As a body-mind therapist, I was intrigued by a full page article in the Sept 29, 2012 Los Angeles Times, by Lily Dayton. Entitled “Healing Senses” the subhead read, “New approaches to psychotherapy stress that the treatment process should go beyond traditional talk sessions and consider the physical state of our bodies.” This is the essence of body-mind healing. How nice to see mainstream media open up to new options.
Too Attached to Our Story?
In the article, Dr. Martin Rossman, clinical professor at UC San Francisco Medical School said, “Talk therapy is actually a little removed. A story might relate some of our disturbing experiences, but it can distance us from real emotions and somatic [body] feelings.”
Wolf Mehling, M.D. at UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine said, “talking takes place in the cognitive, or thinking part of the brain, and our thoughts are often the problem. To help combat negative or obsessive thinking, many new therapeutic approaches focus on letting go of thoughts and becoming anchored into bodily sensations.”
Four “widely accepted non-traditional approaches” were explored, including Somatic Experiencing®, “a body-focused intervention used to discharge tension that is stored in the body following a traumatic event. The therapist [Somatic Experiencing Practitioner or SEP] directs the patient to revisit the event in small doses while focusing on the body sensation, guiding the patient to shift focus between the traumatic memory and an image of comfort and safety. As fears dissipate throughout the patient’s body, gentle touch or movement is used to help ground the person the in present moment.”
This helps regulate the involuntary nervous system where the trauma still lurks–even after decades–in the form of fight, flight or freeze. When we embrace the body’s ability to soothe a wounded mind, we empower our recovery.
Body Awareness: The Canary in the Mine
Many of my Somatic Experiencing clients are currently or once were in talk therapy. Often they seek body-mind work, with the encouragement of their talk therapist, after they’ve told their story numerous times and are ready to delve deeper into their innate healing, on a sub-verbal or feeling level. Personally, I’m ever grateful to these therapists and analysts who appreciate our body’s capacity to bring all affected areas of the brain into the healing process, not just the thinking brain.
In a sense, body awareness is like the proverbial canary in the coal mine: It tells us when something is not quite right. Body awareness runs the gamut of gut feelings and bad vibes to actual physical signs like aches, pains, tight muscles, shortness of breath, sweaty palms, heart palpitations, dilated pupils, insomnia, digestive problems and so on. Re-telling our trauma story or trying to figure out why we have our symptoms may not alleviate them. In fact sometimes the re-telling can entrench the trauma deeper into the nervous system.
Our Body’s Pure Agenda
The beauty of bringing our physical sense on board is that–unlike our higher cognitive brain–its only purpose is our well-being. It doesn’t care about political parties, our parents’ disapproval, what our siblings said about us or what others might think of us. Yet, we often ignore our somatic signals because we’re so much in our heads, such as making that deadline at work or checking our smart phone.
But when we open to the reality that there is wisdom in the body–solely devoted to enhancing your life–we open to a vast store of healing potential that is just waiting to be discovered and put to good use in partnership with our thinking brain. As SE founder Dr. Peter Levine says, “trauma is a fact of life, it does not, however have to be a life sentence.”
As an SEP, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I have the good fortune to witness the body-mind partnership helping traumatized people overcome fear, hurt, guilt, rage, depression and anxiety. That in turn helps us regain healthy boundaries, a sense of how and when to defend themselves and build resilient, meaningful relationships with others and especially within themselves.