"She is a gentle soul and a true natural healer"
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing®, trauma resolution work developed by Peter Levine, is a body-awareness approach to trauma. Trauma is a fact of life. The sources of trauma are wide-ranging; they include natural disasters, exposure to violence, accidents, falls, serious illness, sudden loss of a loved one, surgeries, medical and dental procedures, childhood neglect or abuse, difficult birth, and even high levels of stress and toxicity during gestation in the womb.
Not all traumatic events will create symptoms. However, trauma related symptoms are rampant in our modern lives. Symptoms of unresolved trauma can include:
- panic or anxiety, including panic attacks
- phobias or depression
- hypervigilance or hyperactivity
- chronic pain of all kinds
- sleep disturbances
- avoidance behaviors
- chronic tension
- addiction
- accident proneness
- migraines
- digestive problems
- sexual dysfunction
- dissociation
- chronic fatigue
- forgetfulness
- and many more...
The symptoms of trauma, from the extreme symptoms classified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to the milder symptoms, can be healed. Trauma, although a fact of life, does not need to be a life sentence.
Somatic Experiencing is a gentle therapy for resolving and discharging unresolved survival energies, thereby healing the symptoms of trauma. It is based on the fact that we, like animals in the wild, are biologically designed to do this; in other words, our bodies, given adequate support, know exactly what to do to in order to heal. If our bodies know how to heal, then why haven’t we done so?
Just as we have a primitive part of our brain that governs survival responses, we also have higher brain functions of emotional and cognitive responses, which often interfere with this “body wisdom.“ Somatic Experiencing is a method of supporting our bodies to access this body wisdom and apply it to healing and resolving the effects of trauma.
To work directly with the inherent wisdom of the body, Somatic Experiencing largely bypasses the cognitive brain centers by utilizing the “language” of the primitive brain: sensation. By working with a person in a state of resourced, pleasant body sensations and gradually working with the edge of the nervous system activation, the inherent body wisdom takes over. This gradual working of the edges of the nervous system activation gently allows for the discharge and completion of the instinctual survival energies, resulting in a restored sense of settling and well being and a return of a sense of aliveness, relaxation and wholeness.
