what is somatic healing?
Somatic is relating to the body, our body, to become more in tune to our innate wisdom the body holds.
Somatic healing is a way to heal trauma through the body, specifically through the nervous system.
Trauma happens based on our perception of an event that feels too much, too fast, too soon. Our nervous system response and reaction to this event can get thwarted and then trapped within our nervous system and our body. When our nervous system is unable to have the full response and reaction it wants to we can not process the event properly. It can keep our nervous system in a state of hyperarousal or dormant. Causing us to have or feel and experience a variety of symptoms both physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
Sometimes what may cause trauma for one person will not be traumatic for another person. Our personal perception of the event has a lot to do with it, along with the other events that may be happening in your life that have been affecting your nervous system, like chronic stress.
When trauma happens our body and our nervous system can hold on to the reaction that got thwarted or wasn’t able to be processed.
By working with the somatic experience we begin to tune into the sensations in your body and allow you to tune into them, to sit with them, to follow them. Sometimes the sensations may move or change, or become more or less intense, sometimes there is emotion or story tied to them, and other times there isn’t. But we are making space for your nervous system and body to have and complete the reaction it didn’t get to complete. This begins to create space in the nervous system as well as a new nervous system pattern.
If we think of our nervous system on a spectrum: high end being fully activated - you are in a survival reaction, the low end being grounded and neutral- where your nervous system is online but you are able to be calm grounded in your body and your nervous system can react how it needs to in a healthy way, we usually land somewhere in between. If we have dealt with a traumatic experience and or chronic stress we will exist higher up the spectrum of our nervous system being activated. We work towards existing in the lower end of the spectrum where you are grounded and feel safe but your nervous system is available to react into fight, flight freeze if needed. (and we are human so that doesn’t mean we are calm and never get activated, a healthy nervous system is able to react, and engage, and then deactivate)
By working with somatic experience and becoming aware of the sensation of your body and your nervous system you are allowing your nervous system to move further down the scale, you are letting your body and your nervous system react how they wanted to or needed to and that drops you further down the spectrum allowing for more space in your nervous system. Which then gives you more capacity for life, to handle stress but also to feel joy.
This practice has been one of the most life-changing experiences for me over the last year. I am still human and experience the stresses of life, but it’s less often I get fully activated and triggered into an extreme fight or flight or freeze response over things that may be used to. I have more ability for new nervous system patterns; that I may be activated but I don’t “go offline”. That instead of being triggered into a freeze response I can stay a little more present and work through the challenge at hand. I have more knowing that I am going to be ok.
It feels hard to explain the depth of this work in a short space of a blog post, but it really has brought me more capacity for life, joy, and hope, and a greater ability to handle stress.