Somatic Psychotherapy
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Changing old, ingrained patterns of reactivity requires first slowing down enough to notice them. However, insight alone is not always enough to catalyze change. This is, in part, why traditional "talk therapy" doesn't always result in transformation.
Why The Body?
The term "Somatic" comes from the Greek word "Soma", which means body.
Our body is with us through every experience we have, even if our consciousness left our body in service of survival.
When experiences are too much, too fast, too long (abuse), or not enough (neglect), and nobody is there to help us, our mind engages the nervous system to drop into our protective states (flight/fight) and because we were usually so young, our only option was to flop. This is a normal nervous system state of dissociation, which is also protective.
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Somatic psychotherapy and trauma-informed yoga, individual & group therapy can support you in regulating your emotions. These skills groups can help give you the tools that you can use right now to start seeing changes.
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Taking the nervous system from
flight-fight-flop
to
safe & social engagement.
The nervous system develops at different rates.
For example, of the many structures in the limbic system, let's look at the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala is responsible for processing emotions & is often referred to as the watchtower. It constantly scans and assesses for danger, and is fully online and functional at birth. Whereas the hippocampus, which handles memory, is not fully functional until around age 3.
This means that any experiences an individual has before that hippocampal memory system is developed gets stored as implicit bodily 'memories' (the issues are in the tissues). Anything that happens after the hippocampus is functional gets stored as explicit 'memory'.
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The nervous system is very smart in keeping us alive. We oftentimes come to therapy because we want change. Maybe surviving is no longer good enough & thriving is now desired.
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By leveraging the power of the nervous system, we engage the body to inform the mind of states of safety. It is a felt sense of safety. This is called 'bottom-up' processing.
Talking about trauma, staying cognitive, is what traditional talk therapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), or Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) & others are all about. These are what are known as 'top-down' processing.
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Top-down & bottom-up are referring to the structures of the brain & how they developed & what their functions are. The triune brain refers to 3 major areas of the brain & how they developed.
The brainstem (automatic functions like heartbeat, respiration, temperature control) develops first, then the limbic system (amygdala & hippocampus, responsible for emotions & memory), then the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC is the most evolved part of our brain, responsible for 'executive' functioning (e.g., planning, time management, logical reasoning, etc).
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Top-down = PFC to influence the limbic system
Bottom-up = Limbic system to influence PFC
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​Engaging in somatic psyhotherapy & using yoga (inward focus, concentration, & breath) are bottom-up modalities that encourage individuals to mindfully explore their internal experiences. Internal experiences of not just thought or emotions, but also sensations in the body.
This is here-and-now experiential learning that can start to change neuronal pathways, alchemizing trauma patterns into a felt sense of safety and empowerment.
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​​By focusing on the mind-body connection, the aim is to process implicit memory held in the body, experience & stay with the emotions that were unprocessed & reorganize that experience into a new encoded memory. These practices offer a holistic approach to healing from past traumas by addressing the bodily experience, somatic psychotherapy. When we use breath, postures, or concentration/meditation (yoga) to engage the body, implicit memories can show up as raw emotions without thoughts, and just as waves roll in & out, we honor what comes up by simply letting it roll in & staying with the emotion, until it rolls out. Doing this in a safe relationship is usually what was not available at the time...the therapeutic alliance creates a safe container for this processing.
When this bottom-up processing happens, new neuronal circuits are created. Talking doesn't create new neuronal cicuits. In fact, talking about the trauma over and over simply reinforces the old circuits, further embedding the nervous system state in which they were acquired...disorganized & highly charged, or disorganized & dissociated. Neurobiology confirms what ancient yogis new about samskaras...patterns or ruts in thinking or movement that get reinforced the more they are used.​​
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