Eileen Wurst

VIRTUAL INTERCORPOREALITY: USING BODY SCAN MEDITATION TO ENHANCE INTEROCEPTIVE AWARENESS, THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE, AND PRESENCE IN TELEMENTAL HEALTH ABSTRACT Psychotherapists were challenged to maintain existing embodied and intercorporeal connections in their sessions inside a new virtual setting while suddenly transitioning to telemental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the in-person psychotherapy exchange, the clinician and client form a mutual connection that helps them to feel a sense of therapeutic presence and alliance together. This is known in somatic psychology as intercorporeality, a critical component of the therapeutic relationship that is suspected to be less accessible through digital environments. This dissertation examined relevant empirical studies and presents the results of a quasi-experimental, repeated-measures investigation that was used inside an explanatory sequential mixed-methods framework. The research compared pre-test and post-test measures of interoceptive awareness, therapeutic presence and alliance using the Scale of Body Connection (SBC), Therapeutic Presence Inventory (TPI), and Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) and end-of-study questionnaire. Both therapist and client participants participated in a 5-minute Body Scan Meditation (BSM) at the beginning of their 60-minute telemental health session over the course of six sessions. For therapist participants, repeated-measures studies determined that Kendall's concordance revealed a synchronizing impact. The effect of BSM appeared to align developmental trajectories, resulting in a uniform evolution in embodied and relational abilities. Spearman's correlation analysis, with a significance level of p < 0.01, revealed a complex network of significant interconnections between the study variables and confirmed that body awareness (SBC-BA) served as a core node, substantially correlated with all dimensions of alliance (WAI) and presence (TPI). These findings demonstrated that interoceptive awareness was essential for therapeutic alliance and presence, even in digitally mediated interactions. Likewise, client-participants' body awareness (SBC-BA) increased descriptively with time, with Kendall's W (0.813; p = 0.039) indicating persistent hierarchical changes. These findings demonstrated BSM's ability to increase embodied awareness while emphasizing the personalized and complex nature of alliance and presence. Integrated with the qualitative results, the findings revealed that the cumulative influence of the somatically anchoring BSM experienced in the six TMH sessions permitted a harmonization of aligned trajectories within the virtual intercorporeality of the participants.