What if understanding the mind starts not with thoughts, but with the senses? Welcome to the bottom-up approach in psychology. In this blog, we will dive into what the bottom-up approach is and what makes it a unique therapeutic strategy.
What Is Bottom-Up Processing?
First, to understand what the bottom-up approach is, we need to understand bottom-up processing. This type of bodily processing happens when your environment influences our body and thinking, sort of like a reflex. To make sense of our environment, the body takes in signals that turn into perceptions1. We then use those perceptions to make behaviors or thoughts about our environment.
Diagram Credit: Verywell / Emily Roberts
The Bottom-Up Approach in Psychology
This kind of body-first-mind-second processing can be used in psychotherapy to help people recover from complex trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and chronic stress, to recognize when your body responds first to a stimulus before your mind.
When a therapist tells you to simply release your tension, it can be confusing. How do you actually do that? But if the therapist gently guides your body into a yoga pose that helps release your shoulders or legs, you may begin to feel the tension melt away through movement. This is the bottom-up approach at work: instead of just talking about tension, the client experiences its release directly through the body.
Another powerful example of this approach is the difference between discussing how nature makes you feel and actually being out on a trail, immersed in the environment, talking about your feelings as you experience them. In both cases, the focus shifts from intellectualizing to physically embodying the experience.
Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down: What’s the Difference?
Top-down and bottom-up approaches refer to two different ways of processing and healing experiences in therapy. A top-down approach starts with the mind: using talk therapy, cognitive strategies, and insight to influence emotions and behavior2. Some examples include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).
In contrast, a bottom-up approach begins with the body and sensory experiences, using movement, breathwork, or somatic practices to access and regulate emotions2. Some examples include yoga, Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy (MABT), Somatic Experiencing, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
While top-down methods rely on thinking to change feeling, bottom-up methods focus on feeling to change thinking. Therapists may use one or both together for clients to reconnect with their body and work through complex thoughts and emotions. See the diagram below to help visualize the differences between these two approaches.
Diagram Credit: The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (Nicabm)
Conclusion
In conclusion, the bottom-up approach is just one of many techniques a therapist may use to help their clients. It works by targeting the clients raw emotions to regulate their body. If you’d like to read more about the bottom-up approach, take a look through our four-part series about neuroplasticity, the nervous system and eating disorder recovery below.
Neuroplasticity, The Parasympathetic Nervous System and Eating Disorder Recovery: Four Part Blog Series:
Sources:
- Cherry, K. (2025, February 3). The bottom-up processing view of perception. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/bottom-up-processing-and-perception-4584296
- Buczynski, R. (2022, November 9). Infographic: Brain-based approaches to help clients after trauma. National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. https://www.nicabm.com/brain-based-approaches-to-help-clients-after-trauma/
