What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a naturalistic form of healing that will help you learn how to settle and release physiological activation from your body. Very often, this process helps people to reduce stress and return to a sense of regulation and mastery in their lives. SE will support you in learning how to attend to uncomfortable sensations in your body and gently unwind them through your conscious attention. SE is particularly useful in managing stress because so many symptoms you may experience in relation to stress are physiological.
SE is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. It 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. SE provides effective skills appropriate to a variety of healing professions including mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, education, and others.
What is Somatic Experiencing used to treat?
SE is effective in treating developmental or attachment traumas, motor vehicle accidents, sexual assaults, inescapable attacks, medical traumas, transgenerational trauma, war-related trauma, discrimination and hate crimes, natural disasters, and interpersonal traumas amongst others.
How does Somatic Experiencing work?
SE teaches that trauma is not caused by the event itself, but rather develops through the failure of the body, psyche, and nervous system to process adverse events. SE 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.
SE 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, freeze, and collapse responses. Individuals locked in anxiety or rage then relax into a growing sense of peace and safety. Those stuck in depression gradually find their feelings of hopelessness and numbness transformed into empowerment, triumph, and mastery. SE catalyzes corrective bodily experiences that contradict those of fear and helplessness. 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.
How can Somatic Experiencing help me?
- SE employs awareness of body sensation to help you "renegotiate" and heal rather than re-live or re-enact trauma.
- SE's guidance of the bodily "felt sense" allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged.
- SE "titrates" experience (breaks down into small, incremental steps), rather than invoking catharsis, which can overwhelm your system.
Where can I learn more about Somatic Experiencing?
- The Somatic Experiencing Institute's website
- "Waking The Tiger" or "In An Unspoken Voice" by Peter Levine
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a naturalistic form of healing that will help you learn how to settle and release physiological activation from your body. Very often, this process helps people to reduce stress and return to a sense of regulation and mastery in their lives. SE will support you in learning how to attend to uncomfortable sensations in your body and gently unwind them through your conscious attention. SE is particularly useful in managing stress because so many symptoms you may experience in relation to stress are physiological.
SE is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. It 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. SE provides effective skills appropriate to a variety of healing professions including mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, education, and others.
What is Somatic Experiencing used to treat?
SE is effective in treating developmental or attachment traumas, motor vehicle accidents, sexual assaults, inescapable attacks, medical traumas, transgenerational trauma, war-related trauma, discrimination and hate crimes, natural disasters, and interpersonal traumas amongst others.
How does Somatic Experiencing work?
SE teaches that trauma is not caused by the event itself, but rather develops through the failure of the body, psyche, and nervous system to process adverse events. SE 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.
SE 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, freeze, and collapse responses. Individuals locked in anxiety or rage then relax into a growing sense of peace and safety. Those stuck in depression gradually find their feelings of hopelessness and numbness transformed into empowerment, triumph, and mastery. SE catalyzes corrective bodily experiences that contradict those of fear and helplessness. 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.
How can Somatic Experiencing help me?
- SE employs awareness of body sensation to help you "renegotiate" and heal rather than re-live or re-enact trauma.
- SE's guidance of the bodily "felt sense" allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged.
- SE "titrates" experience (breaks down into small, incremental steps), rather than invoking catharsis, which can overwhelm your system.
Where can I learn more about Somatic Experiencing?
- The Somatic Experiencing Institute's website
- "Waking The Tiger" or "In An Unspoken Voice" by Peter Levine
We Would Love to Connect!
|
Address1650 Murfreesboro Rd
Suite 100 Franklin, TN 37067 |
Telephone615-236-6365
FAX
615-285-8099 |
hello@newmoonrisingwellness.com
|