my experience of somatic healing…
There has been a lot of talk lately around somatic healing, from me, maybe from others. I love somatic healing and all that it has brought to my life, and my understanding of self, and I couldn’t wait to learn more and how to support others through their own healing journey.
I started seeing a somatic practitioner/therapist in December of 2020. I had experienced my first pregnancy loss at 3 months pregnant and to me, it didn’t feel like losing a pregnancy it felt like losing a baby. The grief was all-consuming and I was unable to do much, I was hardly surviving. I knew I needed support to navigate how I was feeling but wasn’t sure where to go since my therapist I had been seeing was on mat leave. One of my friends suggested I try seeing a somatic therapist, so I booked my first appointment.
I showed up to her office and sat down, in a freeze state I explained briefly everything I had gone through in the last year, (there was more than just a loss of a baby) In order to even talk about it I had to be tuned out and shut off, it was all too traumatic and painful to be in it in any way. I was scared to feel it.
She explained to me a little about somatic therapy and I was vaguely familiar with some concepts as I had taught yoga from a nervous system-based lens. But even knowing cognitively the process would be slow, like really slow, It didn’t stop me from feeling incredibly frustrated. I couldn't just be over it and move on.
I began seeing my somatic therapist on a regular basis, about every two weeks for many months. It took a while before I noticed much of a difference, but over time I was starting to feel myself, I was still there, I could connect back to myself again, and after a while, I began to feel better than I have in years. It was not a magic pill that took it all away but we slowly and intentionally started to heal my nervous system, to move out of freezing and toward finding safe places in my body to exist. I was beginning to feel and acknowledge the pain I felt and see the beauty of life at the same time. When we are living in survival mode we do not often have access or very little access to holding the both and the and.
This past year I have moved through many more ups and downs. I continue to see my somatic therapist on a regular basis, I do not escape grief as I am a human being and we will not go through life without experiencing grief, sadness, and challenges of varying degrees. But my nervous system is different, I have more capacity, I can lean gently into the pain a little more and find safe spaces within myself more often. I don’t know or even think it is possible to be healed completely. I think it's a lifelong journey as life never stops moving, but I am healing. I can feel it, the sensations in my body are different, my reactions are different, how I live and my values have changed and are changing. There are physiological changes that have happened in my nervous system and it makes life feel better than I could have imagined. Even in the depths of sadness and anger when I still feel some fear of being consumed by it all, I know I can go in gently, titrate the edges of it and notice if I can go there safely, and even understand what that means to me.
I write this in a heavy heavy time, personally and in the world, my heartaches, I feel like I am barely surviving but I know that I am navigating better than I would have been a year ago. And that is the beauty of this work. It's human work.