Somatic Therapy

— Peter Levine

Does this apply to you? Your body is a thing that trails along three paces behind your head, almost like a ghostly afterthought. Or, your head is a round orb that floats in space with your body loosely dangling below, like limp spaghetti. You live in your head. Your body is just something that you feed, and maybe take for a walk occasionally, and pay closer attention to if something hurts. But it’s not important, like your head. Your head is where it’s at.

And yet, what you may not understand (yet), is that, as Bessel van der Kolk, who has been at the forefront of trauma research for a lifetime, says, “The body keeps the score.” In somatic therapy what that means is that things like trauma, chronic stress, anxiety, grief and a sense of threat are all stored in the body, and affect the way we hold ourselves, the way we breathe, the way we react, or overreact, to the everyday. The event may be long gone, but the body still remembers and holds onto the state of emergency, never having had a chance to discharge the energy of the event.

As a somatic practitioner my aim is to provide a safe place for you, so you have the length and breadth to begin to pay attention to what is happening in your body. Do you have a sensation like all your fur is being rubbed the wrong way? Or a nest of angry bees is surrounding your head and all you can hear is buzzing? I have often felt like that myself. Perhaps you feel grey inside? Do you drink or use because you feel numb? Or do you use because you feel too much, and you want to be numb?

What happens if you begin to slow your breath? I will do this with you and we will breathe together, slower and deeper, and start to let a feeling of calmness enter our bodies. The house is not on fire – you can actually relax. You might start to notice physical sensations – your heart beating, a pulsing in your fingers, a widening of your vision. And once you’ve helped your body feel safer in this present moment, we might, gently, look at what it is that brought you here, the thing that’s bothering you, and check in with your body and listen to its response.

I hope that describes what you might experience, working with me, but in many ways the thing is ineffable, hard to grasp, difficult to put into words. No matter; the point is that as you continue to breathe, to focus, to pay attention in a way that perhaps you have not done before, as your heart opens, as your body, mind and spirit begin to fit together better, integrated, whole, your understanding and acceptance of your self illuminates the way to the best self you have always wanted to be and know you can be. I look forward to our work (and play) together.