Somatic Therapy
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic Therapy, sometimes called Somatics, Body-Based Mental Healthcare, Mind/Body Practices, Nervous System Regulation, or Embodiment, is a therapeutic approach that addresses mental, physical, and emotional health through the nervous system.
Through body based practices somatic therapy bridges the gap between talk therapy and body based, integrative restoration for more comprehensive preventative medicine. The word soma literally means “body.”
Somatic Therapy can help with:
Freeze, overwhelm, anxiety, depression, and dissociation
PTSD and trauma-related symptoms
Chronic pain, digestion issues, and sleep irregularities
Stress and nervous system dysregulation
It supports self-agency, empowerment, and resilience after a traumatic event or while managing chronic trauma and events in life. Somatic Therapy can also provide trauma resolution and nervous system repatterining to assist with overall quality of life and long term solutions for chronic or acute conditions.
We are constantly exposed to the challenges of our changing environments. All of these experiences layer upon themselves to create trauma in our body. Some of us might have specific events in our life that we are trying to “move past” and some of us might have general feelings of stress and anxiety that are impacting our everyday life. Somatic Therapy can assist with both.
Understanding Trauma from a Somatic Perspective
In somatic therapy, trauma is not the event itself but the body’s reaction after the event has passed. Put simply, trauma is anything that feels like too much, too soon or not enough, for too long.
As humans we need to and want to feel safe. Part of our nervous system provides a mechanism for finding safety when we come under threat; fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. We react immediately in one of these ways in order to survive.
For example:
Walking along, you see a snake → you run away → you find safety → you return to calm.
But if the survival cycle is blocked (e.g., you couldn’t run away), that energy can remain trapped in the body and manifest as sensations of anxiety, stress, hyper vigilance, sleep issues, chronic pain, and so forth.
This is trauma and it greatly affects our mental, physical and emotional health. Not to mention our ability to connect in relationships, think rationally, and continue to survive and thrive.
How Somatic Therapy Helps
Somatic Therapy helps the body and mind complete survival cycles, release stored energy, and build new, supportive neural pathways (neuroplasticity). Through embodied practices, you can re-experience sensations of calm, comfort, and safety, creating more space for growth.
As humans our brains are constantly finding new pathways to safety. Sometimes, however, these pathways can be unsupportive after the initial threat has passed. For example if I ran out of a building during an earthquake this was my body keeping me alive, but if I continue to feel the need to run out of a building when I hear thunder rumble, this is residual trauma.
This reaction has been carved into the brain and nervous system.
Through Somatic Therapy we begin to carve a new, more supportive pathway. Somatic Therapy peels back the layers of trauma, discharges the residue from our body, and reenforces our memory of our sense of self and safety.
Somatic Therapy can also provide opportunities to complete any survival response cycles that might not have been able to be completed.
Examples include:
Releasing unfinished stress responses (like needing to run during danger but being unable to)
Discharging stored tension that contributes to pain, panic, or health issues
Strengthening memory of safety and self-connection
Every time we can offer our bodies and brains a glimmer of “calm” or “safety” we forge new roads in our nervous system to our overall wellbeing and more sustainable pathways to safety.
This process is also called “widening the window of capacity.” It means being able to stay present with life’s challenges while also accessing hope and possibility.
This is how I define resilience, another buzz work right now. We don’t build resilience, that sounds so exhausting. Resilience is innate in all of us as humans.
Somatic Therapy nurtures resilience not by “building” it, but by making your innate resilience more accessible when you need it during times of discomfort and stress.
The Value of Professional Support
Sometimes we need help in order to peel back the layers of trauma, discharge the residue, forge the new pathway, and remember what it feels like to be calm and safe. This is where seeking a professional can be extremely valuable.
In my years of learning and practice within Somatic Therapy, I have come to realize that it is about providing support along a journey together to finding strategies and tools that work for your individual nervous system in order to break down the feelings of stress, anxiety, pain, and all the other ways our body manifests trauma.
Somatic Therapy and the Future of Mental Healthcare
We are at an exciting crossroads where conventional talk therapy meets body-based approaches. Modern neuroscience is now validating what many traditional healing practices have long understood.
Trauma resides in the body, and in order to move it along, we must work with the body to feel more, calm, safe, and connected to one another and within ourselves.
I hope you will join me on this journey.
