Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a unique body-awareness approach to healing trauma. SE helps the nervous system renegotiate awareness from dysregulation to effective self-regulation.

Developed by psychotherapist Peter A. Levine, SE is modeled after animals in the wild, who engage innate, instinctive, and physiological processes to discharge the massive fight, flight, and freeze energies associated with survival. As a result, wild animals are rarely traumatized, even though their lives are routinely threatened.

Although humans have virtually the same innate self-regulating mechanisms as animals, we often override or inhibit these processes, thwarting our own capacity to heal. When we fail to discharge the high levels of arousal associated with survival, these massive energies stay trapped in our neuromuscular and central nervous systems, wreaking havoc on our bodies and minds. It is this trapped energy that develops into a whole constellation of post-traumatic symptoms, including pain, anxiety, anger, depression, cognitive impairments, and intrusive thoughts and imagery.

SE provides the steps needed to reconnect individuals with the innate wisdom of their bodies. Through focused conscious awareness of bodily sensations, individuals can access these restorative physiological patterns, resolve their traumatic symptoms, and reengage in life with renewed optimism, creativity, passion and joy.