Somatic / body · Kansas City & Overland Park
It is said that the body has a life of its own. This is more true than seems on the surface. Our body hosts a world of experiences in sensation, feelings, gut, instincts etc. Our bodies carry not only intuition and our ability to process our loved ones and changes in the world but it also has its own memory. It is a sea of hormones, neurons and chemical realities that all contribute to our sense of self, others and the world around us. If we are cut off from our bodies, what of life have we limited ourselves experiencing - both the bitter taste found in life and life's sweet fruits.
Soma is Greek for body. Somatic work is the study and practice of body — not as a machine, but as the medium for experiencing life.
For example, some issues we face put the body in a sort of traffic jam (stuck in a mood), or in a moment we begin to “fall apart” (feeling so intensely we struggle to regulate — feeling out of control). Then the very vehicle (the body) we use to regulate, connect to others, or think clearly may be offline or unavailable — and this can leave us confused, disoriented, and/or reactive.
In somatic/body work we find alternative non-verbal, more physiological methods to regulate, relate, and find a grounded center. The goal is always to bring in more resources and support the body that holds us through life and relationships.
Here are aspects of our body’s life that often get missed in cognitive/talk therapies:
Most cognitive/talk therapies center on the electrical aspects of the brain’s functioning. But this limits the truly powerful feelings, meanings, memories, and strong associations related to touch, smell, taste, and our visual systems. And in doing so it stifles embodied imagination, creativity, expression, and the embodiment of security with others.
The heart is responsible for the hormones that travel through the blood. It sends cortisol (stress) to become alert, adrenaline for fight, flight, or freeze, dopamine for comfort, and a host of other important hormones. What is often missed is that the heart also carries a dense network of neurons — on the order of tens of thousands — that sense, regulate, and send signals upward to the brain as well as receive messages directly from the brain and spinal cord. That feeling in the chest is not only poetry; it is part of the body’s electrical biofeedback system and is necessary for decision making and brain functioning.
Instincts are the compulsions we build over time. In some ways they live in the autonomic nervous system, and they are the primary place of our most primitive training and alert system — fight, flight, freeze (and fawn). But instincts are not without influence. Instincts are our conditioned reactions based on our values and training. Childhood was your first training ground - for better or worse. And if your training was not adaptive enough, look out, because life throws curve balls. Somatic work in therapy can be a place to retrain and hone these important body responses according to the values and person we desire to be.
Humans have the capacity to experience ourselves in other bodies. That is why when we see something gross our bodies can feel it, or when we see someone get hurt we wince. The body can feel these moments, and in this way what we witness (the younger we are, the more impact) happens to our bodies — even if not to us directly. This is why working with the body directly and with the purpose of integration is often a far smoother and faster route to healing than many cognitive-based approaches. This type of work being an even higher necessity when thinking itself triggers fear, anxiety, depression or doubt.
Experiencing support, connection, love, togetherness — and more — is through the body. When that body feels open with others, we have the ability to generate predictable, available support: an important condition for safe and secure attachment. In this way our body produces the highway by which we transmit important relationship packages to each other. An unavailable body halts the needed support for ourselves and from ourselves to others.
Somatic work as I practice it is not anti-mind. Thoughts, images in the mind’s eye, values, perspective, and procedural memory matter a great deal in integrating all of us into one person. Integrative work is about finding the crossroads where the body, mind, spirit, and other important pieces of self come together to help support us in becoming who we are and wish to be.
Related: Depth therapy · Individual work · Jungian therapy · Dream work