Some things must be dealt with at the roots. Trauma is one of these things.
Peter A. Levine
Who Created Somatic Experiencing?
Dr. Peter Levine received his Ph.D. in medical biophysics from the University of California in Berkeley. Peter also holds a doctorate in psychology from International University. He has worked in the field of stress & trauma for over forty years and is the developer of Somatic Experiencing. The recipient of four lifetime achievement awards, he is the author of several books, including Waking the Tiger, which has now been printed in 33 countries and has sold over a million copies.
What Does A Somatic Healing Session Look Like?
Somatic Healing Sessions are an alternative approach. Somatic processing helps release emotional pain and stress related symptoms. Working from the bottom up in the nervous system by processing emotions an allowing the body to heal and regulate the nervous system.
Somatic processing is a trauma-informed approach to resolving painful emotional and mental struggles by addressing the root cause in the body.
Every day we can wake up and struggle because of a dysregulated nervous system, chronic stress and repressed emotions. What happened to us in our childhood can still affect us today. We carry our pain and stress in our body. Somatic processing can help us to safely tap into the core wounds and process them. Leading us to heal at our core. Helping us to be our authentic self and live a healthier life. When this happens everything else seems to fall into place. We can have healthier relationships, save marriages, stop harmful generational patterns, that can affect our children. Becoming more of a whole of a person and the person that we were created to be.
Who Can Somatic Healing Sessions Help?
People with chronic stress and a dysregulated nervous system.
Somatic Healing Sessions help people who feel deep shame, guilt, sadness and anxiety. Somatic Healing Sessions can help if you have rage, feel emotionally numb, self-sabotage, “people please”, fawn, or experience social anxiety. Do you live in fear? Do you feel as though you’re not good enough or feel like there is something wrong with you.
Stress
If you have been abused
Emotional Regulation
If you have experienced neglect as a child or hold any deep child wound.
Porn and sex addiction
If you have experienced, an abortion, miscarriage or a death of a loved one. A car accident, assault, bullying, parent separation, divorce or an annulment.
Creating healthy relationships (note we do not work with couples, just each individual) We can meet with each partner one on one. If you do not know what your needs are in a relationship, or find that you are putting up walls with your spouse, or are going into rage.
We have a special interest working with people who do not feel-good enough, feel toxic shame and feel anxiety. We work with people who have experienced abuse, physically, emotionally and sexually. People who have been raped.
By now, many of us know that stress is contagious and can affect our family unit.
It requires that we, as adults, attune deeply to our felt experiences of rage, fear, anxiety, and sadness, develop our capacity to tolerate uncomfortable sensations, and work with our bodies’ intelligence to release these causes by using simple and effective tools for letting them go.
What Do Professionals Say About Somatic Experiencing?
Trauma can register within our bodies on a cellular level. What that means to an individual — and how best to heal from serious traumas encountered in life — is the focus of a newer form of mental health counseling known as somatic therapy.
(Harvard Health Publishing)
Dr Klabunde States “Our brain findings indicate that childhood trauma treatments appear to be missing an important piece of the puzzle. Trauma therapies in children should also address how trauma’s impacts on one’s body, sense of self, emotional/empathetic processing, and relationships. “This is important to do so since untreated symptoms will likely contribute to other health and mental health problems throughout the lifespan.”
How Does Somatic Healing Sessions Differ From Talk Therapies?
Typical talk therapies such as CBT engage only the mind, not the body but do help people to become aware of disturbing thoughts and behavior patterns and work to change them.
In Somatic Healing Sessions, the body is the starting point to achieve healing. This form of sessions cultivates an awareness of bodily sensations and teaches people to feel safe in their bodies while exploring thoughts, emotions, and memories (Harvard Health Publishing).
“I have patients who are off all of their medications…. Who no longer suffer from panic attacks….Who are no longer haunted by traumatic visions. I am trained in other techniques…. SE is the only method I have found that consistently helps people reorganize their nervous systems and greatly reduce, if not completely erase, trauma symptoms. Although I understand that the SE techniques are grounded in biology, the results are nothing short of miraculous.”
SHIRLEY IMPELLIZZERI, PHD, PSYCHOLOGIST, AUTHOR, SEP
“In Embodied Processing we teach ourselves and our clients to allow psychic structures and somatic wounds which were at one point detrimental to our survival and in turn repressed, to arise and reintegrate.
Matt Kay – Co-Creator and Trainer of Embodied Processing
As we grow in our capacity to meet our pain at the root the nervous system begins a reorganisation. With gentle and loving attention these orphaned parts return home and the repressed pain metabolises. The process is a practice of allowing things to be as they are, to step in fully and embody our more uncomfortable parts. We grow in our capacity to allow these abandoned parts of ourselves back in to be experienced, as an act of unconditional self-acceptance and love.
Bit by bit we learn to embrace all aspects and give up the internal struggle and long learned habit of attempting to fix or manipulate ourselves.
Paradoxically when we stop trying to force change, transformation and integration naturally occurs.”
Ignoring Your Emotions Is Bad for Your Health. Here’s What to Do About It | TIME