Bessel van der Kolk's book The Body Keeps the Score is a brilliant and enlightening study of how trauma and all kinds of negative experiences are literally stored in the body as tension, which, when chronic, can become debilitating inflammation and pain.
Van der Kolk noted in his decades of practice that trauma victims, and those who are chronically angry, anxious, wary, etc. are deeply out of touch with their bodies. They were often clumsy and visibly tense, though when asked how their bodies felt, they either couldn't say, or they were just "normal."
He had to first get patients to recognize how their bodies felt, then taught them to relax and change those feelings through various exercises, meditations and practices. When the body started to loosen up, the mind and emotions followed.
Edit Eger, a holocaust survivor turned therapist, found the same things in her decades of practice. Both books spend a lot of time describing the symptoms and problems, and the address healing practices toward the end.
Van der Kolk noted in his decades of practice that trauma victims, and those who are chronically angry, anxious, wary, etc. are deeply out of touch with their bodies. They were often clumsy and visibly tense, though when asked how their bodies felt, they either couldn't say, or they were just "normal."
He had to first get patients to recognize how their bodies felt, then taught them to relax and change those feelings through various exercises, meditations and practices. When the body started to loosen up, the mind and emotions followed.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...
Edit Eger, a holocaust survivor turned therapist, found the same things in her decades of practice. Both books spend a lot of time describing the symptoms and problems, and the address healing practices toward the end.
Eger's book is at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30753738-the-choice
In general, both Buddhist meditation and Yoga address these mind-body issues well, in forms that you can practice as part of your daily life.