Somatic therapy is different from traditional talk-therapy. Often, psychotherapy supports noticing thought patterns, identifying feelings and creating behavior-change primarily top-down, through your cognitive mind.
We live in a society that privileges the brain and intellect. In fact, there are actually fewer (top-down) signals from the brain to the body. Therefore, why somatic therapy can be so effective.
Somatic therapy also includes bottom-up processes, relying on numerous communications from the body up to the brain.
In somatic therapy, your body’s communications are equally important as your verbal narrative. Your somatic narrative shows up in flickers of expression. Gestures. Posture changes. Whether you’re completely still, or in truth, need to fidget! On the other hand, you may drift off mid-thought, prefer to look at things around the room or need to stare into space… All are phenomena to be explored, which can lead to rich insights about your lived experiences.
What’s different in somatic therapy is that you will be asked, “How do you notice the anxiety showing up in your body?” You might discover a tightness in your chest, throat, or jaw. Churning in your belly. Tension in your shoulders and neck. These are just a few examples of how your body manages your emotions, impulses and responses.
Somatic therapy can teach you how to respond to your body’s signals. Ignoring the body’s alarm bells can be highly stressful.
For example, you may be asked to place a hand where you notice the tightness in your chest. It may be uncomfortable at first. With gentle contact, support and your attention. If you manage to stay with it, you may be pleasantly surprised. The tight places soften. They shift with your awareness and guidance from your therapist. Your breathing opens up. You feel calmer. Sweet relief.
Using present-moment awareness, such patterns in the body—somatic responses—can be explored and resolved. Tensions unwind. Gentle attention invites the body to reset, find easier ways and transform from the inside-out.
Furthermore, you’ll learn to better utilize the messages from your body, as well as optimize how you are responding to different circumstances. You’ll learn to sort the past from the present, and perhaps interpret your feelings in new ways. Slowly, you’ll begin to feel less overwhelmed.
“The body does not lie. You cannot fake the sensation of true pleasure. You cannot trick your body into believing that you are safe. Your body knows what it feels, and it feels what it feels for a reason. The body does not easily bypass its feelings or reactions quite like the mind is sometimes capable of doing. The body is much harder to distract from or gaslight when it is feeling overwhelmed.”
—Jenny T. Wang, PhD, author of Permission To Come Home
As described above, turning inwards can be especially healing—an antidote—for those of us whose heritages and cultures of origin are more collectivist in nature. To put others before oneself, beliefs such as “what will people think,” and day-to-day concerns about safety for many marginalized folk altogether rely on a habitual, external focus that places a high-stress demand on your physiology.
Re-centering yourself and taking up embodied space can be a homecoming.
Therefore, in somatic therapy you find ways back to yourself. Connection is an innate safety-seeking function that of course we all have, both with ourselves and others. Even with nature, and spiritual realms if you will. Moreover, all of us need a little of each.
In effect, somatic therapy aims to offer you tools for resetting your nervous system. Most important, you can learn from your emotions and how they are trying to help you. Rather than being reactive, you will respond more skillfully. As a result you will gain discernment, and more often act wisely.
Changes at the somatic level can shift habitual thought patterns, behaviors and responses to stress.
Common concerns:
- Chronic pain
- Digestive issues
- Disconnected from your body, emotions etc.
- Distraction and difficulties concentrating
- Fears and worries hold you back
- Imposter syndrome
- Insomnia and disrupted sleep
- Never enough-ness (time and otherwise)
- Numbness by staying busy
- Panic and hypervigilance
- Pent up anger and resentments
- Racing thoughts
With physical symptoms, you will be emphatically encouraged to rule out any medical conditions. Often times, clients have already done so before seeking out somatic therapy. Sometimes symptoms are inexplicable to medical professionals. Conversely, having the label of a diagnosis doesn’t necessarily help reduce discomfort.
Frequently, chronic stress is the culprit.
You might already recognize how habits of avoidance are a coping strategy, not a solution. Instead, you remain anxious and stressed. However, you don’t yet know any other ways. In somatic therapy, you will become clearer about your needs. Learn to better assert yourself. Most important, setting boundaries will become easier… Therefore, you will feel safer, calmer and learn to relax more. These are all skills to help you better manage stress and life’s challenges.
Somatic therapy will introduce breathing patterns, invite movement and subtle posture changes, engage your imagination as well as all of your senses.
Somatic tools and practices will be explored in sessions, and then you’ll experiment with them day-to-day. In time, you will learn to connect with your body more. As a result, you may uncover hidden needs and impulses. By listening in deeply, you will discover alternatives. New options, perspectives and behaviors will come available.
Various themes will require time and space for close examination. Eventually, you’ll feel happier from taking better care of yourself. In time, you will learn to trust the wisdom of living in heartfelt alignment, body and mind.
Ultimately, somatic therapy leads to feeling more like an active agent in your life choices. Empowerment and greater vitality. Increased resilience. Freedom and excitement. Exuberant joy. Liberation.
A very brief history of Somatics…
A soma is any individual embodiment of a process, which endures and adapts through time, and it remains a soma as long as it lives. The moment that it dies it ceases to be a soma and becomes a body. (1976)
—Thomas Hanna, PhD, Founder of Somatics
In English, the word body does not carry the same connotations as in some other languages. Borrowing from the Greek root soma meaning “the living body in its wholeness,” somatics came to be defined as the body as experienced from within.
Body and mind are an integrated experience.
Though not a fully comprehensive list, here are some central pioneers in the US whose contributions to the field of somatics continue to promote healing today:
- Janet Adler, Authentic Movement
- F. M. Alexander, Alexander Technique
- Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Body Mind Centering®
- Emilie Conrad, Continuum Movement®
- Moshé Feldenkrais, Feldenkrais Method
- Anna Halprin, Life/Art Process
- Ron Kurtz, Hakomi Method
- Rudolf Laban, Laban Movement Analysis
- Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing®
- Alexander Lowen, Bioenergetic Analysis
- Fritz & Laura Perls, Gestalt Therapy
- Pat Ogden, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Ida Rolf, Rolfing® Structural Integration
- Marion Rosen, Rosen Method®
- Alana Rubenfeld, Rubenfeld Synergy Method®
- Charlotte Selver, Sensory Awareness
- Milton Trager, Trager® Approach
- & so many others…
Many past innovators also studied and borrowed from dance/movement, ritual/spiritual practices and non-Western wisdom traditions. Likewise, many present-day practitioners have followed in their predecessors’ footsteps and often train in practices such as:
- Aikido
- Buddhism
- Butoh
- Capoeira
- Judo
- Katsugen Undo
- Lomi Lomi
- Taoism
- Tai Ji Quan (Tai Chi)
- Qi Gong (Chi Gong)
- Sufism
- Vedas (including Yoga)
- Voudou (Vodun or Voudon)
- & so many sacred Indigenous legacies
