Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing & Release Techniques!

   I incorporate a somatic practice into every one of my classes! While not a form of yoga per se, somatic techniques can be incorporated as a healing modality in yoga classes, just like adding reiki to a savasana. “Somatic” means relating to, or affecting the body. Traditional methods of trauma healing like talk therapy can be affective, and this is simply another approach to trauma healing that involves the body healing first, then the mind. We don’t converse during our yoga practice, but the practitioner “communicates” with the body & mind throughout the yoga practice.

   Somatic Experiencing addresses the underlying physiological symptoms of the nervous system, where trauma & pain is stored. It aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, freeze, fawn, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies, by assessing where in the body a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these states. The vagus nerve is the answer! This nerve travels from the base of the brain throughout the entire body: our information superhighway! 80% of the messages traveling through the vagus nerve are from body to brain, so healing the body first is of great benefit. Reprogramming the body’s foundation, regulating an overactive or underactive nervous system, helps you feel safe before you do the heavy lifting of trauma healing. This can be accomplished through pranayama breathing exercises, meditation, tapping, squeezing, swiping, thumping, swaying, shaking, humming, bee breath, voo or om breath, rubbing, and massage.

   We can take these techniques off our mat into daily life to regulate the nervous system, to move fluidly between the NS states, so we don’t become stuck in one. Indeed, fight or flight activation is essential to survival, such as when we are in an accident, or fleeing danger, but we don’t want to response to life in that manner every day for years on end. This harms the body, mind, and spirit. In the same way, an underactive nervous system state, existing in a freeze, fawn, shutdown state is equally harmful to the mind, body, and spirit. 

   We can use these techniques during yoga, while taking a walk, cycling, while waiting at a red light, after avoiding an accident or someone with road rage, waiting in line at a store, opening an email from the boss, or hearing a loved one’s name, who has passed, at a park. We can also sing in the car, pet an animal, bear hug, connect with nature & friends, art, and dance. All of these tools can help the body release stored trauma and over time, the body and nervous system will learn the difference between now and then, and that it doesn’t have to respond in the same manner that it did to the original traumatic experience. We can heal ourselves.