Body schema and body image: At the crossroad of somatics and social work

Abstract

This research began as a response to fieldwork difficulties encountered in bringing somatic practices, particularly Feldenkrais, into the field of social work. The endogenous discourses produced by the Feldenkrais community to describe and analyse the practice proved to be counterproductive in convincing social work professionals of the relevance of somatics to participation in the global support of people living in a cluster of social difficulty, including health (chronic disease), and ethnic and cultural differences (migration). The analysis of endogenous discourses has shown discrepancies within the discourses themselves, and between discourse and practice. This article presents an alternative Feldenkrais description based on Gallagher’s model of body image and body schema, and the relevance of such a model to the Feldenkrais Method, but also to social work, describing the experience of social exclusion as a somatic experience.