post on this page, and I am pleased to share Inger Ström’s insights with you here. Below is my translation of Inger Ström’s original Swedish text into English:
”The body’s language/messages have been in focus for some time, and many professions are now claiming that their interventions are body-oriented, which is sometimes true but often not. The interventions may be physical but not helpful to the patient. For an intervention to be meaningful for the patient, they must themselves notice and understand how the body ’speaks’ and how signals should be interpreted, amplified, or calmed, which requires sensitivity and mutual trust in the therapeutic relationship.
To achieve success in this work, one must have both concrete knowledge of the body and an understanding of how the body sends affective signals, which we, based on the course of life, have varying ease in noticing, interpreting, and regulating. It is also important to understand the significant impact that relationships have on our well-being and that in the therapeutic setting, the patient’s physical reactions will partly involve the emotions activated by the relationship with us in the moment. How well we, together with the patient, can try to make sense of what the patient is experiencing plays a vital role in how the patient can move forward in understanding how the body speaks. As far as I can see, no other professions have this fundamental knowledge, but through our basic education, we have the physiological, anatomical, and psychological foundation, and we can then pursue further education and thus stay at the forefront of this important work.
The challenge today is that the work I have briefly described is time-consuming and may seem costly in the short term, but in the long run, it is a gain for the patient, society, and future generations.
In summary, we can today justify and develop treatment methods where we, together with the patients, focus on the experience and interpretation of the body and its affective signals. Treatment that includes relational, mentalization-focused conversations, psychoeducation, and bodily interventions, which opens doors for many patients that they have long been knocking on.”
Inger Ström is a co-author of the book “Understanding the Body’s Messages – Physiotherapeutic Perspectives (Swedish original title: ”Att förstå kroppens budskap – sjukgymnastiska perspektiv”),” which highlights the holistically oriented physiotherapy based on modern research.