Communication between body and mind can increase the ability to cope with psychological and physical symptoms, stress and trauma (Fogel, 2009). By encouraging individuals to reconnect with their mind and body, emotional regulation can be improved.

In order to regulate emotions, individuals need to be well connected with their bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings; meaning being able to tolerate and understand signals from the body, as well as managing the thoughts and  behavioural responses associated with these signals (Price and Hooven, 2018).

One of RESET’s core approaches to mental health is to enable individuals to gain self-awareness through the use of meta-awareness and meta-cognition, whilst encouraging a self-compassionate and curious standpoint alongside this process as increased awareness and acceptance of feelings have been found to be beneficial to psychological and physical health (Politi, Enright and Weihs, 2007).

Fundamentally, human beings are intrinsically motivated to understand their feelings (Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). Often this process involves making meaning of  experiences, so that they can be explained and can then move on from this experience. Making self-awareness an essential mechanism in processing traumatic experiences. 

Dunne et al. (2019) also found that meta-awareness is essential to most forms of mindfulness, playing an integral part in processes central to the therapeutic effects of mindfulness; such as the ability to shift perspective on to the experience itself rather than one’s perception of the event.