What is Somatic Experiencing
SE is a body-based approach to healing from trauma and chronic stress. In these sessions we explore life’s stresses using the language of the body - sensation! By exploring the landscape of the body we can get clues as to where your natural processes have been stuck - and then spend time inviting and allowing your body to complete it’s natural cycle. As we facilitate this completion, pent up survival energies are released - and when survival energy is released, integration happens.
Through these embodied practices, we are able to live with greater ease and fluidity, with a greater felt sense of safety and connection.
My approach: tends to be gentle. I like to establish a reliable sense of stability and ground, to let the nervous system soak in feeling okay, before we begin to renegotiate specific episodes of stress or trauma. In our sessions, we’ll explore feelings of ground, stability, rhythm and ease. We’ll also touch into feelings of discomfort, nervous system activation and freeze. By gently pendulating between these sensations and experiences, the nervous system has time to tell its story, complete its cycles and return to its natural rhythm. It’s incredible - your body relearns how to respond to, and bounce back from, life’s stresses and difficulties.
From the SEI Website: Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.
Navigating Nervous System Regulation
Sign up for a Somatic Experiencing Session HERE.
FAQs:
What should I wear? Will we be moving?
Anything you comfortable. While we may do some isolated movements, this is not like a yoga asana class. The entirety of the session is generally done seated and we will be communicating verbally.
How many sessions does it take?
This varies from person to person. The majority of people will need a series of sessions in order to renegotiate their stress and/or trauma. Many of us have layers of stress to work through, this is not a magic pill and can take time and/or require regular maintenance.
I’ve heard this called somatic release, should I expect a big catharsis?
This varies from person to person. The goal of this modality is not to create or encourage a huge outpouring of energy (evidenced by seismic shaking in the body) and accompanied by emotional release. This may happen, and can be totally fine, but sessions will generally be slower paced. The reason for the gentle, slow approach is that although those big, dramatic releases can feel good and be exciting, if they happen too soon, they can overwhelm an unregulated nervous system.