What is somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy is a psychotherapeutic whole-person healing method that uses both the body and mind to promote healing.
Trauma stretch’s beyond our minds and gets stored in the body. Our bodies have cellular memory and can hold every experience good or bad. If our experiences are not processed and integrated they can create symptoms like inflammation, tension, stress, anxiety, depression, burnout and overwhelm. These symtoms’s can show up in our everyday lives and lead us to feel exhausted, fatigued and overwhelmed. We might develop coping mechanisms in an attempt to numb or forget about the emotional or physical pain we are feeling. We have to feel it to heal it.
During a somatic therapy session, we are connecting to present emotions and everything that is arising. With safe guidance, we slowly tap into our body, we release that stagnant stored energy and we slowly build our capacity to hold ourselves in those emotions. We learn to relax around our emotions so we are no longer dominated by them but have capacity to hold them.
Somatic therapy involves many trauma informed practices and modalities including polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation, relaxation techniques, mindfulness, breathwork, movement, increasing emotional literacy (being able to name of we feel) and interoception (the ability to sense what is going on for us internally). These practices help to build safety in our body and increase our self awareness. With a combination of talk therapy, somatic practices and somatic processing such as parts therapy and bilateral stimulation we can begin to heal. All of these techniques focus on the root cause of our suffering so that we can free ourselves from painful past experiences that are still alive for us in the present.
Somatic holistic therapy addresses the emotional, mental, somatic and spiritual needs of each individual.
If you are ready to start your healing journey and are interested in tapping into the profound effects of somatic therapy. Please book a free 20 min consultation with me.
