SOMATIC EXPERIENCING

What is Somatic Experiencing™?

Somatic Experiencing (SE®) is a brain and body-centered approach to healing symptoms of stress and trauma. SE® is the life’s work of Dr. Peter Levine, combining his insights from stress physiology, psychology, biology, indigenous healing practices and neuroscience.

Somatic Experiencing (SE®) is an approach to trauma recovery that directly works with the body and our autonomic nervous system. SE® is often called a bottom-up approach to healing, in contrast to top-down approaches such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).

Although with SE® the focus may primarily be on the body, the therapist is actually working with the whole person by helping clients tune in to their body sensations, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and the five senses. What Dr. Levine discovered through his research and practice was that by helping others to focus on how the language of the nervous system manifests in the brain and body, our natural ability to heal from the impacts of a wide variety of traumas became not only possible but also long lasting.

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SE® defines trauma as a physiological phenomenon and not as an event per se. This means to resolve trauma we do not just talk or think our way through a traumatic event. Instead, we work directly with our fight, flight and freeze physiological states that can become stuck in the body. In these instances, the body has not yet been able to renegotiate the physiological responses activated through a highly charged experience. With SE® one gets to “experience” feeling the release of these stuck physiological states and/or emotions and then can integrate new beliefs, emotions, perspectives, and experiences of oneself and the world.

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Using the somatic experiencing approach, we learn to restore a new state of homeostasis or balance, in much the same way as other mammals do.  Our body is naturally designed to metabolize trauma as a way to reset our nervous system after a difficult, threatening, or traumatic experience.  This helps to restore our capacity to respond flexibly to life challenges, and to be able to bounce back more easily from adversity.  In addition, we can reconnect with our life force energy and our essence which helps us to be more present in our lives.