Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing is an approach to the resolution and healing of trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine. It is based upon the observation that wild animals, though routinely threatened, are rarely traumatized. Their bodies have an innate ability to regulate and discharge nervous system activation, and they largely return to normal after highly-charged, life-threatening experiences.
Our human bodies are fundamentally the same, but (because of some features of our human brain and modern lives) we can easily get stuck in the nervous system activation. Ideally, nervous system activation will arise to support life-saving action, and then settle back down. It’s a very necessary survival response…but should be temporary. Living with this activation over time has physical and mental health consequences. From a somatic perspective, this is trauma—getting stuck in the physiological response to a threat.
(It’s worth noting that this system is in play even for things that our conscious mind says are not dangerous. When a honk startles us while driving, there will be a spike of activation, even as the conscious mind assesses that there is no actual danger.)
So ideally, the threat response is a cycle, with a clear beginning, middle and end. But we humans can live for years, decades, even a lifetime, stuck in some part of the cycle—stuck in trauma. But our human bodies do have the ability to come back to a relaxed and ready state, even after a long time. Bodies are actually very eager to do this—they just need some help to do it. Somatic Experiencing is that help, and can result in a number of benefits to you, such as relief of traumatic stress symptoms, and increased resiliency and resourcefulness.
So, how do we do it? First, the client is a very active participant in the SE process. SE is not something a practitioner can do to a client. It’s something we do together. It may happen sitting up in a chair, or laying on a table with light hands-on touch.
Wether sitting or lying, touching or not, we bring interested curiosity to the body, with special interest in threat response physiology. We want to let the body talk to us. How does the body communicate? Through sensations, perceptions (sight, sounds, etc), physiology changes (breath, heart rate, digestion, etc), images, memories, and impulses to move. All of those things, or the absence of any of them, are information.
(And if these aren’t things you already easily perceive, don’t worry! You don’t have to be “good at it” in advance. The first step for a lot of people is learning how to sense and make contact with the inner world.)
In SE, we want to learn about the body’s perspective. When we let it, the body will tell us about:
- things that have happened
- it’s most significant experiences (they can be different that we expect)
- what it’s struggling with
- what didn’t get to happen
- what it wants to do or experience
That last one is super cool. When we let it, the body will show us what kind of help it needs. We can then give the body experiences that complete the threat response and resolve the trauma.
We can’t change what happened, but we can change how the body is responding. And bring a tremendous relief to the system.
To be successful SE clients, most of us need to make some conscious, learned shifts in:
- how we talk about our experiences,
- how we prioritize what we notice in our bodies,
- and how we expect healing and change to happen.
First, let’s talk about talking. Talking is important in an SE session, but in a different way than most people have experienced before. SE sessions aren’t the place where clients talk at length about things that have happened in a storytelling kind of way. It’s not that telling the story is bad, or wrong. There is a time and place where it’s very important to be heard in this way. But, in a somatic session, that kind of talking will eclipse the the body’s story, the body’s story is what we are working with in SE.
So in an SE session, there may be a little bit of “this is what happened to me” kind of talking—but it’s just to get the body to start showing us what it’s experiencing. Usually the body’s response is present with just a few sentences or even a few words about “this is what happened to me”. When clients are talking I may even gently interrupt, in a “this seems important, can we see what the body has to say?” kind of way.
For many clients, it is a new experience to leave the details of the story verbally unfinished, and switch to the body’s narrative. But once they feel the relief that comes from doing so, most embrace this new way of communicating.
There is a kind of talking that does happen frequently in sessions: self-report. SE sessions rely on self-report from the client. “This is what I feel…notice…sense…” These are the somatic experiences. They constantly change, and guide us, and we will continuously check in about them.
Another thing about the inner world. When we check in (“what do you notice in your body?’) most of have loud things calling for our attention—our familiar pain and problems, the things we don’t like and want to change or get rid of. In SE, we are interested in those…and we are also interested in the things that are different that that. We are interested in sensations that are subtle, mild, seemingly insignificant, uncomplicated. Much like the switch from the verbal narrative to the body’s narrative, widening our focus beyond the loud pains is an important part of the SE process. Those less interesting, less intense things in the inner world can help show us how to resolve trauma.
SE is slow and patient work. A little bit at a time. We work this way because this is how real nervous system change happens. If we aim or push for big experiences, the body will stay within existing patterns and the nervous system does not change. This is another place where most of us need to make a conscious shift, this time in our expectations about results. In trauma, most of us will be scanning ourselves and our world for something that is going to make a huge change. Naturally, we want a relief to come in that is bigger that the pain we are feeling. It can take some doing to reorient to the value of “a little bit at a time”, but there is tremendous value in doing so.
Lastly: How many sessions? Every SE session will do something. Occasionally, a person with an overall healthy nervous system will be able to work through an isolated incident in few sessions, or even a single session. But usually people’s traumas are complex and layered, and it can take some time. If there was early or developmental trauma, and a person’s nervous system never originally learned how to regulate, then our task is building the capacity to regulate...something that just takes more time.
For example, here's a video of Peter Levine working with a soldier named Ray. Remarkable changes happen with Ray’s PTSD in a few sessions. And, Ray went on to work with Peter for years on the developmental trauma that was underneath. Trigger alert: war zone content. https://youtu.be/bjeJC86RBgE?si=Y5Kem8_5GJDOis-z