Somatic Experiencing® is a modality created by Dr. Peter Levine, which addresses trauma, stress, and chronic pain through the experience of the body and a deliberate focus on the patient’s physiological state, ie. fight, flight, or freeze.
Somatic Experiencing® arose through decades of study in psychology, stress physiology, biology, indigenous healing practices, neuroscience, and medical biophysics. Somatic Experiencing® works to create emotional safety to ultimately help release emotional intensity which has previously been overwhelming to the person. As such, Somatic Experiencing® has great potential to help people to progress through PTSD and early developmental traumas.
Dr. Levine intensively studied the nervous systems of animals, exploring the ways in which animals have the innate ability to process through their “survival energy,” after a fight, flight, or freeze response. When this energy is not able to move or “reach a completion,” then the nervous system is likely to continue reacting as though it is under attack, which manifests in ongoing trauma symptoms. Somatic Experiencing® offers humans ways to reach a completion that the individual was not able to experience in the moment of their trauma.
With Somatic Experiencing®, people engage in practices designed to release the survival energy stuck in the body.
This incomplete survival energy, stored in the physical body through sensations and movements, is the impetus of trauma symptoms. Somatic Experiencing® differs from traditional talk therapy as it works with the body first, instead the mind, which is called “bottom-up processing.”
First, a person is invited to begin noticing the physical symptoms of trauma. Therapy is then used to better understand the behaviors and actions associated with those physical symptoms. While this technique does work to move trauma-related energy through the body, thereby soothing the mind, the process is gradual. This happens at the rate with which the individual is comfortable.
Somatic Experiencing® is a gentle process that sets free the body sensations associated with trauma, while allowing emotions to process in a healthy way. Somatic Experiencing® provides a holistic approach to working through life traumas. While it is gentle, patients experience profound benefits from this method as it integrates body, mind, and emotions.
