Somatic Experiencing®

How does it make you feel?  This is a cliched question of therapists the world over.  Often our answers aren't informed by our bodies but by our meaning making machine, the brain.  I feel sad, I feel happy and, I feel frustrated are all concepts we have learned to help explain how we feel. In many ways, though, we have lost the art of actually feeling. 

Somatic experiencing is integrated naturally into how I work and simply means that we begin to be aware of not just how you perceive your feelings in your head, but where you feel them in your body.  Tightness in the chest or noticing your breathing becoming shallow or your heart rate increasing.  By bringing awareness to these changes, and learning to sit with them, our bodies learn to no longer be overwhelmed and are able to process them in much the same way as our brains process what we think about how we are feeling.  
 

Your brain and body do not exist independently and becoming aware of how they interact and feed off each other is essential to fully understanding your reactions and responses to stressors in your life.   I work with you holistically which means that I understand the importance of equality in the intellectual as well as the somatic understanding of your life experiences.