From Head to Heart to Body: How Primal Therapy Heals at the Root
This essay was written by Gilbert Bates, a Primal Therapy practitioner based in Australia. Gilbert has spent years working with clients who feel “stuck in their heads” despite trying talk therapy, mindfulness, or medication. He wrote this piece to explain—in plain language—why lasting change often requires reaching beneath thoughts into the deeper layers of feeling and body sensation. The “three levels of mind” is his practical map for that journey and for why Primal Therapy focuses on releasing stored pain at the root, not just managing symptoms at the surface.
We humans are struggling with relationships, health, and conflict because we’ve drifted away from how our brains evolved to work. Primal Therapy helps by reconnecting the thinking brain with deeper layers of feeling and sensation—so old pain can be released instead of managed.
A quick map of the mind
The essay proposes that our psychology operates across three interconnected levels:
Cognition (prefrontal cortex: thoughts, planning),
Feelings (limbic system: emotions, bonding), and
Sensations (brainstem/midbrain: raw bodily states and survival signals).
Modern culture focuses on the top layer—thinking—while undervaluing feelings and sensations. When the upper layer is cut off from the lower two, thinking runs the show without the grounding of empathy, love, and embodied reality. That’s when people (and systems) start to malfunction.
How disconnection creates problems
When early needs aren’t met, the organism experiences Primal Pain—distress signals arising from the sensation and feeling levels. To cope, we repress those signals so we can carry on. Repression may keep us functioning, but it also blunts love, dulls sensitivity, and seeds problems like anxiety, depression, compulsions, and relationship breakdowns. Over time, entire systems (medicine, education, even public discourse) can become over-cognitive—managing symptoms and ideas while missing root causes.
Why “top-down” fixes fall short
Typical approaches try to use the thinking mind to control or reframe emotions. Medication can mute signals; mindfulness can help people tolerate them; cognitive techniques can reorganize thoughts. Helpful at times—but none of these discharge the stored pain in the lower systems. The essay argues this is why we see limited long-term change when we only manage symptoms.
What Primal Therapy does differently
Janov Primal Therapy guides people—safely and gradually—downward through feeling into sensation, so the nervous system can complete unfinished survival responses and release Primal Pain. As the lower levels clear, the system re-integrates: thinking becomes clearer, feelings become trustworthy, and bodily states settle. People report more access to love, empathy, and meaning, not as ideas but as lived experiences.
Relationships, love, and health—an evolutionary view
Love as biology: From an evolutionary lens, bonding isn’t sentimental—it’s survival. When the lower systems are open, love flows naturally and relationships stabilize; when they’re shut down, intimacy feels unsafe or unreachable.
Physical health: The body reflects the mind’s history. Diet and lifestyle matter, but chronic tension from unreleased pain dysregulates everything from appetite to immunity. Re-connecting the three levels helps the body re-sense real needs rather than chasing substitutes.
Mental health: Instead of “many causes, many cures,” the essay frames a single core cause (unmet needs → Primal Pain → repression) with a single core process (safe, titrated release → reconnection). Individual stories differ; biology is shared.
A humane, practical takeaway
Your anxiety, numbness, or overthinking aren’t personal failures—they’re adaptive responses to earlier overwhelm.
Real change isn’t about tougher self-control; it’s about feeling safely, at the right depth, so the system can let go.
As integration returns, people often notice: calmer bodies, more authentic emotion, warmer relationships, clearer decisions—and a sturdier sense of meaning grounded in everyday life.
Curious whether this approach fits your story? Book a short consultation to explore how Primal Therapy works and what a safe, paced process could look like for you.
