Facilitating Body/Mind Communication with Somatic Psychotherapy

Wellness and wellbeing are affected directly and indirectly by physical, mental and emotional injury. These traumas together with negative feelings such as resentment, anger and frustration may prevent the body and mind from working together, creating an imbalance within the whole structure.

Many people, in order to deal with or avoid feeling emotional or physical discomfort, learn how to disconnect from their bodies. This can be a survival response to something unpleasant, painful or confusing. If this disconnection becomes a constant way of being, a person loses touch with their deepest feelings and themselves. This can also manifest itself in physical adaptations creating many chronic problems.

Often people are unaware that the bodily ailments they are experiencing may be the result of an imbalance in their physical and psychological wellbeing.

The body, mind, emotions and spirit can communicate, and are all interrelated. As a Somatic Psychotherapist, I assist clients in learning how to listen to the language of their bodies and understand aspects of themselves on all these different levels.

Somatic therapy supports physical and emotional changes by allowing, not only the mind, but also the body, to 'communicate' about its experiences. This facilitates the self-healing capacity of the body and allows the client to feel integrated, whole, efficient, expansive and creative.

Emotional Traumas

The body actually expresses and communicates imbalances or structural changes that have been created by emotional stress, trauma or even negative mental images.

As living organisms, human beings are constantly developing, memorising and adapting specific patterns for all our activities. However, when there is an injury or trauma to the body - physical or emotional - its normal functional patterns are interrupted. New patterns are adopted to compensate for this interruption and we continue on as best we can.

For example, if you accidentally bang your elbow, it may be painful to hold your arm as you normally do. You compensate by holding the arm in a way to protect it, to shield it from further pain, and then continue to go about your life as efficiently as you can. Naturally there are a number of other adaptations that take place that may also impact on your shoulder and neck etc. After the pain has subsided you can generally resume the normal pattern that you had been using before. However, sometimes we 'forget' that there were earlier more functional patterns and we may continue to hold our arm, shoulder or neck in these compensated patterns even though the pain has subsided.

Significantly, these functional patterns are not only related to physical tasks or as responses to physical injuries or traumas. We assume these postures or 'patterns' in response to our emotional and mental states. Think of common expressions that illustrate a relationship between our physical and emotional states. We talk about having a 'defensive posture', a 'dejected look', or 'an air of confidence'. If a person is defensive, he may raise up his shoulders, hold his breath, tighten the muscles in his arms and clench his jaw. Similarly, if someone is dejected, her shoulders may roll forward and her head might be lowered. And if a person is confident, the shoulders may be held broadly, eyes forward and upper body firmly supported by the pelvis.

The physical symptoms may seem disconnected or unrelated to what can be a 'forgotten' experience but are often sensory reliving of the experiences or behavioural aberrations. Over time, secondary adaptations to trauma can develop, further obscuring or burying the initial experience. This is often the complex situation when working with trauma that has occurred in childhood and that has impacted on the maturation of the systems in charge of the regulation of psychological and biological processes.

The body also responds to situations whether they are real or perceived. When we are in situations which present immediate danger, threat or possible attack, we experience a state of hyperarousal called 'fight-or-flight'. Physiologically the heart rate increases, the breath becomes faster, the muscles are supplied with more blood for action, and the digestive processes stop. What is interesting is that we can elicit these physiological responses even when we simply 'think' we are being threatened. For example, some people find standing up and having to speak in front of a group of people can be sufficient to stimulate this fight-or-flight state.

We experience many instances of nervous system arousal and relaxation throughout the day - some related to physical situations and many related to our emotional and mental experiences. Usually these balance themselves naturally as we evaluate the stresses and threats and respond to them accordingly. But we can also become stuck, or even 'addicted' to, a sense of stress or to the energy charge that we experience when we are under stress. This circumvents our ability to allow the balancing relaxation response of the nervous system to occur and we begin to accumulate physical patterns associated with this 'hyper' state.

Over the past 20 years, neuro-physiological research has shown that neurochemical changes occur in the body when we experience different emotions or emotional states. Whether we are depressed, happy, stressed, or blissful, there is a range of chemical responses that affect our physical wellbeing.

Research also shows that we can affect the emotional state by changing our physical state. If we are anxious, we can facilitate a reduction in anxiety by consciously altering our physical sensations associated with that anxious state. Often the focus of my work will be to show a client how to monitor and regulate their physiological responses enabling them to directly influence their emotional states.

Where appropriate, integrative bodywork and touch can be utilised with many clients. This involves gentle movement, positioning and supporting physical and energetic contact, release and unwinding of muscles, of structural and energetic patterns and of limiting patterns of function. In this way I can create the opportunity for clients to connect with the messages from their bodies, the life metaphors that are expressed in body tissues, postures and movements.

This allows clients to access the sense of the inherent balance within them and understand the possible significance of these structural patterns at a large life perspective.

A simple example is the person who presents as depressed, with a posture that is characterised by a collapsed chest, rounded shoulders and a 'droopy' sense of his or her body who has seen therapists before but not been able to manage, modulate or regulate the depression. By facilitating the change of the underlying structure on which the spine is balanced, releasing the tension in the shoulders so that they are resting in a more relaxed way on top of the trunk of the body, repositioning the head, so that the eyes can face forward, checking that the sphenoid is balanced, and that the other cranial bones are correctly positioned, often enables transformative 'movement' in the emotional state. With this movement, greater depth analysis and exploration can take place, effecting an integrative understanding at a holistic level of the emotional underpinnings of the depression.

Physical Trauma and Injuries

Because of the range of bodywork I can offer, people who have sustained a physical injury that has not responded to traditional physical therapies, also often seek out my services.

An injury creates automatic physiological responses, which are stimulated in an attempt to restore the body into a sense of balance. These responses can occur in the facia, tissues, bone and joint repositioning, in structural compensation or wherever the body deems it necessary to function and retain a sense of comfort and balance. If the body corrects these imbalances naturally, then normal function returns and the body can successfully integrate the experience.

If however, the body cannot address the imbalance, it will compensate by making changes in order that it can continue to function. In these instances I will work with the client to re-establish their ability to self-correct using specific physical, structural and energetic release techniques.

Physical and Emotional Integration

To illustrate this integration, I would like to share one of the experiences of a client with whom I worked.

"Maria" is in her fifties. Both her parents physically and sexually abused her from about four years of age to her early teens, when she ran away from home. She was the oldest of 12 children and had a twin sister. She had been seeing a psychiatrist for several years prior to coming to me and had finished with him when she felt she had 'come to terms' with her past. The psychiatrist referred her to me when she returned to him complaining of severe aching in her legs and arms, having already consulted a number of other specialists, and physical therapists - all to no avail. Medical tests could find no evidence of anything physically wrong with her.

When she first started coming to me, she felt that the pain she was experiencing was so severe that she would have to resign from her job as a social worker in a hospital as she could not keep up with the amount of walking that was required in the job.

Even though she expressed eagerness to start the bodywork immediately, because of her history, it was essential to establish a strong sense of safety and trust before any such work could be initiated. This included strong grounding and boundary exercises to enable her to feel a sense of agency, an ability to modulate and regulate and to ensure there was not a possibility of re-traumatisation.

With this in place, I worked with her arms and legs, and experienced the tissues as 'dead' - the energy and fluids were not flowing through these limbs. When asking her to describe the sensations she experienced with the touch, she described her limbs as inanimate objects that felt like wood. As we continued to work with her legs, some movement began and as I watched, it developed into a kicking action. Over several sessions her arms also started to move in a defensive, pushing-away action.

As we worked, she remembered as a small child, when her parents would begin their abuse, she would become very still, until she felt she could almost disappear. This way she 'did not feel' and she would not cry, as she was afraid that if she did, they would either continue for longer or make her 'punishment' worse.

Over continuing sessions, we continued to talk and work on developing the kicking movements with the legs and the defensive movements with the arms. She began to feel the difference as energy began to flow throughout her legs and arms. She began to understand why the energy had not been moving through these limbs, as the action required to thwart her attackers was never initiated or completed.

She learnt that when stressed, she re-experienced this holding pattern, this early traumatic survival technique, and naturally felt the subsequent pain from this physical constriction. Over time she has learnt to modulate and regulate this pattern.

She still holds her position in the hospital and continues to work with a number of other physical symptoms that are a result of her earlier childhood experiences.

Conclusion

In summary, somatic psychotherapy assists with the understanding of emotional traumas, disappointments and fears, by identifying and releasing physical symptoms that are stored in the body as chronic aches and tensions in muscles, fascia, organs, bones and energy fields. Somatic Psychotherapy is an efficient and effective form of holistic healing.

By facilitating clients to become aware of the interrelationship between the mind, body, emotions and spirit, they become capable of accessing the resources they have within, to respond successfully to the challenges and opportunities in their lives. With these strengthened inner resources, they are able to make the changes necessary for their own growth and healing.

My background training is in Somatic Psychotherapy, with further qualifications in Integrative Bodywork, covering Structure, Metaphor and Alignment, Anatomy and Physiology, Myofascial Release and Craniosacral Therapy. I have a Master's degree in Applied Science, majoring in Critical Perspectives of Psychological Practices.

I work with senior executives, teenagers, couples, elite athletes, anorexics, bulimics, and students with learning difficulties, cerebal palsy patients, migraine sufferers, alcoholics, pregnant women, IVF patients, and trauma victims.