How to search inside a specific block of code in IntelliJ IDEA?

Go to Settings | Keymap, search for the Find... action in the Other group. This action should have the following description:

Find a string in active editor, shows modal dialog

Assign a keyboard shortcut to this action (you need to make a copy of default keymap to modify it), for example Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F.

When in editor, select any block of text, then press this shortcut, a dialog will open with the Scope automatically set to Selected text:

Find Text

To quickly select the method body while standing on the opening curly brace use Ctrl+W.

First select some text and press ctrl+R to open the dialog, then check the "in selection" option :

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As of 2020, I'm able to perform find in selection on PhpStorm

Select the block of text and hit Cmd + F on MacOS / Ctrl + F on other platforms
On the find toolbar (that appears on top) there's an In Selection button; use that to limit search scope to the selected text only

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Here's the link to my original answer on JetBrains support forums

I'm using

PhpStorm 2020.1.2
Build #PS-201.7846.90, built on June 3, 2020

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