I invite you to consider anxiety as an unspoken voice, just as depression, debilitating fatigue, migraines, feeling like one is living in a fog, unexpressed rage, helplessness could be calls for help. Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of the healing modality, Somatic Experiencing®, identifies the nervous system as an immediate entry to experience greater ease [...]
You know how it is when you want to change an unwelcome habit. You make resolutions, think positively and hope for the best. The problem is that habits are hard to change. And new habits take a lot of effort to establish. What helps sustain the momentum for change? First let's review some mindfulness instructions [...]
Vietnamese Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hahn, titled one of his first publications, The Miracle of Mindfulness. This book was published in 1975. Jon Kabat Zinn brought mindfulness to the public through his program Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction developed at the University of Massachusetts in 1979. Today, mindfulness is everywhere. Our thirst for greater health, emotional [...]
"I feel SO different", Sylvie emailed the day after our Somatic Touch session. "I had two ruptured discs and felt very protective of my back for the last 35 years because of a car accident. My upper back had come to feel like a solid immovable mass. But now I can feel the various bones and [...]
Craig* said he was on the verge of a bad mood as he waited for traffic to move. This was a familiar feeling in a familiar situation. Suddenly, he remembered a Somatic Experiencing exercise we did together where I invited him to recollect positive past experiences and to connect with how his body felt. Craig [...]
Mindfulness is intended to increase our happiness and put an end to our distress. It starts with being alert to what is happening in the moment with our body and mind. The therapeutic approach of Somatic Experiencing engages this inquiry in a similar way. Soma means body - we experience our bodies from the inside-out [...]
Coming out of the dark When Sarah came for a Somatic Experiencing and Somatic Touch session, she said she didn’t have anything particular in mind to work on this day. But as usual, she was curious what her body’s wisdom would reveal. Sarah has ME/chronic fatigue syndrome and has learned to attend carefully to her [...]
I recently completed a Somatic Touch Training module taught by Kathy Kain, a Somatic Touch specialist and Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute faculty member. Ms. Kain taught how healing of past traumas is possible through respectful and intentional touch with different layers of our bodies such as skin, muscle, bones, and organs. During the training, participants [...]
One of my clients, *Natalie, was curious to explore how **Somatic Experiencing touch work might affect a painful condition in her lower back. On this occasion, we agreed it might be helpful for me to place my hands on the soles of Natalie's feet. We settled into the contact, and Natalie said she was comfortable. [...]
As I sat with Ruby, my friend's healthy and active 89 year old mother, I was struck by how quickly she responded to our Somatic Experiencing session. I asked Ruby to pay attention to her inner felt experience of body sensations. Ruby was recovering quite nobly from hip surgery and was very familiar with what [...]