Although mind and body connected treatment modals back to ancient times (Margetts, 1950), there was a period that human beings rejected the connection and tried to treat these two structures as two unrelated different qualities. After the use of brain image technologies involved in understanding the mind and body, the effect of the nervous system on not just the physical wellbeing but also mental wellbeing  of the person. Porges mentioned mind, body, and nervous system wholeness in his “Polyvagal Theory '' and pointed out the effect of emotion regulation abilities of the person through “Vagus Nerve” which is a central part of the parasympathetic nervous system. Polyvagal theory suggests that the details of social interaction such as how we see (expressions), how we hear (sounds) and how we speak (calling) make the person feel safe, and this sense of being safe is transmitted to the body via the vagus nerve which helps the person to be protected from the effects of adverse events (Porges, 1995). Porges (2014) also stated that the reaction to trauma, expressed by Van der Kolk (1994), leaves a trace on the nervous system rather than a physical trace in the body, and studying this trace is of great importance in trauma studies. In other words, with this theory, Porges (2014) focused on bodily memory rather than cognitive memory of trauma while working with trauma. This perspective was gained by many psychotherapists, Peter Levine (2010) developed his psychobiological work Somatic Experiencing as a way of working with people to build resilience, coping and stress management skills, and work with trauma through body and mind connection. 

Studies based on mind-body connections were also developed in the education field. Adding sensations to education became a major target and several studies were conducted to show the effectiveness of adding sensations in the curriculum (Kersting, Haglund & Steier, 2021; Kátai, Juhász & Adorjáni, 2008; Light, 2008). Additionally, since sensations are tools of the body in coping with stress, anxiety, burnout, and gaining resilience when facing negative circumstances which become a basic need for teachers and students (Gu & Day, 2007; Madigan & Keem, 2021; Meeks, Peak & Dreihaus,  2021; Whiting, et al; 2021) working with sensations can also contribute to creating a resilient environment in schools.

With the increased attention to body and mind relation studies, the psychometric perspective of bodily sensations  started to gain importance as well. By assessing these sensations it is possible to bring awareness to the sensations and be able to use them as a resource in negative circumstances that cause stress, anxiety, burnout and also use these sensations to improve the learning abilities in the field of education. The Body Sensation Scale (Chambles et. al, 1984), The Scale of Body Connection (Price, Thompson  & Cheng, 2017), and Body Perception Scale (Porges, 1993) are some of the examples of these assessment tools that focus on tracking the bodily sensations and being able to define them. The mentioned scales contain important items on body and body perception. However, recognizing positive sensations and using them as a resource has an important place not just in trauma studies but also in the field of education since adding sensations to education has increasing importance. Hence, this study aims to develop a measurement tool for positive body sensations in order to statistically process positive body sensations.

30 Items were constructed by two Somatic Experiencing Practitioners (SEPs) and one academic from the Guidance and Psychological Counseling Department. Two academics reviewed these items from the Assessment and Evaluation Department, three academics from the Guidance and Psychological Counseling Department, one academic from the Turkish Philology Department, two SEPs, and four non-academic to understand the items’ comprehensibility. A 25-item questionnaire was constructed considering the feedback and conducting necessary changes. During collecting data for EFA, participants were asked to join an interview with researchers. Thus, seven volunteers who filled out the questionnaire conducted semi-structured interviews about the scale. The whole procedure was conducted according to the METU Applied Ethics Research Centre (Ethics Committee). Measures Demographic Measures: The demographic variables of interest included gender, age (years), the highest level of education completed, occupation, chronic disease, physical disability, and psychiatric drug use. These data were then compared and recorded if needed to capture participants’ identities. Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA2): MAIA2 is a 37-item self-report scale designed by Mehling et al. (2018) to assess the interoceptive awareness of individuals. Participants select how they perceive their interoceptive awareness using a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (never) to 5 (always). MAIA demonstrates strong validity with Cronbach’s alpha (α), vary among the subscales. The Turkish version of the scale consists of 32 items with six subscales, namely “Emotional Awareness”(α= 1.34), “Attention Regulation” (α= 0.7), “Body Listening” (α= 0.95), “Not-Distracting” (α= 0.75), “Trusting” (α= 0.34) and “Not-Worrying” ( α= 1.05) (Özpınar et al., 2021). The Body Perception Questionnaire (BPQ) Short Form: BPQ Short Form is a 46-item 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always), originated from a 122-item measure to assess body awareness and stress responses (Cabrera et al., 2018; Porges, 1993). BPQ Short Form demonstrates strong validity with Cronbach’s alpha (α= 0.98). The Turkish scale version was internally consistent, α= 0.89 (Aslan, 2020). Participants 519 participants (76,7% female and 22,9% male) participated in the first phase of the study between the ages of 18 and 63 (M= 24.30, SD= 9.05). 10 participants have Ph.D. degrees, 26 participants have master's degrees and the other473 participants have undergrad degrees from different departments. 10,4% of participants had chronic diseases, 6,4% of participants use psychiatric medicine, and only 4 participants had physical disabilities.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) conducted using IBM SPSS 27 (IBM, 2021). According to Cattell (1978), the sample size is adequate to analyze. Also, sample size adequacy is satisfied according to N/p > 10 (Hair et al., 2010). After checking the necessary univariate and multivariate assumptions. it is observed that there are no outliers in this study. The sample is factorable (KMO= .929). Bartlett’s test of sphericity shows that the correlation matrix is significantly different from the identity matrix (χ² (300)=32 9186,766, p =.00). Multivariate normality satisfied with the Mardia test. Thus, Maximum Likelihood was used to extract the underlying factors (Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum & Strahan, 1999). Oblique rotation was used to give more accurate and reproducible solutions (Costello & Osborne, 2005). According to the correlation matrix, items are grouped under three factors. These three factors have eigenvalues greater than 1,0, explaining 59,892 variances. Cronbach’s Alpha is checked for the scale (a = .95), factor 1 (a = .91), factor 2 (a = .92), and factor 3(a = .83) and the internal consistency was adequate for the scale and the factors (Nunnaly, 1970). Items 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 17 are loaded for the first factor named as physical sensations, items 1, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 are loaded for the second factor named as imagery, items 2,10, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 are loaded for the third factor named as inner sensations. Thus, this research explains the positive sensations with three different factors which are (1) physical sensations, (2) imagery, and (3) inner sensations. It is believed that this study will pave the way for the measurement of positive sensations and improve the mind and body connection in the field of educational psychology.

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