{"id":1530,"date":"2021-10-03T07:52:26","date_gmt":"2021-10-03T07:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/?p=1530"},"modified":"2021-11-19T06:28:56","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T06:28:56","slug":"somatic-experience-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/somatic-experience-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Somatic Experience & Transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u00a0have been studying Somatic Experience work in this last year and a half since the start of COVID.\u00a0 Somatic Experience helps people \u201cbuild awareness, coherence, and self-regulation. <\/strong>The result is a deeper understanding of the body\/mind connection with an improved ability to release and regulate emotions. It also helps manage stress, resolve issues related to trauma, heal from and navigate life transitions, relationships and build resilience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An idea developed by Dr. Peter Levine, he believed that humans (like animals in the wild)\u00a0 possess the same ability to release physical energy from stress but often thwart it by \u201ckeeping it together\u201d following trauma. <\/strong>We all probably have direct experience \u201ckeeping it together\u201d through a difficult experience. Our ability to override what is an innate mechanism for self-care is for many of us what sets the stage for PTSD. By stopping this natural cycle of release, the energy becomes stuck, in effect keeping us in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight so that we are unable to return to our relaxed, balanced state. https:\/\/therapy-mn.com\/blog\/somatic-experiencing-ptsd\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some ideas to ponder in the relationship of trauma and how we store this in our bodies: What is happening in my body when I feel overwhelmed or when I feel anxiety, or another familiar emotion that tends to come on to you powerfully.<\/strong> By beginning to get curious about what\u2019s happening in our body, we can start to noice if there is a thought or meaning we are making of how we feel, an emotion we can name, an image we can bring up of the sensation, any senses like a smell, texture or color to this feeling. We can look at the way our body is responding and wanting to move.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, when I feel anxiety, I often get overwhelmed by my thoughts and emotions often something like this: \u201cOh gosh, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve thought this all the way through, what if I\u2019m missing something or what if I make the wrong decision?\u201d Then I\u2019ll tend to feel scared and that puts me thinking similar thoughts and basically, that continues on a loop. Super fun! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I start to work with this by first recognizing that this loop is happening and put words to that, \u201cOh, here I am doing that thing, I\u2019m looping from fear into thoughts that focus me on more fear. I\u2019m feeling really anxious.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I\u2019ll begin to bring in a body sensation to this, I\u2019ll notice where I\u2019m feeling the anxiety or fear in my body. It might be a tightness in my chest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I\u2019ll look for any other sensations, images, any extra sensory information I can bring in here. I might think: Aha, I\u2019m noticing with that tightness in my chest, there\u2019s actually a little vibration and some warmth there. It feels like a red ball of energy right there in my chest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I can see if my body is trying to do any type of movement or some physical form I\u2019m adopting. I\u2019ll notice maybe my jaw is clenched or maybe my hands are tight or I might be curling my body in towards a protective slump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By bringing these different elements into the experience I\u2019m having, it\u2019s like I\u2019m opening the loop up, expanding it, and making it a richer, brighter experience that I can really see from a new perspective<\/strong>. It might not be less uncomfortable at first but instead of staying stuck in the loop from my emotions to my thoughts and back and forth\u2026 it gives me greater context. The feeling is one of slight relief and a bit of integration into the rest of my body. It\u2019s like a feeling of wholeness, a bit more resiliency. It feels very relieving and empowering to find tools like this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After my husband passed, I was working with my long-time therapist and the Somatic Experience work we did together around my grief was life-saving and transformative. It gave me context to emotional states that were completely overwhelming in that deep trauma of loss. It gave me a way of contextualizing pain, anxiety, sadness. I lean on these tools all the time and am so excited to be bringing this work into my bodywork with clients, deepening my ability to hold space for your deepest things that you bring with you in your body. Life is a beautiful mystery and our bodies are holding our stories inside. As we learn to be with our bodies in a safe and loving way, we can bring more and more compassion and presence into our every day, showing up whole with our whole hearts.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience- Shakti Gawain<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0have been studying Somatic Experience work in this last year and a half since the start of COVID.\u00a0 Somatic Experience helps people \u201cbuild awareness, coherence, and self-regulation. The result is a deeper understanding of the body\/mind connection with an improved ability to release and regulate emotions. It also helps manage stress, resolve issues related to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/motoki-tonn-ezOKZhYJAFo-unsplash-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riseupmassage.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}