Beyond the Mind: Exploring Somatic Practices in China’s Therapeutic Landscape
Li Zhang, University of California Davis
Moderator: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
Abstract: In today’s high-pressure, fast-changing China, psychological well-being has become an urgent concern for urban professionals and middle-class families navigating constant stress. But Chinese therapists don’t simply import Western therapeutic models—they transform them. Through a process called bentuhua, they reshape therapy to fit local values, cultural sensibilities, and lived realities. A key feature of this process is the reintegration of body and mind. Practices like tiyan (embodied experience) and ganshou (felt sense) center the body as a site of healing—not just the mind. These innovative, hybrid approaches resonate deeply with Chinese clients and point toward a more holistic global psychotherapy—one that embraces somatic practices and challenges the mind-body divide.
About our speaker: Li Zhang (Ph.D. Cornell 1998) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of three award-winning books: Strangers in the City(Stanford 2001), In Search of Paradise (Cornell 2010), and Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (California 2020). She is also a co-editor of Privatizing China, Socialism from Afar (Cornell 2008) and Can Science and Technology Save China? (Cornell 2020). Broadly speaking, her research concerns social, political, spatial, and psychological repercussions of the post-Mao economic reform and postsocialist transformations in contemporary China. Currently, she is working on a new project on aging, care, and the digital divide in post-COVID 19 China. She was a 2008 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and the President of the Society of East Asian Anthropology (2013-15). She also served as Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences (2015-17) and Chair of Anthropology Department (2011-15) at UC Davis.