Somatic Experiencing

The Somatic Experiencing® method is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. It is the life’s work of Peter A. Levine, PhD, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, psychology, and indigenous healing practices, together with over 50 years of successful clinical application. The Somatic ExperiencingTM approach releases traumatic shock and restores connection, which is key to transforming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma.

SE offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.

Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat, as the end product of cumulative stress, or as the result of a single “shock trauma” event. All of these stressors can seriously impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease, and live in the here-and-now. 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, conflict, racism and oppression, and chronic shaming.

Somatic ExperiencingTM Private Sessions

Human beings have an innate ability to overcome the effects of diverse traumas. The Somatic ExperiencingTM approach facilitates the completion of self-protective physical responses, and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body and nervous system, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms, such as chronic pain, sleeplessness, emotional distress, autoimmune disorders, and panic attacks. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions, building their capacity for containment and resilience.

The traumatic event isn’t what causes long-lasting trauma, but rather it is the overwhelming and trapped response to the perceived life-threat that is causing an imbalanced nervous system, which causes physical, mental and emotional symptoms. The aim of Somatic ExperiencingTM is to help one access the body memory (procedural memory) of the event, not the verbal description of the event. It is not necessary to share the details of your trauma history to do Somatic ExperiencingTM. The objective is to diffuse the power of the narrative, and remap the body memory to regain aliveness and flow.

Somatic ExperiencingTM sessions are 60 minutes and conducted on Zoom.