Trauma can be resolved and transformed
Trauma is a fact of life. It doesn’t, however, have to be a life sentence.
- Peter Levine, PHD
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a body-centered approach to the resolution of trauma, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, author of“ Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma“.
This method, supported by cutting-edge research in neuroscience, is based on the observation that prey animals in the wild, although frequently subjected to life threats, are rarely traumatized. They know, when they survive attacks, how to discharge the intense arousal energies from their nervous system.
But we humans, when confronted by life threatening events or overwhelming situations, and when we are unable to complete or discharge the body’s instinctual survival responses (fight, flight or freeze), we become exposed to the debilitating effects of trauma. We lose our capacity to cope and to self-regulate.
Somatic Experiencing works at the physiological level where traumatic activation is held in the body. It’s a body-based method that encourages and uses the awareness of bodily sensations to renegotiate the impact of trauma.
Somatic Experiencing aims at gradually and safely discharging the frozen energy stuck in the nervous system, and also aims at supporting self-regulation and a sense of wholeness, moving from a stressed, overloaded nervous system to a healthy, resilient one.
The session is done comfortably sitting in chairs across from each other. As a trained Trauma Touch Skills Practitioner, I also give fully-clothed massage-table sessions. particularly beneficial for early trauma.
Guiding work principles of Somatic Experiencing are:
- Re-establishing a sense of safety
- Tapping into your inner ressources
- Repairing breached boundaries
- Developing present-moment body awareness
- Re-establishing the body’s natural rhythms
- Building a container to expand your capacity to meet sensations
- Supporting a more coherent and resilient nervous system
- Engaging organic self-regulation and healing
Signs and expressions of Trauma Recovery:
- Capacity to relax and trust
- Healthy boundaries
- Capacity to connect, to bond
- Forming new synaptic connections towards safety, ease and pleasure
- Ability to be in the present
- More engagement with life
- Better presence to oneself and to others
- Ability to deal with stress with less feeling of being overwhelmed
- Inner resilience
- Better health
- Capacity to self-soothe
- Capacity to self-regulate
- Self empowerment
Signs and symptoms of unresolved trauma:
- Hyper vigilance
- Extreme sensitivity to light, sound or touch
- Hyper activity
- Insomnia, nightmares, poor sleep
- Anxiety, including chronic low levels of anxiety
- Panic attacks and phobias
- Amnesia or forgetfulness
- Feelings of helplessness and powerlessness
- Feelings of alienation and isolation
- Depression, shame, feelings of impending doom
- Chronic fatigue
- Compromised immune and endocrine systems
- Digestive issues: irritable bowel syndrome, spastic colon
- Skin disorders
- Environmental sensitivities
- Addictions