Emotional Integration With Stephen Gilligan

The journey of deep emotional intelligence through connecting and assimilating cognitive/somatic processes

Rene Descartes infamous quote ‘I think therefore I am’ (1637) set a context for a mind body split which dominated all parts of Western attitudes to health and well being for over 350 years.

Descartes positioned thinking above feeling a notion to which medical profession totally subscribed to and people have since been thinking their way into all sorts of problems and try desperately to think themselves out of the problem to access a logical solution again through thinking.

The essential element of long term change is to recognise the value in the cognitive processes (thinking) and also the equal value of what is experienced in the body somatically i.e. the feeling that is connected to the thought process and vice versa, the thought that is connected to somatic process of the emotional expression. 

By integrating the cognitive and somatic, the illusion of the mind body split no longer exists and you will perform as a ‘whole’ version of yourself and not a split entity which reduces performance and often creates a pronounced loop in the negative emotion which is accentuated through over thinking and downward spiral which is part of the loop.

The integrated self, will have clear feedback from the cognitive and somatic elements of the emotion, producing self awareness and a high level of emotional intelligence.