It makes sense: pay attention to your body if you're injuring yourself, and stop moving forward if you keep injuring yourself blindly-unskillfully moving forward in life continuing to injure yourself (and likely others). And the reason negativity feeds pain seems to be at least two-fold: everything in the body is connected and so emotional pain uses at least some of the same pathways as physical pain, and this is perhaps how or where the mind-body connection interfaces - being able to read off eachother via biofeedback loop; think a negative thought that stresses the body, the body tightens causing discomfort that then stresses the body-mind - and the reverse: learning to visualize an infinitely fast beam of healing light encompassing you and forcing its way through whole being as part of self-directed positive reinforcement visualization practice; in part this is a practice of getting as much of your mind active and flowing at once, which can be tough from a longtime stagnant-depressed mind due to suppressed or repressed feelings or sensations or unprocessed trauma.
TL;DR - Mind-body: "Pay attention to me or I'm going to force you to [learn why you're in pain, how to heal it, and how to stop from continuing to hurt from it]!"
The sooner you invest in restoring good habits, good spirit, even if life sucks even if you dont feel like it it really is the shortest path to normalcy. Once you're too far off the middle there seems to be no end to the bottom, thing only get worse, and your brain stays in negative rationalisation mode potentially forever. Also our minds are very relativistic and you can always find a reason why your pain is impossible to fix.
I think we share the same conclusion.
Especially about benefits of the somatic path.