Your Guide to Healing and Transformation

Somatic Experiencing® is a pioneering body-based approach to overcoming trauma, shock, and other stress disorders. It is the life’s work of American psychotherapist Dr Peter Levine, who combined his studies in stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics to develop this innovative approach.

SE aims to safely release traumatic shock ‘frozen’ in the body during times of overwhelm, allowing for a natural transformation of both PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early childhood trauma. It recognises that the effects of stress and trauma are primarily experienced in our nervous systems (how we react) and how any unresolved trauma can create dysregulation. Therefore, SE works with your body’s natural self-regulating systems.

SE is based on the work of Dr Peter Levine, who considers trauma to be a primarily biological physical phenomenon – not an incurable disease. Observations of wildlife show they are regularly threatened with death, yet rarely traumatised; humans are equipped with the same capacity to overcome overwhelming experiences, but our rational brain often ‘rejects’ the powerful primal instinct of the body. The result is the huge fight/flight energy gets trapped in our nervous system, where it can lead to all sorts of symptoms; sometimes immediately, sometimes not until years later. For more information about Dr Peter Levine’s work, visit the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute and SE UK.

How Can Somatic Experiencing® Help You?

Research shows that somatic approaches reduce symptoms short-term and show long-term effectiveness to benefit individuals suffering from traumatic events such as:

    Physical wounds such as medical interventions, auto accidents, natural disasters
    Inescapable attack: rape, sexual abuse, incest, torture, war
    Loss of loved ones, divorce
    High fever, asphyxiation, birth trauma
    Developmental trauma or emotional trauma such as neglect, abandonment, or betrayal during childhood

However, the key reason for working with SE® need not be an obvious traumatic event, but the presence of a symptom or a range of symptoms. Trauma is not so much in the event, but in the individual’s physiological reaction to it. A fairground ride, for example, might be fun for one person, but terrifying for another.

Examples of symptoms of traumatic stress can include:

•     Anxiety, phobias and panic attacks
•     Palpitations and breathlessness
•     Involuntary tics, jerking or grimacing
•     Being over alert, or on guard
•     Addictive behaviours
•     Extreme sensitivity to light and/or sound
      Insomnia, nightmares
•     Skin disorders
•     Avoidance behaviour (people, places etc)
•     Abrupt mood swings
•     Shame, lack of self-worth, depression
•     Exhaustion, chronic fatigue
•     Headaches, migraines, neck and back problems
•     Digestive, Immune system issues

Somatic Experiencing® is also particularly beneficial for individuals suffering from anxiety, depression, PTSD, Complex-PTSD and chronic illnesses.

Somatic Experiencing® vs. Talking Therapies

SE® is a ‘bottom up’ approach that starts with the fundamental areas of the brain and body – where trauma has had its effect and where the body reacts to traumatic events. As your body becomes more stabilised and your survival centres develop a more healthy ‘normal’ setting, the higher brain centres begin to make meaning of the events. This helps the past to be left in the past and a peaceful new present to arise.

Talking therapies may be considered a ‘top down’ approach in which the therapist works primarily with the rational mind. You are asked talk about your history and the events that happened and often your childhood and your family. Whilst SE® draws on these experiences; it concentrates more on how it is living in your body today. SE® broadens the approach to trauma treatment by engaging the regions of our brain (the subcortical) that are not easily accessed by talking.

What to Expect in a Somatic Experiencing® Session

In a typical SE session, Sue acts as an impartial, compassionate support to help you feel safe and facilitate the release of your trauma from your body. You’ll be guided to consciously explore – without judgment – related physical sensations, feelings, thoughts, and images as they arise.

Through this simple moment-to-moment process – called tracking – it’s possible for highly charged stress energy in your body to be properly engaged and released naturally. Examples of this discharge include tingling, warmth, and involuntary muscle movements such as twitching or yawning. The result of this subtle mobilisation allows the trapped survival energy at the root of your symptoms to be freed, establishing a new relaxation deep in your body and mind.

Does SE involve touch?

SE is referred to as a body-based therapy because its focus is on the body rather than the mind. It doesn’t, however, necessarily involve touch; where it does, it is simple touch – not manipulation or massage and is intended to support your healing. This has been effectively adapted for online work. Should touch be beneficial to your session and your process, this will be discussed with you. You are encouraged to bring up any questions you have about the work.

There is no prescribed answer to this, it differs from individual to individual and is based on the need for the body to integrate between sessions. Where a recent one-off traumatic event has been experienced health benefits have been known to be achieved within relatively few sessions. Longer term, more complex symptoms will typically need more sessions.

*It is very important to allow time for the nervous system to settle and integrate within the session – this process cannot be rushed. This will be discussed with you.