New Year, New Relationship With the Body

As the new year approaches, many of us naturally turn towards reflection. We think about what we would like to change, improve, or grow. There is often a hopeful energy in this time, a wish for greater wellbeing, more balance, and a sense of moving forward with intention.

For some, however, this period can also carry anxiety or heaviness. Facing another year while living with ongoing health challenges, mental health difficulties, or persistent stress can feel daunting. Rather than excitement, the new year may evoke fear, pressure, or exhaustion.

Almost all of us, in one way or another, begin to think about our bodies at this time. We mobilise energy to take better care of ourselves. New Year’s resolutions often focus on exercising more, eating differently, sleeping better, or changing habits that feel unsupportive.

What is much less commonly considered is how we live in our bodies, and how our bodies support us through demanding, stressful, difficult, or sometimes painful experiences. Strengthening wellbeing is not only about what we do to our bodies, but also about the quality of relationship we have with them.

Beyond Resolutions: Strengthening the Mind -Body Connection

From a Gestalt therapy perspective, the body is not something separate from the mind. Our thoughts, emotions, memories, and relational experiences are continuously shaped and expressed through bodily sensation. The body carries our history, our adaptations, and also our capacity for regulation, resilience, and creativity.

When life feels overwhelming, many of us move away from bodily awareness as a way of coping. We live more in our heads, pushing through, analysing, planning, and managing. While this can be necessary at times, over the long term it often leaves us disconnected from important signals of excitement, desire, need, limit, and support.

As we move into the new year, I would like to offer a gentle reframe: rather than asking How can I improve or fix my body?, we might ask How can I strengthen my body’s capacity to support me? How can we develop embodied awareness that helps us stay present, grounded, and resourced in the face of challenge?

This kind of care does not require dramatic change. It begins with small moments of attention, curiosity, and kindness towards bodily experience.

A Brief Grounding and Embodied Awareness Practice

From a Gestalt therapy perspective, grounding and embodied awareness practices support our capacity for self‑regulation, contact, and choice. Rather than trying to change how we feel, these practices invite us to notice what is already here in the body, moment by moment. By bringing gentle attention to sensation, breath, and support, we strengthen the body’s natural ability to orient towards safety and to settle after stress.

This kind of practice can be particularly supportive during times of anxiety, emotional intensity, or when we feel disconnected from ourselves. It helps us come back into relationship with our bodies as a source of information, stability, and support, rather than something we must control or push through.

Below is a guided visualisation you may return to whenever it feels helpful.

Guided Visualisation: Safety, Calm and Groundedness

About this practice

This guided visualisation is offered as a gentle, relational, and trauma‑informed support to help you reconnect with a sense of safety, calm, and grounded presence. It invites you to notice your bodily sensations and to allow an image or sense of a safe space to emerge, whether remembered or created.

There is no right way to do this practice. You are welcome to move at your own pace, to adapt it, or to pause or stop at any point, listening to what feels supportive for you.

Take a moment to notice that you are here, in this room, in this moment. There is nowhere you need to go and nothing you need to do right now.

If it feels okay, allow your eyes to gently close, or soften your gaze.

Begin by noticing your breath, not changing it, simply sensing it. You may notice movement in your chest, your belly, or the flow of air.

Now bring your attention to the places where your body meets what supports you. The weight of your body on the chair… your feet touching the floor… the steadiness of the ground beneath you.

See if you can allow yourself to be supported, just a little.

I invite you now to allow an image or sense of a safe space to begin to emerge. This might be a place you remember, a place you know well, or a place you create. There is no need to force anything.

You may notice colours, light, shapes, or simply a feeling of being somewhere that feels safe, welcome, and peaceful.

This is a place where nothing is required of you. You are welcome here exactly as you are.

As you sense this space, notice how your body responds. Perhaps there is warmth, softening, ease, or a sense of grounding. Or maybe you simply notice that something feels less tense.

Bring your attention to where this sense of safety or calm shows itself most clearly in your body. Rest your awareness there, allowing the sensation to be as it is.

If it feels right, imagine this sense of safety spreading gently, through your body, through your breath, or down through your feet into the ground.

You don’t need to make anything happen. Allowing is enough.

From time to time, notice your breath again, and the way your body feels right now.

Remember that this safe space, whether remembered or created, is something you can return to whenever you need.

When you’re ready, gently bring your awareness back to the room, noticing sounds around you and the support beneath you. Slowly open your eyes if they were closed.

Take a moment to feel your body and notice how you are now.

Carrying This Into the New Year

Practices like this are not about eliminating difficulty or discomfort. Rather, they support our capacity to stay with experience, to notice when we are becoming overwhelmed, and to return to a place of greater regulation and choice.

As we enter the new year, you might consider including this kind of embodied care alongside any intentions for change or growth. Strengthening the relationship between mind and body can offer a quiet, steady form of support – one that is especially valuable during times of uncertainty or struggle.

If you are curious about exploring embodied awareness, self-regulation, or the mind–body connection within a therapeutic relationship, you are very welcome to get in touch.

Aneta Gawin

Gestalt Psychotherapist

The World Between Us Psychotherapy

www.theworldbetweenus.com