Somatic Healing - The What, The Why, The How, The MAGIC!
“An embodied approach to healing is more compassionate and mindful. You enter into this space with the awareness that you are already whole. You’re not looking for anything outside of you - instead you are connecting with what is already within you.”
- Lauren Bentley -
How beautiful is this quote? It really resonated with me. It reminded me of my grandfather, my Gong-Gong - and better known to the South African Chinese community as the go-to Chinese Traditional Herbalist & Healer. I remember always hearing what sounded like magical folk tales of his ability to simply make people feel better through their own bodies (and on other occasions with boiled herbs and bees…) through Tai Chi, meditation, and acupuncture. I never quite understood it all until I became a psychologist. Everyone has inner resources to know how to heal, process, and release.
So, how come these inner resources are so difficult to access? The big stand-out for me, is the connection and relationship we have with ourselves, and more specifically, our bodies.
Since ancient times, somatic healing work has been a sought-after cure of all sorts of ailments of the body and the mind. In recent years, it has gained interest within the therapeutic field and techniques have been incorporated more and more into therapeutic work - deep breathing, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, tapping, postural swaying to name but a few. Perhaps you have heard and experienced some of these already?
Somatic experiencing is very much a body-centered approach originally developed, by Dr Peter Levine in the 1970s, for treating PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Based on the premise that rather than focusing only on thoughts or emotions associated with a traumatic event, it expands to include the natural bodily (somatic) responses as well. At the same time, I have personally found somatic experiences, in addition to talk therapy, to be useful and effective for other presenting complaints too - dysregulation, anxiety, depression, pain management, stress release etc.
Much has changed since the 1970s, including the society we live in and the way we have adapted to these exponential changes. With the often stressful hustle and bustle of daily life, it is easy to become disconnected with ourselves - mind and body. This is when we can experience various problems and even physical ailments.
How often do we complain about a sore back, stiff shoulders, or a sick feeling in our tummy? And how often are these ignored or brushed off?
I am guilty of this too!! It is easy to become stuck in the marathon of life - to feel trapped by our own physical and emotional stresses.
In fact, what is actually happening is our bodies are speaking to us and letting us know where we are at - what our capacity is at, what needs are not being met, what the stress levels are, when we need rest etc. So when these signs from our bodies are ignored, disconnect happens.
For example, with hunger - should we ignore or delay this need for food, I don’t know about you, but I get HANGRY! It switches off my ability to think logically, to communicate effectively, to feel like my usual self. Similarly, the same happens when we ignore or delay what our body is trying to tell us.
Somatic therapy is designed to help us clear our minds and reconnect with our bodies to ground, process and release stress, trauma & dysregulation.
In my next post, we will hone in on how the body stores these emotional stresses and trauma as well as how this ultimately impacts us and how we navigate day-to-day.
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