somatic Experiencing

‘The body is the most reliable truth meter’

Adyashanti

Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. Somatic Experiencing is based on the idea that traumatic experiences cause dysfunction in a person’s nervous system and prevent them from processing the experience. This approach focuses on experiencing the ‘felt sense’ in the present moment to relieve the physical, emotional and physiological effects of post traumatic stress disorder and other stress and trauma-related health problems.

Somatic Experiencing was founded and developed by Dr. Peter Levine to address the effects of trauma. Levine’s model developed from his observation of prey animals in the wild. He became curious as to why prey animals though threatened routinely, rarely became traumatised. Instead what he observed was these animals utilised innate mechanisms to regulate and discharge the energy they accumulate during stressful events. Although we virtually have the same regulatory mechanisms as animals, humans often override these natural ways of regulating the nervous system. Unlike animals in the wild we don’t feel free to shake off shock and what does not feel good and instead we contain it and hold onto it. These interferences prevent the complete discharge of survival energies and do not allow the nervous system to regain its balance. These energies then become ‘stuck’ in the body causing the body to be in a state of alertness even once the ‘danger’ has passed. Somatic experiencing aims to help people to move past the place where they might be ‘stuck’ in processing a traumatic event.

Somatic Experiencing works at the physiological level rather than focuses on talking about or reliving the trauma. SE focuses on where traumatic activation is held in the body and guides a process to allow stored energy in the body to be discharged which then brings balance to the nervous system. As this process happens the trauma event/charge loses its power and you start to feel more like yourself and are able to live a more functional life.