When you have an intense experience we first feel it in our body. If we see a car about to hit us or someone raising a gun to our head then we feel our heart rate rise, terror and fear rising in the body. We are not thinking about the experience in the moment. The thinking happens afterwards when the looping thoughts of what if this had happened, or what if I had done differently begin to arise as we try to make sense of what happened to us. So it makes sense that we not only need to talk about an event to heal from it but we also need to feel it and release the emotions – this is what happens in Somatic Therapy.
The stress cycle in relation to our nervous system refers to the process our body goes through in response to a perceived threat and its subsequent return to a state of calm. When we encounter stress, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activates the “fight-or-flight” response, releasing stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which prepare the body to deal with the threat. Once the threat is gone, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) steps in to deactivate this response, promoting relaxation and recovery through processes such as reducing heart rate and respiration, thus completing the stress cycle and restoring homeostasis.
However, often in life when we experience these threats (especially if we were a child and the threat was a family member) the sympathetic nervous system is never deactivated as we do not feel safe or do not know how to do this. This means we stay in this activated state perceiving the world as unsafe. The result of this is that we are unable to trust people and situations always perceiving them through this lens of threat. This means we get easily triggered and can react in unhealthy ways in different situations and we feel like we do not have control or do not know where the reaction came from. This can result in feelings of anxiety, loneliness, depression and stress related disorders.
Research has shown that in order to deactivate the nervous system and return ourself to calm we need to release these emotional energetic imprints by allowing ourselves to be present with them without judgement and feel them in our bodies. This is what is done in somatic therapy using techniques that engage the body’s physical sensations and movements, such as deep breathing, body awareness, physical exercises, and touch, to release stored tension and trauma.
As the nervous system is restabilized and the emotional energetic imprints are released then talk therapy becomes helpful to support the understanding of what happened to us. From this place we are often able to have a wider perspective of the event and feel a sense of closure.
In a somatic therap session I create a safe space allowing these energetic imprints that are ready to be released to be known, allowing for release and calm to be returned to the nervous system.
By addressing both psychological and physical aspects, somatic therapy aims to integrate and resolve emotional and bodily experiences, promoting overall well-being.
Find out more here.
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