Cultivating Capacity
Renegotiating Trauma Response
Fostering
Resilence
Photography by Amber Shumake
A Somatic Psychotherapeutic Approach
Partnering with the body, using its signals, and following the sensations or lack of sensation is a powerful yet gentle tool for transformation. Julie's practice is based on allowing the body to have that voice. The work follows the client’s instincts, intuition, and impulses.
What is Somatic Experiencing (SE)?
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a naturalistic approach to the resolution and healing of trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, and medical biophysics. SE supports the body’s natural ability to regulate itself, which is key to transforming PTSD, chronic stress, and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma.
SE is based upon the observation that wild prey animals, though threatened routinely, are rarely traumatized. Animals in the wild naturally regulate and discharge the high levels of energy arousal (fight/flight) associated with defensive survival behaviors and chronic stress. This provides animals with a built-in “immunity” to trauma and stress that enables them to return to regulation in the aftermath of highly charged life-threatening experiences.
SE facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of survival energy bound in the body, aiming to address the root cause of trauma symptoms, which can result in subtle or more intense experiences as the body discharges. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions, so as to not get overwhelmed.
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SE employs awareness of body sensation to help people "renegotiate" and heal rather than re- live or re-enact trauma.
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SE's guidance of the bodily "felt sense," allows the highly aroused or frozen survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged.
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SE “titrates” your experience (breaks it down into small, incremental steps) so that you can remain embodied and present, rather than evoking a mindless catharsis or becoming flooded.
Note: Somatic Experiencing can be used with or without touch.
SE does not require you to re-tell or re-live the traumatic event, which can be helpful in the case of pre-verbal trauma. When working through a trauma story, working with narrative can be done gradually to build capacity and resilience. SE offers the opportunity to engage, complete, and resolve—in a slow and supported way—the body’s instinctual fight, flight, freeze, and collapse responses. Individuals locked in anxiety or rage then relax into a growing sense of peace and safety. Those stuck in depression often gradually find their feelings of hopelessness and numbness transformed into empowerment, triumph, and mastery. SE catalyzes corrective bodily experiences that contradict those of fear and helplessness and seeks to restore a sense of aliveness and pleasure. For more information: www.traumahealing.org
Note: The Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute states that Somatic Experiencing is neither a form of psychotherapy nor a bodywork technique, though it lends itself well to being integrated into these and other treatment modalities. For more see
What are SE Touch and Table Work?
Touch and Table Work are applied with hands and occasionally with other forms of contact, such as forearm or foot. It can also be offered indirectly, such as providing support through a cushion. SE Touch is done fully clothed and is not used to manipulate the body. Touch Work offers support to muscles, joints, diaphragms, and organs to support regulation and healthy functioning. Touch can be applied with the client in a seated position or lying face up on a table, or standing during movement exercises. Some examples of when touch can be helpful are:
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Identifying an area of the body for tracking internal sensations.
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Supporting an area of the body to release tension or constriction.
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Stabilizing a highly activated / dysregulated nervous system.
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Containing and processing difficult emotions (e.g., feeling therapist’s hands on the outside of your upper arms to provide a sense of containment to reduce flooding).
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Bringing awareness to an area of the body that feels disconnected or numb.
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Engaging a reflexive action or defense to support completion / discharge of a response (e.g.,
pushing into a therapist’s hands to engage a frozen fight response).
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Resourcing an individual with positive sensation or a healthy body function (e.g., pressure on the feet can enhance a sense of grounding).
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Calming an anxiety response, by supporting the brain stem or the kidney/adrenal area.
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Connecting with tissue / muscle memory or natural biological rhythms.
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Increasing blood flow to damaged tissue.
Touch was incorporated in Somatic Experiencing by Dr. Peter Levine, and was further refined as a practice by Kathy Kain, MA, PhD, SEP, somatic and bodywork practitioner and senior faculty member with the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (www.somaticpractice.net).
Touch- and body-based modalities, especially when working with a self-protective response or body memory, can bring up emotions, thoughts, pain, physical reactions, or memories that may be upsetting, depressing, evoke anger, etc. It is also not unexpected for the body to vibrate or tremble, and for clients to experience a sense of fatigue or discomfort. This is typically temporary, and your therapist’s aim is to support you to work through these in a way that reduces the likelihood of overwhelm. It is important to honour the body’s needs following sessions to support integration (rest, water, nourishing food, etc).