FUndamentals of a Somatic Approach

SOMATIC THERAPY GOES BEYOND TALK THERAPY

When we have an experience or experiences that we interpret as unsafe, upsetting, overwhelming, or traumatic, our survival brain is triggered to help bring us to safety. Our bodies go into a “fight or flight” reaction - we sense danger or threat, feel fear and helplessness or anger and defensiveness, and our bodies react accordingly. We are trying to survive this pivotal threatening experience the best way we can.

When our Survival (lower) brain is active, by necessity our Learning (higher) brain, which regulates our thought and reasoning, is inhibited (or shut down) so that we can work to escape the danger or threat quickly. Our bodies activate a “fight or flight” reaction to help us survive.

In Talk Therapy, we might sometimes look back an event in our lives and realize, with relief, that we have escaped and are no longer in danger from this pivotal experience. We might rationally understand that the situation is in the past, and move on.

OFTEN, HOWEVER, THE SYMPTOMS PERSIST OR RETURN. This is because our survival brain was triggered and feelings of fear, anger, and helplessness were activated. Our experience of threat lives on in our bodies in the present, resulting in intrusive thoughts and memories, unexplained fears and anger, generalized anxiety, and physical symptoms that don’t have a diagnosis and/or are not responding to treatment.

These feelings still live in our Implicit (Nonverbal) Memory, as if this event is still happening to us. There is no sense of it being “over” until the body is able to process it, not through talking but through corrective embodied experiences. This is where Somatic Therapy techniques can help.

Somatic therapy is based on the science of the nervous system. A nervous system that is too over-activated or too under-activated is not receptive to healing, learning, and change.

Being in direct experience through techniques like meditation, mindful movement (such as yoga), making sounds, and tuning into the parts of the body ( to name a few) all support a state shift that is more receptive, opening a path for incomplete survival and coping responses to finally resolve. When our nervous system is helped into a state of optimal receptivity, rather than staying stuck in old patterns, we are able to move toward positive life change.