What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy focuses on the connection between mind and body. In traditional talk therapy, if someone mentions that they are struggling with anxiety or anger, for instance, these thoughts and feelings are explored rather than how they appear in the body. During somatic therapy, we emphasize what happens within the body in the presence of anger or anxiety. As part of somatic therapy, the client processes significant times when they have felt anger or anxiety. There are many ways to do somatic therapy, including somatic experiencing, grounding techniques, and EMDR.
EMDR (read the FULL article here) stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing”. In EMDR, the client and therapist examine a core belief, like I'm not safe, and identify times in their lives when they felt that way. In examining these past trauma memories and their present physical manifestations, we're not only looking at the thought but also how that person felt emotionally at that time. Together in EMDR, we examine what comes up and look at your body to see where you feel it. We change that core belief together by processing that core memory.
How Does Somatic Therapy Work?
When we experience anxiety or anger in the present moment, it is quite likely that the body is trying to play out what was never completed back then. Somatic therapy aims to help us understand our stress responses because the brain reacts automatically when we are under extreme stress and trauma. It's in survival mode. It's a flight or freeze response that happens automatically. The body blindly follows the brain's instructions, and there is residual stress in the body that manifests seemingly randomly later in the mind of the experiencer.
However, people who have experienced trauma may be disconnected from their bodies, and quite frankly, terrified of them, so processing their physical manifestations of previous stress can be tricky. Taking small steps is the key. Often, that involves asking the body to reveal what it is feeling and why.
What is the Somatic Nervous System?
There are two parts to our somatic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for responding, while the sympathetic nervous system offers support, grounding, and soothing. When there is a threat or danger, the sympathetic nervous system will activate. The sympathetic nervous system, which acts as an alarm within the body, sends us into fight, flight, or freeze mode.
This response is designed to protect us from danger, but it can lead to stress and anxiety when we experience it in our daily lives. It is important to find ways to activate the parasympathetic nervous system to reduce stress and create a sense of calm.
What Does the Somatic Nervous System Do?
We are constantly taking in sensory input.
Reading this right now is an example of the brain taking in information, but while doing so, it is also taking in whatever other senses it encounters.
If we smell or hear a sound that reminds us of a traumatic or difficult experience, our minds automatically lump them together. When this happens, the higher levels of the brain can't make logical decisions.
In our brains, we have an emotional alarm centre called the amygdala. In addition, we have our hippocampus, which is our memory bank. When we have a memory that has a high emotional charge, like stress, fright, panic, or terror, it doesn't go into the same category as brushing our teeth. In essence, your amygdala is sounding this alarm, and when that alarm is activated, other parts of your brain shut down, making it impossible to reason. You might feel your heart pounding because your sympathetic nervous system is reacting to whatever stimulus you've received.
Somatic therapy may be especially helpful for people who have difficulty regulating their emotions. Emotions can be extremely stressful and difficult to process.
There may be something deeper going on, such as a traumatic event that happened when they were young that hijacked their emotional state at the time. Somatic therapy can help to identify the source of the trauma and release it, allowing the person to then process their emotions more healthily and efficiently.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
As with many exposure therapies, somatic experiencing involves tuning into the body and titrating. In short, it involves short exposures to times when the body felt unsafe, scared, nervous and so on. There are several types of somatic therapy, but a license is required in order to practice somatic experiencing therapy.
Titration in Somatic Therapy, Explained:
Titration helps you to understand what is happening through short exposures to the memory of the time you felt unsafe in a pendulum motion, where you're going back and forth between exposure, safety, exposure, and safety. This allows someone to see how their nervous system responds to an exposure. Also, it teaches them that safety is possible and can be felt. This form of therapy helps individuals to cope with their trauma in a safe environment. It also helps them to learn how to manage their emotions and develop healthier coping strategies.
What is Somatic Healing?
Scientific studies reveal that trauma can be passed down through generations via genetic encoding, affecting descendants' physiology and psychology. This epigenetic inheritance challenges traditional genetic transmission theories, highlighting the complex relationship between experiences and biology.
Somatic healing addresses these deep-rooted traumas through mind-body connection techniques. Practitioners use yoga, grounding exercises, mindfulness meditation, somatic experiencing, and EMDR. While self-practice is possible, many work with yoga teachers, life coaches, or therapists who incorporate somatic healing methods.
The core principle of somatic healing uses the mind-body link to navigate past traumas, present experiences, and future aspirations. This approach aims to increase self-awareness, break autopilot behaviours, and deepen understanding of mental processes. It addresses both personal and intergenerational traumas passed down through epigenetic inheritance.
What is Somatic Psychotherapy?
Somatic psychotherapy looks at the mind-body connection to promote holistic healing and transformation. Somatic psychotherapy aims to transition you to what feels better than panic, fear, frustration or anxiety. The goal isn't to reach perfection - it's just to reach a point where physical reactions don't hijack you.
People with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety can benefit from somatic psychotherapy. Somatic cues are a great way to discuss anxiety in the therapy room, regardless of whether there's a diagnostic label or if it is self-reported. PTSD usually involves a lot of mental flashbacks that make you feel as if you're back there again, and this can lead to somatic cues in the body emerging as well. These somatic cues may make you feel disconnected from the moment in time and your body, and by working through the mind-body connection somatic psychotherapy helps you unpack your reaction.
Why Do Somatic Psychotherapy?
While somatic psychotherapy can help with almost anything, somatic psychotherapy may especially benefit you if you’re feeling disconnected from yourself and don't know how you are feeling. Feeling this way is often accompanied by emotional dysregulation, which leads to the feeling that people live their lives on automatic pilot.
The benefits of somatic psychotherapy:
it reduces mental health symptoms
helps us understand and make sense of the past
develop the mind-body connection
integrate this connection into our daily lives.
Somatic psychotherapy can reduce many mental health symptoms. When someone is suffering from depression, anxiety, trauma or PTSD somatic psychotherapy can lead to a reduction of those feelings. As well as reducing symptoms, people have the chance to connect with themselves on a deeper level and heal and integrate the experiences from the past and present into the future, since healing isn't about having to deal with stress, anger, upset, or fear again, but learning how to deal with those situations when they arise.
What Happens During Somatic Psychotherapy?
What happens during somatic therapy depends on the exact form of somatic psychotherapy being applied, whether it's EMDR, somatic experiencing or a blend of all of those things. Generally, people coming to therapy for trauma or anxiety can expect to feel sensations similar to what they feel when they are anxious or experiencing flashbacks, but in a safe and supportive environment.
The process of somatic psychotherapy involves:
Active examination of triggering moments
Slow and intentional progression, led by the client's comfort level
Exposure to challenging emotions and sensations in a controlled setting
Learning to observe and process reactions
While it may not always be comfortable, a good somatic psychotherapist will start where the client feels most at ease, ensuring a trauma-informed approach that prioritizes the client's sense of safety. Through somatic psychotherapy, you will be gently guided through painful emotions and feelings, allowing you to process and work through them at your own pace. You will also learn tools and techniques for managing your feelings and emotions in the future.
What Is a Somatic Therapist?
A somatic therapist is simply someone who has been trained in some form of somatic-focused yoga, somatic experiencing, or polyvagal theory. Many somatic therapists focus on the mind-body connection, and they use a variety of tools to support it. Although somatic experiencing is the gold standard of somatic therapy, there are many other forms of somatic therapy, and there are many ways that a therapist might be certified in somatic therapy.
What Does a Somatic Therapist Do?
A somatic therapist helps people to identify and regulate their emotions by teaching them how to become more aware of the physical sensations associated with their emotions. This helps them to gain insight into their emotional patterns and to develop healthier coping mechanisms. With this practice, a somatic therapist can help you learn to remain calm in difficult moments, to better manage stress, and to recognize warning signs of triggers and develop strategies to cope with them.
For example, by working with you, the somatic therapist equips you with the tools to deal with panic attacks when they arise again. This is done by examining how you think about panic, and how you feel physically about panic, and combining both to understand better how it manifests itself in your life and give you tools to deal with it both mentally and physically. When panic comes up again, you'll know how to move through it and ground yourself.
What is Somatic Movement Therapy?
The term somatic movement can refer to many things: yoga, tai chi, pilates, or any physical activity based on mindfulness. However, somatic movement therapy would likely use yoga or other just natural and organic movements. During somatic psychotherapy, a somatic therapist may use somatic movement, for example, doing yoga after a session if a client requests it. If a client feels unsafe, we might do meditation, but other times we may just ask them to try wrapping your arm if they're feeling ungrounded.
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