SOMATIC EXPERIENCING®
Are you seeking a path to healing trauma that truly resonates with your deep needs, works from an embodied way, addresses your core issues and provides lasting results?
Somatic Experiencing® is a body-based approach to healing trauma and stress. It helps us reconnect with the body, gently work with overwhelm, and restore a greater sense of regulation, resilience, and safety over time.
Are you…
Ready to address the deeper patterns held in your nervous system and physiology?
Looking for support with symptoms that haven’t shifted with other approaches?
Curious about a body-based path to greater regulation and ease?
Wanting to feel more resourced, grounded, and present in your life?
Seeking support for trauma, stress, or the lingering effects of overwhelm?
Longing for more connection, safety, and choice in your body?
Interested in a gentle approach that works with your body’s own pace?
If yes, This space may offer what you need
FAQS:
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The Somatic Experiencing® method is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders.
SE™ was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, designed to address and resolve the physiological effects of trauma and chronic stress.
The SE™ approach is key to recovery from PTSD, C-PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental trauma.
By focusing on the body's natural responses, this method facilitates the discharge of accumulated stress energy and traumatic shock, supporting the restoration of the nervous system's equilibrium, through the use of several specific tools and techniques, that allow a gentle renegotiation of traumatic experiences, reducing symptoms such as hyperarousal, dissociation, and emotional dysregulation.
Somatic Experiencing aims to enhance the body's inherent capacity for healing, promoting resilience, emotional stability, and overall psychological well-being.
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Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can seriously impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease. Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear and conflict.
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The Somatic Experiencing® approach facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.
In Somatic Experiencing®, the traumatic event isn’t what caused the trauma, it is the overwhelmed response to the perceived life threat that is causing an unbalanced nervous system. My aim is to help you access the body memory of the event, not the story. So we don’t discuss what happened if you don’t want to.
It is not important to talk about traumatic events, because what we really need to address is the effects of it on your body systems.
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The SE trauma resolution method does not require the traumatized person to re-tell or re-live the traumatic event. Instead, it offers the opportunity to engage, complete, and resolve—in a slow and supported way—the body’s instinctual fight, flight and freeze responses. This resets the nervous system, restores inner balance, enhances resilience to stress, and increases people’s vitality, equanimity, and capacity to actively engage in life.
As an SE Practitioner, I offer an environment of impartial and compassionate support to facilitate the release of trauma throughout your body.
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As an SE practitioner, I can successfully work with developmental trauma (such as conception, pre and perinatal trauma, childhood neglect/abuse and ongoing medical and/or physical issues), with relational trauma, complex trauma, transgenerational and systemic trauma as well as with shock traumas (such as motor vehicle accidents, assaults, operations, NDEs, falls, drowning, etc).
SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® (SE) psychobiological trauma resolution works with all ages of individuals who have experienced all these types of trauma.
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The length of time and number of sessions will depend on several factors, including the severity and duration of the trauma and the degree to which the trauma has affected the individual’s nervous system. A conversation with me in the introductory call may be helpful in providing this kind of information.
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Yes, absolutely. SE is a powerful method for the treatment of trauma, and there is plenty evidence and research which demostrates that Somatic Experiencing can be an effective treatment for traumatic symptoms.
SE also empowers clients to become their own resource by teaching them techniques they can use on their own, outside of sessions in order to access regulation and deep settled and empowered states.
The Somatic Experiencing® approach offers a framework to assess where you are “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.
Somatic Experiencing® is more than just a trauma healing method; it's a profound exploration of the mind-body-soul connection. Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, this innovative approach recognizes that trauma and stress are not only stored in our minds but also deeply embedded in our bodies. Through Somatic Experiencing, you will learn to tune into your body's natural wisdom, releasing shock, tension, and traumatic stress and restoring health and harmony. This process gently supports you in building a sense of safety, agency, and empowerment, allowing you to face life's challenges with resiliency and ease.
In Somatic Experiencing®, the traumatic event isn’t what caused the trauma; it is the overwhelmed response to the perceived life threat that is causing an unbalanced nervous system. The aim is to help you access the body memory of the event, not the story. So we don’t discuss what happened if you don’t want to.
what does a Somatic experiencing session looks like:
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I ensure that clients feel safe and comfortable in the therapeutic environment. This may involve discussing boundaries, expectations, and any immediate concerns they might have.
Once safety and comfort are accessible, the client tunes into their intention for the session in order to work within their will and window of capacity and recover agency over their treatment.
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Somatic Experiencing® professes a body first approach to dealing with the problematic (and, oftentimes, physical) symptoms of trauma. This means that therapy isn’t about reclaiming memories or changing our thoughts and beliefs about how we feel, but we instead gently track the sensations that lie underneath our feelings, and uncover our habitual behavior patterns to these feelings.
For this to happen, I support clients in paying attention to their bodily sensations. This involves noticing physical feelings (e.g., tension, warmth, tingling) without judgment or analysis. The goal is to help them become more attuned to their internal experience.
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This process involves gently and gradually approaching traumatic material. I help clients touch into the traumatic memory or sensation in small, manageable doses to avoid overwhelming them.
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During sessions, clients might move between states of distress and states of safety or calm (all within their window of capacity). This back-and-forth movement allows them to experience the contrast and reinforces the body's capacity to return to a state of equilibrium.
Pendulation is a term used by Dr. Levine to describe the natural oscillation between opposing forces of contraction and expansion.
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As clients become more attuned to their bodily sensations, they may experience a natural discharge of energy related to the trauma. This can manifest as light shaking, crying, deep breathing, heat or cold, shivers or other physical responses. I will gently reasure and support clients through this process, helping them reach a sense of completion and resolution.
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The final step involves helping clients integrate the experiences and insights gained during the session. This may include discussing how the session felt, what was learned, and how these insights can be applied to everyday life.
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Throughout the session, my aim is to maintain a supportive, gentle, resonant and non-judgmental presence, helping clients navigate their internal experience and fostering a sense of empowerment, agency and self healing.
BENEFITS OF SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® SESSIONS:
One of the main benefits of Somatic Experiencing is its use in the relief of physical and emotional symptoms of post-traumatic stress (PTSD), such as anxiety, depression, dissociation, hypervigilance, flashbacks, sleep disturbances, eating problems, numbness, and chronic pain. Several studies have demonstrated the efficacy of this approach in treating PTSD symptoms among survivors of natural disasters and war. Somatic Experiencing has also been applied with success to the treatment of various forms of addiction.
Clients who receive this form of treatment often report less tension, less pain, less irritability, and less anxiety, as well as a greater sense of ease and balance. Somatic Experiencing is also a safe method of treatment since the individual is not re-traumatized during the process. Although traumatic memories are triggered, they are approached indirectly and gradually so arousal remains at a manageable level.
An additional advantage of Somatic Experiencing is the way it can help us develop the capacity to self-regulate. Many people find it possible to learn, through the SE method, how to shift quickly and easily out of negative or overwhelming states, and how to settle themselves when faced with stressful situations.
