Somatic Therapy

Somatic therapy is a holistic approach to mental health that focuses on the connection between the mind and body. It's based on the idea that our physical experiences and sensations are closely linked to our emotional and psychological well-being. This therapeutic approach aims to help individuals become more aware of their bodily sensations and use this awareness to process and release emotional or psychological issues.

Somatic Therapy is a “bottom up process.”  Bottom-up process starts with the sensation and movements in the body or how the symptoms of the main complaint appear in the body. This method of bottom-up psychotherapy uses the wisdom of the body’s movements plus sensations to bring awareness to how the negative events are being held in our bodies.  It also allows the client to take a break from the narrative and just feel their story.  Many clients who have trauma struggle with remembering details of who, what, where when or how.  Bottom-up psychotherapy releases the stress of trying to remember and validates that something happened to cause the body to hold onto emotional pain.  Bottom-up processing then assists the client with releasing the stored memory without really needing to know the story.  

What we know now about trauma is that when a person is experiencing stress or trauma their prefrontal cortex goes offline so that the body can adjust to fight, flight or freeze for survival.  It’s the body that absorbs the stress or trauma, not the brain because the prefrontal cortex is not easily accessible during these times.  It is therefore the body that initiates a trauma response, not the brain. For example a trigger is first experienced in the body so what better way toward healing than working with the very part that the problem begins in, the body.  This is why somatic therapies are so helpful with high stress, anxiety, depression or trauma.  

We use somatic therapy also known as bottom-up therapy because the body reacts first then the mind thinks. If we can bring more awareness to how the body is reacting we can feel more in control of how our mind thinks.  Many somatic based therapists feel that it is difficult to change thoughts without first noticing the feelings in the body that are triggering the thoughts.  When one has ongoing stress or significant difficulties from their past still affecting them they often have unconscious patterns stuck on when triggered.  With more body awareness in the therapy space we invite a direct connection with the limbic system, where high stress or trauma tends to be stored. A simple way of putting this all together is once the client starts to understand how they feel about things they can start to change the way that they think about them.  

Also, once things are brought into more awareness through the body based and somatic therapies we bring the unconscious to the conscious making it more possible for healing patterns to replace triggers.