The Effects of a Mind–Body Approach, Somatic Psychoeducation, on Anxiety and Self-Esteem

Introduction: Mind–body approaches are flourishing to answer the need for support in an increasingly demanding world. To provide scientific evidence of their effectiveness and contribute to the discussion on the role of the body in the effects of these approaches, we carried out a field survey on one such approach, somatic psychoeducation (SPE), with assessments focused on anxiety and self-esteem.

Materials and Methods: An observational multicentric longitudinal study was conducted on SPE clients (N = 114) before and after a series of 10 SPE sessions freely implemented by practitioners (n = 25) in the field of their own practices. A one-off external group served as reference.

Results: SPE had two major effects: one is immediate, as one session lowered anxiety state by 30%; the other is in the long term, as anxiety trait decreased by 6.2 points at the end of the intervention, and self-esteem improved by 3.5 points. The absence of a practitioner effect allows us to generalize the results to the practice as a whole.

Conclusion: The beneficial responses obtained simultaneously on anxiety and self-esteem after a 10-session SPE follow-up are of interest and are discussed, as they suggest possible behavioral changes. We attribute these results to the combined action of bodily experiencing and the enrichment of self-perception. Thus, our results open up new perspectives for mind–body approaches in the context of well-being and preventive health care.