What is Somatic Experiencing (SE)?

Being in the advanced level of Somatic training I do offer Somatic Experiencing as a therapeutic option.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body awareness approach to healing trauma. It focuses on experiencing the ‘felt sense’ in the present moment to renegotiate the physical, emotional and physiological effects of traumatic experiences.

SE can assist with panic attacks, flash backs, sexual abuse, family violence, anxiety, depression, disassociation, emotional outbursts, anger, being teary, feeling unsafe in the body, repetitive negative thinking, hearing voices any type of trauma related body response.

SE is about healing the unfinished trauma responses the body is still holding onto. Talk therapy maintains people within the cognitive space rather than exploring what is held in the body. It’s not just the emotions and mind that are affected through trauma but also the body as it remembers too. But this memory presents itself in different ways.Many people try to repress these feelings through medication, keeping busy, addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, self harm, eating disorders and so on.

Worldwide, health-oriented practitioners in a wide variety of fields use SE. SE practitioners include psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, cranio sacral therapists, rolfers, EMDR practitioners, acupuncturists, art therapists, massage and physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths. SE seamlessly integrates into either psychotherapeutic or body-oriented therapies and it can also be used very effectively by itself.

Somatic Experiencing was founded and developed by Dr. Peter Levine who wrote the well-known book, Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma. 

Using the innate ability humans have to overcome trauma, SE encourages and utilises the awareness of sensations in the body (or somatic experiences) to help people re-negotiate and resolve the effects of their trauma experiences .

While gently pacing the process so that each individual can safely integrate the changes within their nervous system, SE helps return a sense of aliveness, relaxation and wholeness to the individual.

Taken from Somatic Experiencing Australia, my training body. To find out more you can search http://www.seaustralia.com.au/