Somatic Therapy
Are You Looking For A Way To Incorporate The Wisdom Of The Body In Your Therapy Journey?
Somatic Therapy acknowledges the importance of the mind-body connection and uses both mind and body in the process of healing. Derived from the Greek word “soma” meaning body, somatic is anything of or relating to the body.
Somatic Therapy explores where certain emotions, e.g. anxiety, stress, grief, sit in your body. Sadness for example can often feel like a lump in the throat, a weight on the shoulders or a sinking in the chest. We bring attention to these areas and use breathing, movement or other exercises to release these stored emotions and facilitate healing.
Why Is Somatic Therapy Important?
Our bodies hold things in a way that we may not be conscious of. Trauma, in particular, can leave a lasting imprint on our bodies down to the cellular level. This can lead to increased health risks over time.
According to an article published by UCSF, extensive trauma research found that “unaddressed trauma is the hidden cause of most preventable illnesses, and is associated with eight of the 10 leading causes of death, including heart, lung and kidney disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, suicide, and accidental overdose. When we fail to address the trauma that underlies these diseases, prevention and treatment is far less effective, and in some cases, not effective at all.” *
Books like The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk and The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild also highlight the impact of trauma on the body and the phenomenon of somatic memory.
The connection between mind and body is powerful and treating one without the other can often be incomplete. Somatic therapy addresses both mind and body to facilitate a more holistic approach to healing achieving longer lasting results.
