Somatic Therapy

When something threatens us, we have three choices, flight, fight or freeze. Unfortunately, this survival-based strategy doesn’t help us much in adulthood or modern life. This is where a lot of people get stuck. Somatic therapy is a way back into the body, to heal both the body and mind of patterns, beliefs, and trauma. Somatic therapy works with the “felt sense” to safely allow us to experience our bodily sensations and emotions. Somatic therapy integrates the body experience with the cognitive narrative or thoughts of what you are currently or have experienced in the past. The therapeutic process is really about working to regulate the nervous system in order to release the activation of the trauma or stressor. In a session, the therapist will direct you to notice the thought or feeling in your body. The language used is about sensing into a feeling, describing the sensation in the body, and staying with it as it changes. This allows for changes in emotions but also in perceptions. It gives the experience and emotional reaction an opportunity to be felt and expressed. Much of the research we are seeing in healing is that, without bringing the body into the therapeutic process, healing will not be complete. Somatic therapy is the answer to that.