What is Somatic Experiencing?
May 25, 2021Embodiment is your key to joy.
In order to live our full potential as humans, we need to come back to our feeling capacity. We have to FEEL it, to HEAL it.
Never before have we had so much access to instant information, wealth and material gratification at our disposal and yet we are losing the capacity to enjoy all its goodness.
Do you struggle with:
- loneliness
- depression
- anxiety
- burnout
- lack of purpose
- a sheer feeling of emptiness
- numbness
- eating disorders
- loss of sexual libido
- inability to experience orgasm
- body shame
- addiction
- disassociation during sex
- hyper sexuality with no heart connection
Somatic Experiencing is a therapeutic way to embodied living, thriving in your truth, sexual and personal empowerment and trauma healing.
Soma means body, so Somatic Experiencing means,
“experiencing our body”.
Embodiment means,
“the act and state of fully embracing our body“.
What is Somatic Experiencing (SE)?
SE is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter Levine and has been in practice for over 45 years.
It is based in:
– Stress physiology
– Psychology
– Biology
– Neuroscience
What does Somatic Experiencing look like?
1. The body responds to traumatic events by secreting stress hormones.,
2. When “Freeze” happens which is caused by immobilization, helplessness (often happening in sexual abuse and childhood trauma) these stress hormones are still pumping out but there is no physical release. Fight or Flight energy and hormones are suppressed under the terror, fear and pain. There is an inability to flee or fight back from the traumatic event. This causes an imprint on the nervous system and can send it into states of chronic hypervigilance, anxiety, panic and wanting to constantly be busy and achieving.
3. SE helps to discover the location and sensational imprint of past trauma in the body. This is done by developing an internal awareness of the sensations in the body and how emotions are felt and stored. We work together to expand the window of tolerance in feeling what is alive and present. We find internal and external resources to pendulate between the traumatic imprints and places you feel safe. This is done to not blow you away and re-traumatize your nervous system.
4. Moving back and forth from internal sensations and traumatic memories allows for you to begin to understand and experience that it is safe to move through freeze into the thwarted flight or fight energy. This is where we follow body and voice impulses to move, cry, vocalize, push or hit or kick (in safe places) to create new imprints and boundaries.
5. The pleasure of completed action occurs when you are able to physically and consciously experience what it feels like to take back your agency and sense of what it would feel like to actively defend and protect yourself physically, vocally and energetically. One of the most effective ways to come out of “Freeze” and into safety, regulation and empowerment is by restoring a physical and mental capacity to engage in the present day and through imagery in the past. Setting new boundaries from an empowered place furthers the deep somatic healing.
The body becomes restricted and tense when emotions and trauma are suppressed. SE allows you to tune into the innate healing wisdom of your body and regulate on a nervous system level. Letting the body finally KNOW the trauma is over and it can finally be at peace and relax.
Somatic Experiencing is an experiential process that allows you to connect with the entirety of your body, thoughts, feelings, actions and spirit to live in the truest and highest expression of yourself.
I specialize in Sexual, Relational and Attachment Trauma.
Somatic Experiencing for Trauma Release
Part of the disconnect we experience is because of trauma. We all have some degree of trauma, whether primary, secondhand or generational, stored within our bodies.
Trauma in its simplest definition is “frozen energy in the body” that was never able to discharge. During a traumatic event the body experiences a surge of intense energy that if not released through our survival responses of flight or fight can remain stuck.
In Somatic Experiencing the traumatic event isn’t what caused the trauma, it is the overwhelmed response to the perceived life threat that is causing an unbalanced nervous system. Somatic Experiencing is a gentle way to discharge this unresolved “stuck and frozen” energy. We will bring your full attention to your physical experience and sensations which supports regulation of the nervous system and creates an embodied journey to heal symptoms of trauma that are holding you back from living your fullest expression of life. Integration is a huge component of Somatic Experiencing so we work in layers, as if we were peeling away layers from an onion. We don’t jump immediately into the heart of trauma, we titrate in and out building internal and external resources along the way.
Trauma can manifest in our body as:
Anxiety and Panic
Depression
Migraines
Sleeping difficulties
Hyper-vigilance
Eating disorders
Chronic Pain
Numbness and disconnection
Addictions of all kinds
Our bodies and nervous system intuitively know how to heal and want to discharge this frozen, “stuck” energy to create room for more pleasure, play and joy. You will learn to trust your body and its impulse to heal by working with its innate wisdom and knowledge. It is a very natural process and quite magical as you begin to embody trust.
You will move out of trauma into a more wholesome, playful and embodied life.
Benefits of Somatic Experiencing
- Feeling safe in your body. Safety is a doorway that allows us to enter more deeply into every relationship in our life, including the most important one, with yourself. Not living in overwhelm allows us to show up more freely and authentically in our embodied state.
- Healing trauma on a somatic level.
- Help to embrace the full spectrum of our emotions. Learning to navigate and simply be with the difficult emotions such as fear, sadness, grief and anger empowers us to be with pleasurable emotions such as love, joy, abundance and peace in their entirety.
- Somatic Embodiment helps us to create new behaviors and ways of being to replace shutting down, panic, avoidance and anxiety.
- Connecting to your authentic voice, expression and intuition.
- Ability to let go of the stories, people and experiences that are holding you back.
- Increased creative expression.
- More pleasure and ability to “let loose” and play.
- Creating more space by creating boundaries.
- Freedom and empowerment to be your authentic self.
- Feel deep and intimate connections with your partner, family, friends and community once again.
- Discover your passion through your curiosities.
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