What is Somatic Psychotherapy?
Traditional psychotherapy works primarily with thoughts and emotion. For example, cognitive based therapies attempt to understand and change limiting thoughts and beliefs. Emotion based therapies, on the other hand, focus on uncovering emotions and understanding how they relate to our actions. Somatic psychotherapy builds on these by adding awareness of the body as an important additional source of information.
If someone yells at us, our bodies might freeze, our minds might go blank, or we might immediately tense up and make a fist with our hand. These are somatic reactions to an experience. Even hearing the words “this is a safe person who is not going to hurt you” may not penetrate the automatic physical response potentially learned much earlier in life. The body has a mind of it’s own. To communicate with our whole being, we must include the body in a dialogue; focusing exclusively on thoughts or emotions may not be sufficient to help change deep seated patterns.
By listening to the body, we often gain more direct access to the way we organize our experiences; it helps find ways to see and change patterns that may be conscious or unconscious. If our body freezes or goes numb in a certain situation that is important information. We might need to slow down, or take the time to look around and orient to the current environment. Taking a breath may give the body time to relax and sense the here and now, rather than getting lost in a past memory or event. In other cases it may help to listen to what the body needed or wanted to do in a past situation, but didn’t get to complete at that time. Once these actions get completed in the present (with awareness of how the past is still lodged in the body), beliefs and emotions are often able to shift, like the resettling of a building once the foundation has been adjusted. In this way, somatic psychology uses a kind of "bottom-up", rather than "top-down" approach to integrating mind, body and emotion.
Two Kinds of Somatic Therapy
In my work, I incorporate two kinds of somatic psychotherapy: Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Somatic Experiencing, developed by Peter Levine, is based on the study of animals and why, though routinely exposed to life threatening situations, animals rarely store trauma the way people do. It focuses on cultivating regulation by working with the nervous system in slow and careful ways, to renegotiate highly charged or traumatic experiences. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, developed by Pat Ogden, builds on this approach and also includes working with early developmental and attachment problems. It provides a rich framework for restoring integration of thoughts, feelings and body sensation and awareness. This approach is particularly useful in working with early wounds that happened at a preverbal level and cannot easily be resolved through cognitive or verbal methods.
Does it involve touch or physical contact?
Though somatic psychotherapy includes the body, it does not necessarily involve touch. Often it is sufficient to help people become aware of what is happening in their own bodies and use that to guide the therapy work. When physical touch work is needed and appropriate, I draw on Kathy Kain’s advanced training in Touch Work for Somatic Experiencing Practitioners.
When is this useful?
A somatic approach to psychotherapy can be useful for a wide range of issues including anxiety and depression, trauma, restoring feeling where there is numbness, and working with regulation.
Traditional psychotherapy works primarily with thoughts and emotion. For example, cognitive based therapies attempt to understand and change limiting thoughts and beliefs. Emotion based therapies, on the other hand, focus on uncovering emotions and understanding how they relate to our actions. Somatic psychotherapy builds on these by adding awareness of the body as an important additional source of information.
If someone yells at us, our bodies might freeze, our minds might go blank, or we might immediately tense up and make a fist with our hand. These are somatic reactions to an experience. Even hearing the words “this is a safe person who is not going to hurt you” may not penetrate the automatic physical response potentially learned much earlier in life. The body has a mind of it’s own. To communicate with our whole being, we must include the body in a dialogue; focusing exclusively on thoughts or emotions may not be sufficient to help change deep seated patterns.
By listening to the body, we often gain more direct access to the way we organize our experiences; it helps find ways to see and change patterns that may be conscious or unconscious. If our body freezes or goes numb in a certain situation that is important information. We might need to slow down, or take the time to look around and orient to the current environment. Taking a breath may give the body time to relax and sense the here and now, rather than getting lost in a past memory or event. In other cases it may help to listen to what the body needed or wanted to do in a past situation, but didn’t get to complete at that time. Once these actions get completed in the present (with awareness of how the past is still lodged in the body), beliefs and emotions are often able to shift, like the resettling of a building once the foundation has been adjusted. In this way, somatic psychology uses a kind of "bottom-up", rather than "top-down" approach to integrating mind, body and emotion.
Two Kinds of Somatic Therapy
In my work, I incorporate two kinds of somatic psychotherapy: Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Somatic Experiencing, developed by Peter Levine, is based on the study of animals and why, though routinely exposed to life threatening situations, animals rarely store trauma the way people do. It focuses on cultivating regulation by working with the nervous system in slow and careful ways, to renegotiate highly charged or traumatic experiences. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, developed by Pat Ogden, builds on this approach and also includes working with early developmental and attachment problems. It provides a rich framework for restoring integration of thoughts, feelings and body sensation and awareness. This approach is particularly useful in working with early wounds that happened at a preverbal level and cannot easily be resolved through cognitive or verbal methods.
Does it involve touch or physical contact?
Though somatic psychotherapy includes the body, it does not necessarily involve touch. Often it is sufficient to help people become aware of what is happening in their own bodies and use that to guide the therapy work. When physical touch work is needed and appropriate, I draw on Kathy Kain’s advanced training in Touch Work for Somatic Experiencing Practitioners.
When is this useful?
A somatic approach to psychotherapy can be useful for a wide range of issues including anxiety and depression, trauma, restoring feeling where there is numbness, and working with regulation.