Somatic Experiencing
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. We must approach trauma with a sense of curiosity and compassion, rather than judgment or avoidance.
– Peter Levine
The stories of our nervous system are often waiting to be told. We feel pain before we know the narrative of pain. We feel the sensation of joy before we know the narrative of joy. SE focuses on the body and how emotions appear within the body. It examines how we store experiences on a cellular level.
What is Somatic Experiencing®?
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient. It is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades.
The nervous system is a miraculous network of communication between the brain and the body that is working to maintain balance and keep us safe. When we experience trauma and complex trauma, we can become stuck in specific states of arousal or hypo-arousal. SE focuses on expanding resourcing, accessing specific tools to regulate the system and training the nervous system to upshift and downshift.