The easiest way to define Somatic Therapy is Therapy which occurs in an Embodied State, where embodiment is the process of being in the body while sharing and expressing thoughts and emotions.
Somatic Therapy focuses on the bodily sensations associated with negative emotions, which are distressing, scary, and downright uncomfortable. As a species that loves to catastrophize, we subconsciously compare negative sensations in the body with a natural disaster that will likely end in death. So many times clients describe the negative emotions as natural disasters: a tornado, a storm, an earthquake, a tsunami, or an erupting volcano. No wonder we spend our lives trying to run away from those discomforts and waste a lot of energy and money on distracting, numbing, and hiding away from those sensations. Neurologically/ Physiologically, what is actually happening is Just Neurons Firing. LITERALLY! That is all there is to it.
Most people don’t know and don’t quite understand that our bodies are just trying to communicate with us. Our brains take the complexity of neural pathway activations and try to make sense of those patterns by categorizing and labelling them with things that we are familiar with.
There are different types of Somatic Therapies, but most of them will engage in a process called Somatic Attunement. It is much easier to explain what Somatic Attunement Looks like if I just give you an example: “I can feel tension on both sides of my throat, it is pulsating, and it looks like tar. I can see and feel how it's flowing up into my jaw, like a filler. It reminds me of the disappointments that I had to endure throughout my life. I remember the way my mother used to look at me when she felt dissatisfied with me. I am just realizing now, how useless this is making me feel.”
This process goes on deeper and deeper until the client gets to the root of that sensation and remembers in detail what happened that created it, and why it has left an imprint in the body. The key to successful Somatic Release is maintaining a large window of tolerance in the body throughout the entire session. In fact, this process would not take place if the client has a low tolerance to experiencing their emotions or if there is a lack of embodiment. It does not mean that those clients are not fit for Somatic work, it just means that a lot of work has to put into creating and strengthening the window of tolerance at the beginning. This makes Somatic Therapy a carefully designed and personalized approach to the treatment of mental health issues.
So why is Somatic Therapy necessary? Why start this process? And, why should we open a can of worms?
Well, did you not have enough of the suffering created by the burden you have been caring? If you are carrying Somatic distress on a regular day-to-day basis, it only takes one negative life event to tip you over the edge. It is more and more apparent, that people need time and space to recover from life changes, separations, losses, chronic stress, and triggering life situations.
Right now, healing mental health conditions is the responsibility of the individual. But remaining unhealed also has social implications. If people don’t have funds, time, and space to heal themselves, society becomes vulnerable to losing good workers and having more broken families.
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