Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing is my first love when it comes to healing modalities. I discovered it through the serendipity of life and have personally experienced tremendous healing with it. When someone is interested in trying Somatic Experiencing for their own healing, I recommend having three sessions before coming to any conclusions. Why three? Because this gives the time for the nervous system to have a good unwind. Often the first couple of sessions are the beginning of something deeper getting unlocked. It doesn’t happen all in one session. Three gives the nervous system time and space to do what it needs to do.

When I first dove in, I had 12 sessions. In doing so I unlocked trauma from a heart surgery I had when I was three. I didn’t even know I had it. But the surgery made me feel helpless in some core places within me. I felt like a different person after these sessions. Plus a problem area near the surgery scar that kept me going to the chiropractor for years, resolved and has not bothered me since.

I love this method because it is honors the body’s innate wisdom. It slows things down so the nervous system can complete what it didn’t get to complete before, because it was overwhelmed.

What is Somatic Experiencing*?

This is a good description I ran across but do not know the source:

1. SE is a short-term, naturalistic approach to healing and resolving the effects of traumatic events, developed by Peter Levine, Ph. D (who has doctorates in both medical biophysics and psychology).

2. Based on his observations of animals in the wild, who deal with survival threats regularly and yet are rarely traumatized

3. Animals have an in-born mechanism that allows them to manage large amounts of “survival” energy and to discharge it when it is no longer needed—returning to a state of balance (they literally shake it off/out of their systems)

4. We humans have the same mechanism, but we tend to “override” it with our “higher” brain and consequently, we end up “storing” excess survival energies in our bodies as symptoms

5. The body has a natural capacity to heal and to restore itself; SE encourage this natural capacity to heal in a gentle and contained way (without re-traumatizing)

6. SE work with the natural survival responses of “fight/flight/freeze” (the innate survival responses within us all)

7. SE recognizes that trauma symptoms arise when “survival” energies do not discharge completely from the body

8. SE help relieve symptoms of trauma by eliciting discharge of stored or “stuck” survival energies

9. The goal of SE is to relieve symptoms of traumatic stress through gently discharging stored survival energies and restoring balance to the nervous system

10. SE can be used to treat anyone who has experienced or witnesses an event that was perceived to be threatening or overwhelming to the persons or which posed a serious threat or injury to themselves or others

*Foundation for Human Enrichment: www.traumahealing.com

To Schedule a Somatic Experiencing Session:

Call me at 707-971-0304. My rates are $75 an hour. Most SE sessions are 1 and 1/2 hours, $110.