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Much illness is unhappiness sailing under a physiologic flag.
Rudolf Virchow

Before wholistic therapists treat symptoms or illnesses, it is important to ask, "What is your body saying through these problems?" My experience as a psychiatric psychotherapist is that simply asking this question is often sufficient to bring a person to awareness of underlying stress factors.

We have many terms in common usage derived from body parts and functions.  It would not be unusual to hear any of the following metaphoric body terms mentioned in casual conversation: I had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and bellyached to my friend about how my nose was bent out of shape. She cried her eyes out over this tearjerker, but after brooding over it for a while, decide to put her best foot forward and not be such a bleeding heart. After I spilled my guts over the problem, I had a good belly laugh at how foolish I'd been and breathed a big sigh of relief. (See Table 1 for a spectrum of such terms.)

Table 1. Body terms and metaphors

BODY: disembodied; embodied; body of knowledge

HEAD:  --ache, big --, brainy; bursting, cool --, dense/fat/foggy/fuzzy/good--

NERVE(S): find --; high strung; lost --; nerveless; -- of steel; nervous; rattled/raw --;

BROW: beaten; furrowed; sweating; wrinkled

FACE/EXPRESSION: angelic; beatific; blanched; bland; blank; bright; wistful

EYES: black; blank; bleary; blinded; bright; burning with desire; clouded; cried my -- out; clear; hawk--; scathing glance (look); keen; can't see straight; steely; tearful

NOSE: bent (pushed) out of shape; brown --; cut off to spite face; snotty

EARS: deaf; don't want to hear that; --ful; keen; musical; sensitive; sharp

MOUTH: big; bigger than stomach; bite (has a -- to it; lip; -- off more than can chew; tongue); biting remark; foot in --; chew on that; loose tongue; smile; sour taste

NECK: full up to my --; pain in the --; sticking -- out; stiff

THROAT: choking on; craw full; full up to--; sticks in my --; swallow down (feelings; insults; pride; sorrow)

CHEST: get it off --; puffed out

BREASTS: generous; giving; milk of human kindness; nurturing; weaning

LUNGS/BREATH: breathe easy; blow (cool; gasket; hot and cold; it; off steam; stack; temper); held my breath; take a deep breath; wheezing along

HEART: ache; attack; big; bleeding; break; cold; cross your -- and hope to die; cruel; eating my -- out; empty; frozen; full; --less; generous; good; --less; light; lonely; open; pierced; pure; --rending; sticks in my --; skipped a beat; sticks in my --; stopped; swelled; warm --; warmed; weighing on --; -- went out to

BLOOD/PRESSURE: bad; --letting; bloody; boiling; -- pressure up; thin --; warm --

STOMACH/BELLY: aching; full; burns; can't --; digest; eaten up with anger; eating away at; eating heart out/words; gut feeling; sick to --; sensitive; soured; spill guts

SPLEEN: --ful; splenetic; venting--;

LIVER:  bilious; jaundiced; liverish;

KIDNEYS/BLADDER: holding back; big/little pisher; pissed off; wet his pants;

WOMB/OVARIES: good flow; knocked up; menstrual (pre-, post); PMT

PENIS/TESTES: has/no balls; balled/balls-up; big balls; cock-(around; half -ed); (various imprecations)

VAGINA: (various imprecations)

SEX: fuck (--er; --ed up; off); loose; orgasmic; oversexed; pimp; sleazy; whore

ANUS/BUTTOCKS: ass; asshole; butt (in, out); constipated; fart; pain in--; shit (head, hot, face; in pants); soft as a baby's bottom; tight ass

BACK: -- against the wall; -- breaking/up/into it; bent (over backwards, all out of shape); get one's -- up; pat on --; pain in --

ARMS/HANDS: black/brown/green thumb; even handed; fighting tooth and nail; fumbling; heavy handed; lend/lift a hand; all thumbs; tight fisted; two left hands

LEGS/FEET: Achilles' heel; best foot forward; cold feet; down at heels; went out feet first; flat footed; foot in grave/it/mouth; grounded; kicking habit/myself; well heeled

MUSCLES: can't bear; carrying a burden/load/weight; overburdened; stiff; up tight

SPINE/SKELETON: can't bear it; carrying too much); rigid; can't stand --; stretched too far/to breaking point; all twisted up; unsupported; uplifting; weighed down;

SKIN: allergic to; burning up; made my -- creep; itching to; under my --; thick --

HAIR: bad hair day; bristled; hackles rose; hair turned grey; pulling my hair out

TOUCH: aching to--; easy touch; smooth touch; tickled; touched; touching; touchy

DEATH: cry oneself to --; dead end/heat/on my feet; --of me; (nearly) died of embarrassment/fright/shame); doing me in; dying to; end of me; scared/sick to

(See more body metaphors in Healing Research, Volume II.)

In one direction of usage, these are images and metaphors that express our awareness of ourselves in the world. We use words from our physical experience of life to describe aspects of our relationships with our mental, emotional and spiritual interactions with the outer worlds. We use these body language words because they are familiar, readily understood by others, and aptly describe how we relate to aspects of our lives.

Coming in the opposite direction, these same images may become lenses of usage which color our habitual perceptions of the world. If I am constantly bellyaching, then I may perceive many of my experiences with the world as a pain in the stomach (or neck, butt, etc.).

Through repeated patterns of perception and use, these metaphors may actually shape our inner worlds in many ways and on many levels.  

D. Moerman points out, in The Meaning Response, that it is not surprising to learn that in different countries there may be different distributions of common psychosomatic problems. For instance, placebos have been enormously helpful to German people with stomach ulcers (up to 60 percent rates of healing), but far fewer respond in Brazil (7 percent). However, placebos are relatively ineffective in Germany for hypertension relative to responses in other countries.  

Anna Fels shares yet another cross-cultural perspective on body language, in a 2002 article in the New York Times, Mending of Hearts and Minds.