Source: Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (2015). Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher.
The Language of the Body: Procedural Learning
We remember the past not only in words, images, and stories, but also through chronic habits of
tension, movement, and posture. Our bodies continually respond to what happens to us, how others
treat us, and how we feel inside. When, as children, we feel safe, our bodies relax and we might snuggle,
run, jump, or play, but when we feel scared, our bodies tighten up and we cry and seek out someone to
comfort us. If no one is available to soothe or protect us, we sometimes give up and our bodies might
“go limp.” If we are scared often enough, the tension or the limpness turns into an enduring physical
habit. It takes a long time, but eventually the body’s repeated reactions become automatic, long-lasting
patterns that carry the memory of a past that our minds may have forgotten, dissociated, or suppressed.
We may not recognize our physical habits as ways of remembering because the body does not
speak in words. Instead it speaks the nonverbal language of visceral sensations, posture, tightening or
relaxing, movements, gestures, facial expression, changes in levels of autonomic arousal, heartbeat,
breath, even physical symptoms.
Procedural Learning
Our memory system for automatically performing certain skills, behaviors, and survival strategies
is called procedural memory. A simple way to understand what this term means is to imagine tying your
shoes. Once you learned how to tie them at a young age, you no longer had to think about how to do it;
you just tied your shoes. When we repeat a movement, a sequence of movements, a posture, tension,
or gesture over and over, it becomes habitual. We “remember” how to do it automatically, without
thinking about it—the procedure has been thoroughly learned. Procedural memory is different from
recalling the events of the past with words. Our procedural memory is recorded in our habitual posture,
gestures, how we carry ourselves, movements, and tension patterns and has stories to tell that we can
only hear by becoming aware of the language of the body.