What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic Therapy is a broad term covering a range of methods to help people with stress, anxiety or PTSD, by working with the body as well as the mind to restore health and wellbeing.
Somatic Therapy is different from ‘talk therapies’ such as counselling and other psychological approaches, which are ‘top down’ methods, in that they use cognitive or thinking techniques to work with the mind.
In contrast, Somatic Therapies are ‘bottom up’ approaches that work with the body and parts of the brain below conscious awareness, which can then influence the thinking mind. In a Somatic Therapy session there is usually less talking, and more emphasis on what the person is experiencing in their body such as sensations and emotions.
Some Somatic Therapies include touch, while some are more movement based, and others such as Somatic Experiencing™ include awareness of sensation and emotion to help release the physiological imprint of trauma from the body and mind.
Is Somatic Therapy right for me?
Do you have anxiety, feel stressed or have flashbacks to difficult events in your life?
Or are you troubled by physical symptoms which are medically unexplained?
Some people come to therapy because they feel numb or shut down. Perhaps you have tried talking therapies and are looking for the next ‘piece of the puzzle’ to help you fully step into your life. Somatic Therapy can help in all of these situations, and more.
Contact me to set up a free 20 minute zoom call to ask any questions and get a sense of whether my approach feels right for you.
What happens in a Somatic Therapy session?
In Somatic Therapy, there is usually less talking than in traditional counselling approaches, and more emphasis on sensations, emotions or movements arising in the body.
In the initial stages of treatment you will learn resources and techniques to help stabilise your nervous system and build resilience. Some of the resources develop awareness, some include gentle movement and some use remembering helpful times in your life.
The work can sometimes feel quite simple or even playful, as we are working with the deeper levels of the nervous system which don’t have the same access to language as the highly evolved ‘thinking mind’. And so we can work below the level of fixed thought loops or negative beliefs, rather than going ‘head to head’ with thought patterns.
When you are ready, we can work on deeper issues to help resolve the effects of difficult experiences in your life, including events from early childhood. Gentle touch or contact therapy can be included if you choose, as another way of calming your nervous system, or to help release past trauma.
How does touch help in Somatic Therapy?
Somatic Therapy works with the body and mind holistically, as an interconnected whole. While not a necessary part of therapy, the potential for using touch is one of the important differences between Somatic Therapy and talking therapies.
Touch is the earliest of our senses to develop, long before we are born, and touch or contact work can help with early difficulties that can’t be accessed through words, as the parts of the brain that record memories as thoughts and recall them through words, have yet to develop. Nurturing touch has been found to release the feel-good messengers oxytocin and endorphins in the brain.
In Somatic Experiencing™ touch can be used to help resolve patterns of muscle tension held in proprioceptive memory. NeuroAffective Touch™ is a finely attuned approach that can help with developmental trauma, and help you access innate capacities for belonging and feeling safe.
If you choose to have touch therapy as part of your treatment, I can explain more at the time. Self-contact can be used instead of touch from the therapist, and touch therapy also works surprisingly well in online appointments.
How to make the best progress in Somatic Therapy?
Good foundations for Somatic Therapy include the basics of taking care of the body such as good sleep, regular meals, sufficient exercise and avoiding harmful addictive habits.
In addition, I encourage clients to get to know and befriend their bodies with kindness, attending to comfort and listening to the ways their body communicates its needs. Learning to express preference and choice is important, as well as including enough variety in life.
Having a regular mindful movement practice can be really helpful, such as Yoga, Qigong, Feldenkrais or conscious dance. An emphasis on positive aspects of life – even if this seems hard to find at first – helps to counteract the brains’ bias towards negative experiences.
Practicing some of the techniques you learn between sessions helps consolidate the progress made in your appointments, and also strengthens the mind-body connection.
How many Somatic Therapy appointments are needed?
This varies depending on the kind of problems you have had in your life, and on your goals for treatment. For people who have just had one or two challenging experiences in adult life, an improvement should be noticed within 6-12 sessions.
For someone whose early life has been very difficult, it is widely accepted to take many appointments to lift some of the deeper imprints, though you can expect some relief of symptoms early on.
Deep Brain Reorienting™ is a new approach that looks promising for people with complex PTSD. I recommend making a commitment to six appointments to start with, so you can get a sense if this is the best approach for you at this time, then we can assess progress towards your goals and make a plan moving forwards.
Do I need to practice Somatic exercises between sessions?
In our appointments, you will learn a variety of simple techniques to help balance your nervous system, and it can be most helpful to practice them between sessions.
I estimate that you will more than double the value of each appointment if you practice! Some exercises are for settling anxious feelings, some for lifting sluggish energy, and some for building a sense of embodied awareness.
Over time you will gather a range of skills and you can use your favourites life-long, to support your resilience. Some of the deeper work that happens in the appointment can be strengthened by you returning to the new perspectives and insights that you gain, both as a memory of what arose in the session, and as a somatic ‘felt-sense’ of that experience.
What is Somatic Therapy good for?
Somatic Therapy can help with many kinds of problems, from stress and anxiety, to low motivation and energy, or to resolve the effects of past trauma including PTSD.
Somatic Experiencing™ is one form of Somatic Therapy that is especially helpful for single events such as an accident, a natural disaster, or to help with stress from medical treatment such as an operation.
NeuroAffective Touch™ and Somatic Attachment work can also help the distress of growing up in a family where scary or unpredictable things happened.
Deep Brain Reorienting™ is a more recently available technique that helps you access areas in the brain below conscious awareness, to release the imprint of difficult experiences from your nervous system, including those that happened in early childhood.
Will Somatic Therapy work for me?
If you feel curious and interested to try Somatic Therapy, the next step is to find a therapist you would like to work with. I offer a free 20 minute Zoom call so you can get a sense if my approach would be a good match for you, and that I have the skills for the issues you want to work with.
The next step would be to have a few appointments (I suggest about six) to get used to this method, and see if it is helpful and feels right to you. Some problems are outside of my area of expertise – for example if you have recently had a significant episode of mental illness such as psychosis, or a diagnosis of personality disorder or current drug addiction for which there are other services that would be better able to help.
Are there any side-effects of Somatic Therapy?
Somatic Therapy, like any other therapeutic approach, is not guaranteed to work for everyone. It is important that your expectations of therapy match what can reasonably be expected, so please feel free to ask questions along the way.
While most people will benefit, it is possible that some people will feel worse. This is usually temporary and is also true of long established therapies such as Psychotherapy, and of mainstream medical approaches such as side-effects from medications.
Humans are complex beings, and progress in Somatic Therapy can vary, for example some people will benefit a lot in the first few sessions, while for others progress will be much more gradual. For people who haven’t previously been aware of sensations or emotions arising in their body, it can feel strange and perhaps unsettling to notice this at first.
I can guide and support you with this, and I also encourage you to contact me between sessions if unexpected difficulties arise, as a short phone call is often enough to help things settle.
How effective is Somatic Therapy?
The research evidence-base of Somatic Therapies is lagging behind their popularity and apparent helpfulness.
This doesn’t mean that they don’t work, just that the proof of their effectiveness in scientific terms is still being built.
This question touches on the paradox that modern research methods arise from the same Western scientific mindset that gave us ‘top-down’ talking therapies. Somatic Therapies, being body based, are ‘bottom-up’ approaches and I wonder if they may benefit from a different method of evaluation.
However, there is some first-class research now being done, and here are some links you might be interested in:
For Somatic Experiencing™:
traumahealing.org/se-research-and-articles/
Deep Brain Reorienting™:
deepbrainreorienting.com/