Somatic Therapy

We all have a unique narrative that is the lens through which we understand ourselves, others, and the world. This narrative is not only a thinking story we tell about ourselves, it is a story deeply embedded in our bodies as reflected in our posture, physical sensations, movement patterns, and nervous system arousal.

Most of us haven't learned how to pay attention to the language of the body.

We are biased, for many reasons, to privilege information derived from our thinking minds. We get caught up thinking about our experience rather than directly experiencing the present moment. We get lost in thought, focused on the past or the future. This focus prevents us from knowing what is alive at this moment. Because we don't attend to our bodies, we cut ourselves off from information that can update our experience of ourselves, that can update our self-narrative.

Somatic therapies help you recognize and change unconscious physical habits and patterns that create difficulty by perpetuating old stories.

As you learn the language of your body, automatic physical habits can be unlearned and replaced with new responses that fit current reality. You are inviting greater integration of your mind, emotions, and body -- inviting a more sophisticated, embodied narrative -- that allows for transformation and change.

Somatic Therapy and Trauma

Those who have experienced trauma, complex trauma, or attachment failures may experience the body as an unsafe place to live.

As infants and children, we need to feel loved, accepted and cared for by our caregivers to survive. We can feel frightened and scared when they criticize us, get angry with us, neglect us, or otherwise physically and emotionally hurt us. In these instances, we don’t feel safe and our nervous system will deploy its survival responses.

We may, for example, establish safety by running and hiding in our bedrooms (e.g., flee), getting angry and defending ourselves (e.g., fight), becoming very still and waiting until the criticism ends (e.g., freeze), or shutting down (e.g., collapse).

When our nervous systems can't reset after a traumatic event, or when we’ve grown up in an environment that provoked chronic levels of hyperarousal or hypoarousal, we lose the ability to neurocept safety and danger accurately. We become easily triggered by people, places, and situations that remind us of past trauma and attachment distress even when we're safe.

Somatic therapies help you learn how to feel safe in your body. You learn how to regulate your arousal, neurocept safety, and access and process challenging traumatic experiences.

I am a certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Practitioner. To learn more about this therapy please visit www.sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org.

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The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of one’s being to be experienced, explored, enriched and, thereby, educated.”

~Thomas Hanna