About Somatic Therapy

In somatic therapy, we know that stress and trauma symptoms appear when our bodies get stuck in the survival stage (e.g., fight-or-flight, freeze and dissociation). Because of this, we may feel a sense of holding trauma in our bodies.  This can look and feel different ways depending on whether the trauma is on-going in some way and/or when in our life we experienced it. The purpose of somatic therapy is to help our bodies move through the survival stage and return to the state of ease, connection and new possibilities. We do this, first, by learning to pay attention to our sensory experiences and the sensations in our bodies. Physical sensations are the language of the body, whereas words, thoughts, meanings, stories and images are the language of the mind. Our bodies hold innate wisdom about moving through stress and trauma symptoms. When we slow the process down with the right support, we offer the body and nervous system space to tell us what needs attention.

During sessions, I may ask you to give impressions of sensations you notice in your body, images coming to your mind as well as movements and impulses to be noticed or experienced, we may explore body postures, facial expressions, and making sensory contact with the environment outside your body.

It can be challenging at first for people to access or bring words to their body’s experience. That is completely natural and noticing this is part of the process. We work slowly with what is available in order to build capacity to experience more over time. Throughout this, we learn tools that support regulation and settling and draw from the natural alignment and resource your nervous system already holds. It is necessary that this work moves at the speed of true relationship, meaning that the unfolding of this work will come as you feel a sense of trust for me, your own body and this process.

Like many somatic modalities, Somatic Experiencing™ is an approach to trauma healing that draws directly from wisdom that indigenous peoples have known about the ways our bodies and nervous systems heal from traumatic experiences long before the concept of somatic therapy was established. Additionally, most cultures throughout the world have unique practices that have been passed down for generations that support personal and collective nervous system regulation like singing, humming, dancing, and connecting with land. In somatic therapy, this more ancient wisdom has been borrowed and re-packaged alongside more westernized understandings of the brain and nervous system. It is imperative that we honor the origins of these practices not as past but as presently held, continuous, lineages of wisdom that indigenous peoples and communities are the tenders of. Beginning this work from a place of truly orienting to the lineage of it is an important part of the healing process.