Somatic Trauma Therapy Services
SOMATIC TRAUMA HEALING practices, SOMATIC EXPERIENCING ® & SOMATIC PRACTICE, are potent , gentle, naturalistic modes for resolving trauma & trauma symptoms — you return to your natural state of self-regulation, resilience & well-being. The somatic (physiologic) experience can be viewed as the powerful undercurrent of and path to transform our emotions, behaviors, and meanings. In SE & SP, we learn to trust and listen to the body’s wisdom, it’s self-healing and self-protecting capacities, and it’s implicit recognition of “appropriate” others.
Somatic Trauma Healing:
- Heals the physiology of trauma in the body.
- Holds gentle present-moment awareness of sensation & tracking of impulse.
- Body learns a new physiological & psychological map.
- Completes self protective responses.
- Digests small manageable slices of un-discharged trauma energy.
- Discovers inherent inner and outer resources.
- Repairs and renegotiates relational ruptures.
For more, see: trauma healing.com, somaticpractice.net.
INTEGRATIVE WELLNESS is a way of caring that preserves the wholeness & dignity of the body, mind & spirit. You and Mary are therapeutic partners, learning from each other on a healing journey. Interventions are affordable, low tech, evidence-based and designed for preventive, supportive, & restorative healing.
They include tools for self-awareness, growth and wellbeing:
- Health inquiry that reveals your own motivations, deep meanings and wellness goals
- Nutrition as medicine
- Readiness for change
- Mindfulness and stress reduction
- Healing herbs
- Energy healing
- Movement used therapeutically
- Coaching to effectively communicate with medical providers
- Collaborative with your other health practitioners, referrals
For more about Integrative Care check out: http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu
(Somatic Trauma Healing is a wellness model. Medical Diagnosis, diagnostic testing, lab work, and medication prescriptions are not provided.)
What Happens in Somatic Trauma Healing Sessions?
- In Sessions: take time to arrive–transition from the outside to the office.
- Orient to the present and the “felt sense” of that; increase body awareness; inhabit & befriend the body—Practice!
- Firstly, be in relationship–establish safety, be real, warm & genuine. We “get” each other non-verbally, through our senses. Create a “safe haven.”
- Work at a respectful pace– Slow down, titrate–minimize fear, build tolerance of experience.
- Receptive, reparative,”non-doing” touch is offered in most sessions. Touch is key to co-regulation after early trauma as it speaks to the pre-verbal experience of early life.
- Watch: the body’s response to what happens in sessions; subtle movements “before” a desired movement. (shifts in gravity, eye movements, breath, muscle tone); self protective movements? Be curious “what didn’t get to happen?”
- Learn how to track your “state” from the point of view of the “lizzard brain”–fight, flight and freeze responses; the nervous system’s tendency to form patterns, as well as to change.
- Use language to invite & support exploration, playfulness and curiosity about what’s happening inside. Reflect back what happens.
- Never take someone where they don’t want to go. There is a good reason for “resistance”.
- Shift focus & attention: away from intensity and toward “resources”–who or whatever settles the nervous system; or toward aliveness, away from collapse. This elicits the nervous system’s capacity to move & respond.
- Sit, move, lay down; Talk, be silent; Play!
- Look for how you can more easily manage situations that were hard for you before. You sense your impulse to connect with others. This “self-regulation” and “co-regulation” happen naturally outside of sessions.
- You discover and own your own “healing story”.
