You are more than your head or body. However, following a traumatic event, you might feel as though you are living in a haze. Somatic therapy can assist you in becoming more conscious of what happens in your body and mind to heal fully.
Should you have heard the expression “the body keeps the score,” then you may already be acquainted with somatic therapy. The foundation of somatic therapy is that unprocessed emotions can become imprisoned in the body. This method is frequently applied to assist trauma sufferers.
This treatment aims to change your trauma-related reactions so that they no longer cause you distress. Therapists in this kind of care typically employ breathing techniques, mindfulness practices, massage, visualization, and different movement or touch forms to reduce your body’s reaction to stressors.
Learn more about this kind of therapy, its advantages, and its varieties by continuing to read.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy, also referred to as body psychotherapy, is a therapy type that emphasizes the relationship between the mind and body and the experiences that individuals have in each. According to somatic therapy practitioners, traumatic experiences endure at the cellular level.
Understanding what is happening inside the body—that is, the physiological signals that arise in reaction to a provocation or the bodily responses that occur throughout the day, like headaches or stomach aches—is necessary for somatic therapy.
This body-centric therapy is based on the theory that people may eliminate tension, trauma, and anxiety from their bodies by addressing the bodily symptoms of unpleasant experiences.
Somatic Therapy Techniques
Some therapeutic approaches are common in somatic therapy, even though the exact methods will depend on your practitioner. Below is a summary of typical methods that a somatic therapist might employ.
Establishing Rapport
As with all therapy, somatic therapy starts with understanding yourself and your therapist. People often build rapport with their therapists during the first few meetings.
Psycho-Training
Your somatic therapist will also discuss trauma, healing, and somatic experience (SE) treatment with you during your first session. They will go over significant points like healing vortices (positive actions taken to reduce stress and feel better) and trauma vortices (which are mental tailspins caused by overwhelming recollections of trauma).
Resourcing
You use self-calming techniques during resourcing by concentrating on a secure and tranquil condition inside your body. For instance, your somatic therapist might ask you to explain your feelings if you’re seated across from them. You may say, “This couch feels relaxing, and my arms and legs are comfortable.” You can employ those comforting emotions to calm yourself when you’re upset.
Pendulation
Pendulation defines what happens next, like how a pendulum swings back and forth. You alternate gradually between recalling and resourcing the painful event, centered on a calm physical condition. As you discuss these feelings with your SE provider, they will offer guidance. You can briefly describe the start of your horrible experience and how it feels in your body, such as pressure in your chest and trembling in your legs, after revealing how secure you feel on the sofa. This method aims to teach you how to reach that state of relaxation without help.
Titration
Your therapy provider may require you to recollect a traumatic memory using this technique; during this process, you need to observe any physical changes occurring in your body. Then, as these changes happen, you respond to them. You can progressively go over and handle distressing memories by using this technique.
Talk therapy can help you understand what happened and start to feel better as the painful memory gets less physically intense. Your therapist may discuss your symptoms with you in these meetings and ask how well you’ve been able to control your emotions since the previous session.
Benefits of Somatic Therapy
It might occasionally feel counterproductive and uncomfortable to discuss past trauma. Hence, the advantages of somatic therapy can surpass those obtained from a program that focuses solely on talk therapy. Without using words, you can narrate a story through movement. It can assist you in healing from past wounds and increasing awareness of the feelings in your body.
Emotional Awareness
You can learn to recognize your feelings better. Aches and pains might occasionally be your body’s way of telling you that you’re sick or injured. In other cases, it might indicate the emergence of unresolved feelings. You might be able to make particular adjustments to your body by becoming more conscious of your posture and motions.
Positivity
Your mind is a powerful tool and an organ of habit, just like your body. Trauma alters the wiring in your body and brain to make it more resilient. It might get tiresome when your body starts using its fight-or-flight reaction as your primary mode.
This therapy urges you to view things more optimistically. Somatic therapy reprograms the brain’s neural networks. It helps you transition from survival mode to an emotionally balanced conscious state. It can assist you in reclaiming your life from unfavorable attitudes, sensations, and behaviors.
Change and Let Go Trauma
Somatic therapy can help people with PTSD regulate their symptoms and help many re-establish a connection with their bodies. Those who have suffered from physical trauma, such as abuse at home or from sexual assault, may find this particularly challenging.
Based on the idea that trauma accumulates in the body, somatic therapy seeks to convert this imbalance into regulation. It emphasizes how thoughts and behaviors can impact your body’s response to trauma and triggers, raising awareness of this process.
Let Go of Tension
Among the goals of somatic experience is to assist the body in letting go of trauma-related tension. It is where mindful somatic exercises become practical since they help people become more aware of their bodies and identify tight or painful spots.
People who have gone through trauma in the past could be struggling with behavioral disorders, which can lead to physical stress. A component of these behavioral disorders is the freeze reaction (which is a pause as an alternative to fighting or fleeing when someone feels threatened).
The brain is unable to determine that they are no longer in danger. It then proceeds with the freeze reaction, resulting in symptoms including disorientation, disassociation, and trouble moving.
Somatic experience is an excellent treatment for trapped trauma. This therapy goal is to retrain and reset the brain’s ability to recognize the absence of danger even when having similar physical reactions to past traumatic experiences.
Through mindfulness or attentive movements like tai chi or yoga, somatic therapy can help people discharge trauma by bringing consciousness to the locations in the body where it is held.
Incorporating Somatic Therapy in Your Mental Wellness
There are numerous established advantages to somatic treatment for people with mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. You can improve many symptoms of mental health illnesses by returning consciousness to the body and reforming it to release the trauma held deep within the neurological system.
The most effective therapy approaches involve mobility. Incorporate the basic ideas of somatic therapy into your treatment sessions to help you reach your full potential mentally, physically, and emotionally.
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