What is it?
Contemporary somatic psychotherapy is rapidly gaining an international reputation for the way it encompasses all aspects of human experience. This integrated approach to psychotherapy reflects the emerging scientific consensus that all facets of our selves – verbal, emotional, physical, social and spiritual – are inextricably linked.
Based on this understanding, I help others to experience themselves as whole and integrated beings – rather than a set of unrelated ailments or problems. This leads to a unique form of healing, transformation and deep personal awareness.
Contemporary somatic psychotherapy uses a dynamic inter-subjective approach to development of the self. It brings in trauma theory, self-psychology, neurobiology, body-oriented approaches, developmental and attachment theory as appropriate.
What can you Expect to Experience?
I provide a professional relationship of support, challenge and understanding. In the safety of this relationship, we discuss your unique experience –your thoughts, how you are feeling and what you are sensing in the body.
As well as working verbally, I engage with your dynamic bodily experiences: pattern of breathing, posture, movement or body sensations. I pay particular attention to emotions in the body, as they are central to our experience of the world and how we interact with it. Many of us have learned to suppress our emotions, while others have become overwhelmed by our emotions. Irrespective of whether we are an emotional desert or feel flooded, I work with you to facilitate bringing the emotional aspects into a state of equilibrium with the rest of your mind and body.
Together, we discover habitual patterns (‘known” or “unknown”) that maybe holding you back. Through respectful exploration, we find more fulfilling ways of being in mind & body. Through this process of transformation, you will discover a greater freedom of being more authentic with self and others.
How Somatic Psychotherapy can help?
From a medical point of view, in the safety of the therapeutic relationship, you learn new ways of interacting and start to build new neural pathways. Over time, there will be greater integration between the left and right hemispheres as well as between the brain stem (body sensations), the limbic (emotional) system and the cortex (thoughts). (Siegel 2002)
Those suffering from trauma, can start to feel safe again. After remembering and mourning the loss, you will start to reconnect to other people and the world at large. In doing so, you will start to reclaim a more complete sense of self.
As you become more embodied, you learn to recognise stress signals in the body and are able to regulate emotions so that you no longer suppress or feel flooded by them. This in turn regulates the nervous system, bringing greater balance to the mind and body.
You will be more aware of habitual patterns at the mind & body level and in this awareness find it easier to make choices with greater clarity that are more aligned to your values.
