Treatment for mental health has increased substantially in the past two decades. Originally, therapy meant having to sit across the doctor and discuss your issues, but today there are dozens of therapies that include cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, EMDR, mindfulness-based therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and much more.
Each therapy addresses a different aspect of psychological well-being and serves a distinct function according to what somebody is going through.
One of these that has received a great deal of attention is somatic therapy. Somatic therapy searches have increased significantly year to year. Somatic therapy benefits go beyond just emotional processing and anxiety.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic is derived from the Greek word soma, meaning body. Somatic is a broad term for all therapies that are body-based, including working with sensation, movement, and breath as the main modalities for processing the psychological and emotional aspects of the body.
It is based on the principle that your body stores stress. If you have ever had a panic attack and felt your chest tighten, you have felt this mind-body connection.
Somatic therapy involves physical methods, such as breathing, grounding and gentle movement, to identify where stress is occurring in the body and to physically move it. It helps to calm your nervous system from the fight, flight, or fright response and re-enter the healing mode.
What really happens in a Somatic Therapy session?
This is where somatic therapy is most different from conventional therapy. It is more interactive, more body-oriented, and sometimes more slow-paced than regular therapy. What really happens:
- Check-in: The practitioner will not begin with the question: “How are you feeling? They will have you scan yourself physically. They may ask, “What is your body saying to you at this time? It could be that your shoulders are raised by your ears, your jaw is clenched, or your hands are cold.
- Tracking Sensations: When the practitioner identifies the physical tension, he guides you to “track” it. The therapist will assist you to remain with them, follow their movements, and guide them to release.
- Pendulation: This is a fundamental technique. The practitioner will encourage you to focus on some place in your body that is entirely relaxed and free from tension, such as your earlobe, big toe, etc. Your nervous system learns that you can feel calm even under tension by shifting its attention back and forth between the tense area and the calm area.
- Physical Release: As you pay attention to these sensations without fighting them, your body will often naturally release the stress. You may find yourself needing to take a huge, deep breath.
Repeated sessions create a window of tolerance over time. It’s the ability to deal with difficult feelings and sensations without being overwhelmed.
The Benefits of Somatic Therapy
The following are some of the benefits you may expect from Somatic therapy:
1. Reduces PTSD Symptoms
PTSD is a disorder in which the body’s stress reaction becomes activated as if the traumatic event is still occurring. Among the somatic therapy benefits, this is one of the best-studied. Trauma is not merely in the mind but also in the nervous system, so calming the physiology can completely alter a trauma response. In fact, clinical studies have shown that 44% of participants completely lost their diagnosis of PTSD following somatic treatment.
This is best for combat veterans, childhood trauma survivors, accident survivors, and those with complex developmental trauma.
2. Relieves Chronic Pain
Chronic pain, such as fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, tension headache, and chronic pelvic pain, is a sensitized nervous system response more often than structural tissue damage.
Somatic therapy reconnects you with your physical language. It helps the brain to begin to feel that it is safe to move, directly decreasing the physical inflammation and muscle tension that are making you feel chronic pain.
Somatic and body-centered treatment programs have consistently improved pain, fatigue and function in patients with fibromyalgia.
Improves Your Digestion
There are about 500 million neurons in the enteric nervous system in the gut, and they send signals bidirectionally to the brain via the vagus nerve. A dysregulated ANS directly impacts gut function. IBS, chronic nausea, functional dyspepsia, and other gastrointestinal issues that cannot be explained by structural findings in the GI tract are strongly associated with nervous system dysregulation, stress, and unresolved trauma.
Somatic techniques communicate physical safety to the brain, switch on the digestive system, and inhibit the surge of inflammatory chemicals. That is why it is extremely useful in cases of functional medicine patients who experience IBS and autoimmune flare-ups from stress.
Rebuilds Emotional Regulation
But one of the lesser-known somatic therapy benefits is its effect on emotional regulation. Those who have a traumatic history, chronic stress, or a dysregulated nervous system tend to feel their emotions as all-or-nothing; either they don’t feel them at all (emotional numbness, dissociation) or they feel them all at once (flooding, emotional reactivity).
Somatic develop this skill systemically, allowing you to increase the window of toleration, or the range of activation points where a person can be present and functional.
Improves Sleep Quality
Sleep problems are not the only problem when someone has trauma, chronic stress, and anxiety. It is a disorder of the nervous system. People generally get eight hours of sleep and only then wake up feeling tired because their brain didn’t actually enter into deep sleep.
Somatic therapy switches off the alarm system in your nervous system, so that your brain can finally go into one of the deep sleep for cellular repair.
Unlocks Your Sex Hormones
Cortisol is released when your body is in physical stress. Your body takes the raw materials that it would normally use to produce estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone and uses those resources to produce cortisol. This results in reduced sexual drive, irregular menstruation, and reduced levels of the male sex hormone, testosterone.
One of the greatest somatic therapy benefits is that you will stop stealing your body’s resources by shutting off your stress response, so your sex hormones naturally balance out.
Helps Process Grief and Loss
That grief does not remain in your mind when you have lost someone or have experienced a significant loss. It remains in the body and can not pass out. The weight on your chest, the weight in your arms and legs, or the tightness in your throat is not just a metaphor. These are actual, tangible states.
Even once your brain has accepted that it has happened, your body may carry the pain. Somatic therapy helps your body process the grief properly.
Who is Somatic Therapy For?
Somatic therapy is not just for those who have suffered from a severe or acute trauma. It applies to a wider audience than many would consider trauma survivors, and it applies to many who would not consider themselves to be trauma survivors.
It is highly effective for people with:
- Persistent gut issues
- Chronic tiredness
- PTSD
- Trauma history
- Chronic anxiety
- Hormonal imbalances
- Low libido
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic tension headaches
- Grief
- Depression
- Severe anxiety
- Feeling disconnected from your body
- Unexplained physical symptoms
Somatic therapy shouldn’t be used as a replacement for medical treatment. For chronic pain, gastrointestinal or other physical symptoms, these should be assessed medically first to rule out structural causes. Somatic therapy works best as part of a functional approach that includes appropriate medical assessment and care.
What Somatic Therapy Is Not
Some people are not sure what is included in somatic therapy and what is not. This is important because it can impact your choice of where to seek care and what kind of practitioner to seek.
It is:
- Not a massage therapy.
- Not a single technique
- Not a yoga or meditation
- Not require you to re-experience traumatic events in detail
How to Start Releasing Stress Today?
Actually, there is no need to be in formal somatic therapy in order to begin working with your nervous system. These are evidence-based, body-centered practices that you can begin to work with right away that support the same biological mechanisms as somatic therapy.
- Do physiological sighing every day. One of the quickest methods to engage the parasympathetic nervous system is to take a double inhale through the nose and then a lengthy, slow exhale out through the mouth.
- Be aware of your bodily tension points. To change a physical pattern, you must first observe it. Set a reminder on your phone 3 times in your day to check your body patterns in your jaw, shoulders, chest, stomach, and hips.
- Physical activity following stress. If you are under stress after an event, your body has biological energy on board that has not been released. Brisk walking for 10 minutes, a few minutes of hard physical activity (shaking hands and arms, brisk walking), will release that tension.
- Practice Resourcing: Close your eyes and vividly visualize a place or a person that makes you feel entirely at peace. Attempt to sense the warmth of the air, the sounds, and the sense of safety in your chest area. Whenever you are upset, you can always come back to this physical sensation.
Conclusion
Somatic therapy is not a substitute for conventional therapy. The aim of somatic work, formal therapy, or daily practice is not to eradicate stress reactions. Its purpose is to create a nervous system that can fire when necessary and return to a normal state quickly.
A trained professional is a huge help if you want to get the most benefits from somatic therapy. At Kairos Health and Wellness, Lola, one of our functional health providers, takes the time to look at your unique biology, figure out if trapped stress, and build a personalized, easy-to-follow plan to help you physically release it.
If you are experiencing symptoms that could be helped by somatic therapy, please seek advice from a qualified healthcare or mental health practitioner.