What is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic means relating to the body as distinct from the mind.

Our body is continuously scanning our environment to detect if there is safety or danger. It will base this decision on past experiences that are stored in the mind and body, and what your body is detecting around you in the present moment.  It will either determine that your safe and you will remain in a calm state, or believe you're in danger and turn on your alarm system of Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn.  

In circumstances of multiple and repeated traumatic experiences, you may feel stuck in a constant state of stress and survival mode.  Trauma that is stored in the body and creates stress, tension, physical ailments, and dysregulation of emotions and sensations.

Somatic interventions provide gentle techniques to build awareness of your body's responses, help you recognize when you're in stress or shutdown, and learn how to release and regulate.  This may include working with the breath, reorienting to presence and safety, and movement to release stored trauma.  Titration and Pendulation between safety and stored trauma is another technique to pace the healing process in a controlled way.

Somatic Therapy gives you a window into your internal system and response patterns so you can begin to heal these patterns, create a shift, and find ease.

Somatic Therapy combined with EMDR Therapy and Ego State Parts Work can have a deep and long lasting effect as it makes shifts in mind and body.  In my practice I apply these approaches to address Anxiety, Trauma, and Dissociative Disorders. 

If you feel this is the right approach for you, please reach out.