How moving beyond talk therapy can help our clients make deeper change.
Talking with our clients about the limiting beliefs they hold can lead to insight. Working with their beliefs through the body can lead to transformation.
We hold our beliefs in many ways, not just in our thoughts.
The problem is that we often don’t truly know it to be true. We don’t feel it to be true. And it doesn’t serve as a foundation for how we relate to ourselves or our lives. We might believe it intellectually, but underneath that, we lack a deeper, more integrated sense of it.
If we explore a belief mindfully with body awareness, we can get curious about it. We might find that we have a sense of doubt that shows up as a shrinking or collapse in our shoulders and torso. Maybe we feel uncomfortable or squirmy as we say “I’m good enough”. We might turn ever so slightly away from the person we are talking with as a feeling of embarrassment creeps in.
We can look at these contradictions through a framework of parts work: “Part of me knows that I’m good enough, but another part of me has trouble believing that.” We can also view the experience through a mind-body lens. “My head knows that I’m good enough, but my body doesn’t.”
Beliefs are in action even when we don’t realize it.
Our beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world around us begin forming in our earliest moments and are reinforced over time with repeated experiences.
For example, as a child we learn that “my needs matter” when we ask for help and we are met repeatedly with an encouraging tone of voice, a hand on our shoulder, and undivided attention. But we learn that “our needs don’t matter” if we are typically ignored or responded to with irritation or distance.
Both the verbal and non-verbal messages we receive shape our experience and contribute to the underlying beliefs that we develop. Most of this process is happening subconsciously “behind the scenes”. Which means we form beliefs that don’t necessarily have words and that we often don’t even realize we have.
“I don’t matter” isn’t something we walk around thinking. Instead, it influences our choices, our expectations and the way we interpret events and relationships. It shows up in our posture, our voice, the way do or don’t take action, the whole-body felt sense of ourselves. Some of the things we might say or think are “I shouldn’t ask for a raise” or “I shouldn’t bother my friend if I’m upset”.
This is why talking alone isn’t enough.
Okay, so this is silly, but imagine trying to move your laundry from the washing machine to the dryer by thinking about it. Unless you actually take action, move your body, and physically remove the clothes from one machine and put them in the other, the laundry is not getting done.
Changing your internalized beliefs also requires doing more than just thinking about making them different. Talking about our beliefs can lead to insight about how they were formed and how they limit us in our lives. But without working with the whole experience of the beliefs – how they operate in our minds and in our bodies – we will often end up with insight but not change.
And sometimes, if all we do is talking, we don’t even discover the subconscious beliefs that are there operating under the surface because they are simply part of the tone and texture of our experience.
“Change your beliefs to change your experience” is a very useful concept. It becomes much more powerful if we understand that beliefs are more than thoughts, that they are also made from emotion, memories, body sensation, posture and movement habits, and the body-level felt sense of beliefs.
Working with beliefs somatically.
When therapists pay attention to beliefs at the body level, we create new awareness and opportunities for change, healing, and growth. When we work somatically, we can help clients become more aware of the beliefs they carry in their bodies and their being, and we can help them experiment with ways to transform them.
We can invite clients to become more aware of what is happening with their posture, breath, and movement. And we can invite them to try out new and different ways of relating to themselves through their bodies.
Here are just a few examples:
- What happens in a client’s body when they are talking about how they feel about a situation?
- What happens to the client’s beliefs about themselves if you invite them to lengthen their spine and open their shoulders?
- What happens when a client practices becoming more grounded by letting their feet push into the floor or feeling the support underneath them?
- What happens when you can pause in session when you hear a client share a belief that doesn’t quite ring true and explore it more fully with them?
Just as they were formed, our beliefs change over time, with repeated opportunities that reinforce new thinking, feeling and embodied experience.
We need to change more than just our thoughts to change our beliefs. When we believe in our heads and our bodies, in our hearts and our bones, deep in our gut that “I am good enough” – that leads to profound transformation in our lives.
© 2025 Annabelle Coote
This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It should not be considered therapeutic, clinical, health, professional practice, business, or legal advice.
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