What is Somatic Experiencing? 

Somatic Experiencing (SE)…

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 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. SE's guidance of the bodily "felt sense" allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged. SE may employ touch in support of the renegotiation process.

SE emphasizes and utilizes the mind-body connection to promote healthy nervous system regulation. It offers a framework to assess where  a person is caught in fight, flight, freeze or collapse responses, and through increased body awareness, sensation tolerance and guided imagery offers tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.

Trauma is not in the event itself, but in our nervous system's response to it. Dr. Levine observed that prey animals, whose lives are routinely threatened in the wild, are able to recover readily by physically releasing the energy they accumulate during stressful events. Humans, however, often override these natural ways of regulating the nervous system with feelings of shame or pervasive thoughts, judgments, or fears and the unresolved physiological stressors remain in the body.

A Somatic Experiencing Practitioner helps facilitate the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of the trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions. This settling and resettling of the nervous system can restore inner balance, increase resiliency and resourcefulness, provide a heightened sense of vitality and broaden capacity to more fully connect with others. 

For further references and information regarding Somatic Experiencing, please visit www.traumahealing.org