How Somatic Work Transforms Trauma
Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Suzanne O’Connor on Prince Edward County’s The Grapevine radio show. We discussed what somatics is, how I found my way into the work, and the role somatic practices play in healing trauma. Knowing that the term somatics is still unfamiliar to many, we’re dedicating this week’s blog to exploring this powerful, body-based approach to well-being.
You can explore this content several ways…
LISTEN: Catch Lisa’s clip from The Grapevine Radio Show.
WATCH: Check out our recent video on Instagram to get a feel for the essence of somatic work.
ENGAGE: Curious to dive deeper? Book a complimentary 30-minute consult with Lisa here.
READ: For our readers, we’ve highlighted key questions and responses from the interview for you below.
Each offering provides unique insights, and we hope they help you feel more connected to the profound benefits of somatics and the work we do at The Messina Movement.
The Interview
Suzanne: How long have you been a somatic therapy practitioner and holistic movement instructor?
LM: I've been studying somatic therapy for ten years now and have been practicing for about six. When it comes to holistic movement practice, I've really been studying movement since I was three years old, when I started dancing – it's kind of unbelievable! I've been training in movement my whole life, which progressed into a professional musical theater career.
A lot of the repetitive strain and stress that came along with that career led me towards more holistic practices like yoga and Pilates. I began seeking a way to heal my own body on all levels – physical, mental, and emotional.
I fell into the world of somatic relational psychotherapy after that and have never looked back! Though I’m not an accredited psychotherapist with the governing body in Ontario, I am an expertly trained and fully-qualified somatic therapy practitioner and I couldn’t be more proud of the work I do with my clients and in my group program, The Process. (If you’d like to dive deeper into the details of my journey, check out that blog post here!)
Suzanne: Somatics is a new term for some, and holistic feels super broad – would you expand on what these terms mean to you?
LM: Unpacking the word somatics is quite the task as it’s an umbrella term. Overall, somatic therapy focuses on prioritizing the body first when it comes to healing. It centers the body as the primary point of healing when we’re looking at mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, chronic stress, and more – we're looking to the body first.
The word ‘holistic’ to me means addressing the whole person. We have many different aspects of ourselves – body, mind, behavior, brain, heart, etc. and sometimes we compartmentalize these aspects, addressing only one or two at a time. To heal holistically means that you’re looking at all these complex aspects and addressing them together, acknowledging that they all are a part of the whole, they all make up YOU! Tending to all aspects of people, in my opinion, is required for deep and lasting healing.
Suzanne: Can you tell me about the history of somatics?
LM: Though somatics might seem like a new-ish term, its roots can actually be traced back to the early 20th century. It pulls from a variety of disciplines that explore the mind and body, and most importantly the connection between the mind and body.
The field was significantly shaped by Thomas Hanna who coined the term somatics, and Hanna was inspired by earlier pioneers like F.M. Alexander (The Alexander Technique) and Moshe Feldenkrais (The Feldenkrais Method). Both are modalities that stress and highlight self-awareness and body awareness through movement, and how movement can profoundly impact someone's health and well-being.
Over time, somatics has continued to evolve and incorporate important insights from neuroscience, psychology, and various forms of movement and body-based practices. Now, it’s really an integrative and comprehensive approach that focuses on healing through and with the body. Somatics today recognizes the deep interconnection between our physical sensations and our physical experiences, and our thoughts, emotions, mental processes and behaviors.
Suzanne: You mentioned neuroscience and regulating the nervous system seems to be a hot topic right now. How do somatic practices impact the nervous system?
LM: Our nervous system runs throughout our entire bodies, right? So as we address our thoughts and feelings, which are brain processes, we aren’t just addressing our brains, we’re addressing the entirety of our body. Every thought and feeling is filtered through the nervous system network connected to our heart, our digestive system, our muscles – all that we experience in our brain, we experience within our body.
Our body is what is first and foremost experiencing and sensing our environment, assessing and tuning into our relationships, and our body can store that data as it filters through our physical being. When trauma or wounds occur, our nervous systems can get stuck in survival states, and if we don’t work with our nervous systems to move through the trauma or stressor, then we can have a really difficult time finding relief. This applies to resolving momentous trauma or a daily build up of chronic stress, and everything in between.
Suzanne: How is a somatic approach to therapy different from Western medicine approaches and different from say yoga and Pilates?
LM: Western medicine is different from a holistic, somatic approach to healing, in that with somatics we're addressing more than symptoms, illness, and disease. Often in Western medicine the focus is on how to eradicate or resolve a physical symptom, and maybe with it a disease, but most of the time, the practices are reactionary and focused on solving problems with medication or prescription drugs (which can be valuable and necessary in many cases, especially emergencies). It’s rare that conventional medicine traces symptoms back to their root causes, or considers the larger context, and therefore it's common to miss the opportunity to understand the whole picture, root cause(s), contributing factors, to prevent future suffering.
With somatics, we’re able to get in contact with deeper layers of ourselves by accessing body sensations (discomfort, pain, symptom, etc.) to get to the root of the suffering. We work to process what’s been unprocessed, or stored within the body (like trauma, stress, etc.), to alleviate real, physical symptoms that may be associated with whatever is stagnant or stuck or repressed within the body.
And most times, we are unconscious of what’s stored in our bodies – if we have little information about what wants and needs to be healed within us, then how can we heal? Once we are conscious of something through the practice of somatics, we’re able to begin asking ourselves, “How do I then move through this particular thing that's held inside my body? How can I heal it? How can I resolve it? How can I support it? What is needed?”
When it comes to movement philosophies and modalities like yoga and Pilates, they're excellent for creating a container for healing and creating bodily awareness. These practices encourage and require tuning into yourself, your alignment, and physical sensations, and that's a wonderful place to start when you approach somatic healing. Somatic practices on the other hand are more of an inside out approach. You're following the internal impulses and internal sensations (we call tracking and following) as opposed to being told what to do by a movement teacher. It’s of course not required to be a Yogi or Pilates pro before diving into somatic healing, but they are certainly complementary practices.
A lot of what we do at The Messina Movement involves physical gestures, postures, movements, and expressions which are not only encouraged but whole-heartedly welcomed during our sessions.
Suzanne: How does somatic work transform unresolved trauma within the body?
LM: Like regular talk therapy, we begin any session with a check-in. We connect, understand what's needed, what's wanted, what this particular person would like to embody after the session and over time. But from there, we'll quickly move into recognizing, noting, and tracking what's physically happening in the body at the moment.
For example, when you feel nervous, your heart starts racing and you might feel a pit in your stomach, or if somebody insults you, you might feel a contraction or a constriction around your chest or your posture might change, you may want to hide or you notice your spine curl inward as opposed to extend. These are the types of sensations we’re noting.
I help people stay with sensations like these and get curious about them. All too often we might notice something in the body and then distract ourselves or get out of it quite quickly, especially if it’s an uncomfortable sensation – which is usually linked to a core wound. I help people to create safety in and with their bodies by staying with sensations until they shift and evolve, because everything in the body is always changing.
If we stay with something long enough, it typically finds its own way of resolving, whether that's through a gesture or a sound or words that want to come out, or just a simple movement, like reaching or pushing, moving our feet, sometimes trembling, or even tears.
Crying might happen because the body knows it wants to release something and that’s one way humans release and let go – we're creating the environment for that to happen whatever the outcome looks like.
And with shaking or trembling, you can see this process in animals all the time. Animals naturally shake off trauma in order to restore their nervous systems. Humans can get stuck in survival states because we have this really big thinking brain that gets in the way of those natural restoration processes. So sometimes we can invite shaking or trembling into a session for a very naturalistic, organismic approach to healing, and we want to create safety around that, too.
Safety is imperative to somatics (and every approach to healing) as we cannot heal unless we are feeling safe to do so. With trembling for example, we never want to overwhelm the system where it feels like we’re shaking to the point where it gets scary and we create a negative association to it. We want to be able to process an emotion or sensation safely, just a little bit at a time, so we feel safe enough to let things happen like crying, shaking, laughing, etc. – whatever offers us the release and resolve that we need.
We're always having correlated body experiences with every thought, every event, every emotion, and to me, it doesn't make any sense to disconnect the body from our healing process because it's so involved in the suffering. This is how the work of somatics has the profound ability to transform trauma from the body first.
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