Conventional medicine, and to a large extent conventional psychology as well, teach that the mind is a product of the electrochemical activity of the brain. Disturbances of psychological functions including both thoughts and emotions are explained as resulting from malfunctions in the nervous system and/or hormones of the body. Psychology allows that tensions in the body may become habitual through pairing of perceived and/or cognitive stimuli with physical responses to these stimuli. If you see a frightening, barking dog, you may become nervous or even phobic about dogs who bark, or about any dog. This is called getting conditioned to a habitual response. My own experiences, and those of many other complementary/alternative clinicians, is that the body participates far more intimately in memories than the simple conditioning model suggests. I find that the body holds memories of experiences locked into various tissues particularly the muscles, tendons and joints. Massage therapists, yoga instructors, and other body therapists often note that as peoples muscles, tendons and joints are stretched and relax, memories are released. At times these may be very intense. I also find that the unconscious mind will hitch a ride on body sensations in order to draw the conscious attention of a person to issues that the unconscious mind wants the person to attend to. For instance, a pain caused by injury, infection or other physiological processes may be more severe or more persistent than would normally be expected. When the person who is hurting invites the pain to speak about why it is hurting, the unconscious mind will usually reveal what it wants the person to be aware of.