Have you ever felt like traditional talk therapy just isn't hitting the mark for you- you've talked through things a million times, tried a lot of coping techniques, but you're not experiencing a deeper change? Talk therapy is great for working with thoughts, but the roots of our difficult experiences live in our bodies. That's where somatic therapy comes in. By bringing our awareness below the mind into our direct, body experience; somatic therapy guides people to connect directly with the experience of emotions, memories, and self concepts through the felt sense. Tapping into our lived experince holds the key to unlocking our innate impulse towards healing, opening the way to recovering our potency.
Discovering Somatic Therapy
What is Somatic Therapy?
You might often hear somatic therapy described as a holistic approach. What does that mean? Holistic means "whole," an approach that considers the entire system rather than its individual parts. Somatic therapy works with the whole system. How does our embodied experience connect with the quality of our thoughts? What is happening in our spirit? How does it all work together and what can we meet to open up a deeper change? Through connecting wtih our embodied experience (sensations, movements, energy, breath, nervous system, feelings), we can tap into stored experiences that underly how we experience life, the world, and ourselves. Inside our body experience also lives the innate wisdom towards health and wholeness that lives inside each of us.
What Happens in a Somatic Therapy Session?
A somatic therapy approach aims to help you connect with your body and internal experiences. For example, people often arrive with something they have been experiencing in their day or week. In talk therapy, we may talk through the storyline and engage it through dialogue. In a somatic session, expect to be guided to explore your felt experience, located underneath the narrative for what's happening, and offering a doorway to address experiences we have had and held over time. Upon arriving, sessions typically begin with a check in to connect to your current emotional and physical state. As you progress, you'll be guided to deepen into your body experience. Some avenues for this may include utilizing the breath, cultivating interoception (sensing of your inner felt experience), building dialogue with what's inside, expressing through movement, among other possibilities.
How to Know if Somatic Therapy is Right for You
Determining if somatic therapy is the right fit involves a bit of self-reflection. Here are some considerations that might help:
Desire to Go Deeper: If you're feeling stuck in traditional talk therapy, and/or feeling ready to connect with and address the roots of the patterns in your life.
Body Awareness: You might be drawn to somatic therapy if you're interested in having a more embodied experience of life, building more connection with your body, and more empowerment in caring for your whole system.
Open to learning something new: A somatic approach may challenge the way you're used to thinking through things. It's not a linear process and is more about unwinding strategies that aren't working for us anymore than striving towards something. If you feel called to explore something that may be different to what you're used to, somatic therapy could be a good modality for you.
Experiential Practices: Somatic therapy invites you to connect with your present moment experience, and may involve practices to connect with your breath, inner awareness, etc. Being open to exploring an experiential approach can open new doors in your therapeuitc journey.
Interest in Nervous System Regulation: If you’re looking to gain understanding of how your body reacts in moments of stress or trauma and learning how to better manage that; somatic therapy helps you build a relationship with your nervous system, tend to it, and expand your sense of nervous system well being so that you can respond to life with more presence and resilience.
Seeking Mindfulness: For those interested in mindfulness and being present with their experience, somatic therapy provides a way to become more present in the moment.
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