Somatic work is a body-based approach to healing trauma and supporting the body’s innate ability to discharge unresolved or incomplete flight, fight, freeze, fawn, and dissociative energies and regain equilibrium. My somatics practice is grounded in a deep understanding of the body and the impacts of cultural and sociopolitical dynamics on the body. My work specifically draws upon a lifetime of modern dance and intuitive movement; 20 years of Hatha Yoga and meditation training, practice, and teaching; 14 years of antiracism facilitation; the three-year Somatic Experiencing International professional practitioner training; my cultivated, ancestral, and innate intuitive abilities; and my personal 1:1 and group healing work with Somatic Practitioners, Sage Hayes (Somatic Experiencing) and Vanissar Tarakali (generative somatics).
The benefits of Somatic Healing work include:
Increased confidence, personal empowerment, self-compassion, and self-awareness;
New choices in how you respond to pressure, conflict, stressors, and triggers;
Greater confidence in setting boundaries and asking for what you need;
Deepened intimacy, agency, connection, safety, and presence in relationships;
Expanded sense of purpose, presence, aliveness, clarity, and hope;
Reduced or fully alleviated chronic physical pain, tension, and immobility;
Greater felt sense of integration, coherence, calm, wholeness, and spiritual connection;
Increased executive functioning and ability to focus and concentrate; and
Greater capacity to discern safety and trust yourself, others, and the world.
Somatic Experiencing draws upon research of how our triune autonomic nervous system mobilizes to respond to threat. SE is modeled off of animals in the wild, who engage innate, instinctive, physiological processes to discharge the massive fight, flight, and freeze energies associated with survival. Wild animals are rarely traumatized, even though their lives are routinely threatened. Although humans have virtually the same innate self-regulating mechanisms, we often override or inhibit these processes due to generations of socialized disconnection from our bodies’ wisdom. When we fail to discharge the high levels of arousal associated with survival these massive energies stay trapped in our neuromuscular and central nervous systems and wreak havoc on our bodies and minds. It is this trapped energy that develops into a whole constellation of post-traumatic symptoms including pain, anxiety, anger, depression, intrusive thoughts and imagery, physical illness, and cognitive impairments. Somatic Experiencing supports people to reconnect with the innate wisdom of their bodies. Through focused conscious awareness of bodily sensations clients are able to access these restorative physiological patterns, resolve their traumatic symptoms, and re-engage in life with renewed optimism, vitality, creativity, resilience, and joy.
Titration - When trauma occurs in our life, it comes at us at a pace that is too fast, too much, too soon. Trauma is an experience that overwhelms the normal capacity of our nervous system and we are unable to integrate the experience. Titration is a concept in chemistry where one tiny drop of a volatile substance is added to another volatile substance, allowing time for the chemical reaction to take place and integrate into the whole before introducing another drop. If the two substances were combined without titration an explosive and volatile destabilizing reaction would take place. If they are added in a slow and titrated way, much like we do in SE, we only get little reactions, and ones that the nervous system is able to integrate. As the nervous system is given time and space to integrate each titration, healing occurs without re-traumatization and further destabilization.
Resourcing - It is essential in working with Trauma to orient to and root in positive resource before navigating the traumatic territory. Somatic Experiencing focuses on developing and expanding a felt sense of safety in the present moment and environment. Learning to experience resource in our bodies enables us to work with trauma safely, gently, and gradually.
Pendulation - Resilient nervous systems are constantly in a state of expansion and contraction, also known as “pendulation.” In SE we cultivate this kind of flexibility and fluidity by pendulating between resource and gentle titrations of traumatic material/content/story in the body.
Note: As with all holistic health modalities, this work is not meant to replace professional psychological and medical attention.
