What is Somatic Therapy?
Embracing the Inner Ground
We innately respond to others, the world around us, moments of stress, and our emotional life by feeling it in our bodies. This is our nature as human beings. We feel it. We feel it somatically, which means ‘in the body’.
When our nervous system detects a threat or danger, our bodies move into survival mode to protect us from the risk. This is how we survive as a species; this is the body doing its job. We often hear about survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. These responses happen naturally in the animal kingdom while trying to detect a threat or stay safe.
If we experienced stress often in childhood and the support was not available to process or make sense of it and thereby discharge that excess stress response, it stayed locked in the body as memory, which can become problematic in adulthood. We don’t need significant traumatic situations in childhood for this to happen. It’s usually because, for many different reasons, the support wasn’t there to process frightening or overwhelming things.
This is problematic later on because we come to expect or anticipate threats where there are none. This impacts how we engage with the world, causing us to remain in states of hypervigilance, trying to protect ourselves from perceived threats and remaining disconnected from our authentic selves.
We stay stuck in survival mode, not growth mode.
These chronic states of stress can have a very real impact on our bodies and our physical and emotional well-being. Our immune system can become compromised. We can become vigilant of our environment, wondering, often unconsciously, when the next threat will appear, and frequently feel anxious and uneasy. We can also feel numb and shut down, overwhelmed, depressed and unable to feel good emotions such as joy and contentment. Over time, our bodies and muscles armour and brace against threats or stress, resulting in physical aches and pains, tummy aches, headaches, tightness in the throat and chest, and a myriad of other physical symptoms.
Somatic Therapy - What is it?
Historically, talk therapies focused on cognitive approaches that explore your thinking process and how you're feeling emotionally, and the focus is on resolving things verbally. This is useful, but only half the story. When we don't feel safe in our bodies, we live in our heads, disconnected from our physical experience. We need to return to the language of the body, to come to know what our bodies are communicating, to support ourselves in our bodies, and to feel our feelings. When therapists work somatically, they look at incorporating the body in the overall picture so that the stress response is released in the body and, therefore, no longer holds the same charge.
How can you support your relationship with your body?
1. Establish Emotional and Physical Boundaries
One of the most important things we can do for ourselves is establish boundaries between ourselves, others, and the world around us. Boundaries allow us to come into our separate selves. In therapy, this looks like building a relationship with your body, becoming curious about what you are feeling and sensing, getting to know your wishes and needs, and learning how to honour and protect those parts of yourself.
This cultivates a sense of inner trust and allows us to remain grounded in times of stress and distress. We start to nurture a relationship with our bodies slowly and gently. This means we can begin to listen with the inner ear: What am I noticing in my body just now? What am I sensing in my body at this very moment?
It is a very slow, gentle coming back to the body. We need to take our time.
2. Notice Your Breathing
Returning to our breathing returns us to our separate selves, too. When we are stressed, our breathing is shallow. This is a sign we are more in survival mode, responding to a threat. When we breathe into our tummy and feel the rise and fall of our breath, this slows our nervous system down and supports the overwhelmed or stressed nervous system. We can usually support ourselves more when we are connected more to our breath.
3. Grounding
When our nervous system is in survival mode (this may be when there is no real danger present), we need to support our bodies to ground into the present moment. Feeling the actual ground at our feet helps this. Both feet are on the floor. When we wash our hands under the tap of cold water, see five things our eyes are drawn to in the environment around us, five things we can touch and feel, breathe into the tummy, these small exercises help bring us into the moment, and supports us in moments of distress.
4. Returning to the Senses
When we Deepen into the Senses, we notice the senses. We notice the smells, sounds, and sensations on our skin and what our eyes see and take in.
Invitation: When you are next outdoors, my invitation to you is to bring conscious awareness to noticing. Notice the cool breeze on your exposed skin as you go outside, as we enter the changing seasons. Drop your shoulders down. Breathe into your tummy. Notice the smells, the smell of the seasons changing. Later, in your journal, jot down what that felt like.
“Her nervous system had been through so much. She decided to spend the rest of her life calming the inflammation. Thoughts, feelings, memories, behaviour, and relations. She soothed it all with deep, loving breaths and gentle practices. The softer she became with herself, the softer she became with the world, which became softer with her. She birthed a new generational cycle: peace.”
JAIYA JOHN
(Fragrance after Rain)
NEW!
A Journey Inward Online Course
We will focus on remembering the language of the body. We will explore our feelings and senses and how returning to our bodies helps cultivate our inner ground. This will allow us to begin the journey inward, where we will create a touchstone, an anchor, that supports us in feeling safe while we explore our inner world.
