What is somatic therapy?
We often think of therapy as being just about the mind, when actually our body is an important part of our mental wellbeing.
Somatic therapy is therapy that works with the connection between mind and body. While other forms might focus on just the mind, somatic therapy includes the body and how this relates to your wellbeing.
This involves bringing the physical experience of your moods into the work, rather than just talking about them as an abstract concept. It could be as simple as noting what bodily sensations come up when you are anxious or feeling low.
The body can also store or express strong emotions, sometimes through pain or discomfort. The Body Keeps the Score, a book by Bessel van der Kolk, describes how the things we experience impact our body on a cellular level, meaning that we can work with the body to help heal these hurts.
What does it involve?
Somatic therapy involves building more awareness of your body sensations and how they relate to your mood. This can be done to allow your body to give an early warning signal of how you might be feeling, or making sure you have fully attended to a feeling rather than covering up what is going on for you.
It can also include relaxation techniques and grounding exercises to return a person’s attention to their body when their awareness has drifted off elsewhere.
Developing a stronger sense of how it feels to be in their own body (known as ‘being embodied’) can help people cultivate a feeling of safety and grounded-ness. This can then be used to allow the safe exploration of difficult feelings. If we are able to cultivate a feeling of safety in our body, then we can begin to work on difficult topics and observe the bodily sensations this brings up, knowing we can move back to a sensation of safety and grounded-ness whenever needed.
Many clients tell me that letting themselves feel their biggest feelings is scary as they worry they will be overwhelmed. By working to create a felt sense of safety they can return to, it is possible to do much deeper work on those potentially overwhelming feelings.
Please note, some somatic therapy can also include touch. This might be massage or near touch like reiki. This is not something I do.
What is it used for?
Somatic therapy is most often associated with treatment for trauma, but it can also be helpful for a variety of issues like anxiety or depression.
For example, for a depressed person this could look like taking the time to map how they feel in their body when at their lowest point. In later sessions we might notice that the feeling has shifted to a different part of their body or has lessened or changed in some way. For many depressed people it is hard to think things will ever be different, so by noticing even minute shifts in our somatic experience we can begin to open up hope for wider changes.
As another example, when working with anxiety we might spend time practicing observing the physical feelings of panic or anxiety from a distance. We could name and locate symptoms of tension or nausea, and then see how they shift as we observe this. This technique combines somatic therapy with mindful awareness.
We all have a body, and it comes with us wherever we go. Everything we go through, our body goes through too.
If you would like to explore how somatic therapy could help you, please get in touch and we can make a plan together.
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