Somatic Experiencing Therapy for Trauma Release: How Body-Based Healing Works

The majority of individuals are aware of what befell them. They have the ability to narrate the events, name the people involved, and explain how it happened. What they can’t always do is the thing that actually matters: feel safe in their own bodies, stop their nervous system from firing as though the danger were still present, or stop being affected by something even after they understand it intellectually. Somatic experiencing therapy has been created with this gap in mind. It acts at the level where the trauma lies, in the nervous system and in the body, not just in the tale that the mind tells about what happened.

What Is Somatic Experiencing Therapy and How It Heals Trauma

Somatic experiencing therapy is a body-based trauma therapy created by Dr. Peter Levine, which is based on the fact that trauma is not what happened, but the physiological response to it that was not completed. Whenever an animal gets away from the hands of the predator, it shakes and trembles as a form of releasing the energy of survival that was mobilized but was not utilized. Humans, by social repression and action of the cognitive mind, often repress this discharge, and the energy of survival is held in suspension in the nervous system in the form of chronic tension, hypervigilance, and physiological manifestations of threat without resolution.

The Connection Between Your Nervous System and Trauma Storage

Trauma storage occurs mostly in the nervous system and not the narrative memory that most individuals relate to traumatic experiences. The first response to danger happens before the conscious mind knows anything is happening, the brain’s threat detector fires, and the autonomic nervous system mobilizes the whole body to survive. The implicit memory of the body contains the physiological alterations of the threat response, the muscular bracing, the cardiovascular activation, the hormonal cascade, and the altered state of awareness coded in the body as the felt signature of danger.

How Unprocessed Trauma Gets Trapped in Your Body

The unprocessed trauma is retained in the body via the incomplete action process. The table below demonstrates the usual locations and manifestations of trapped trauma in the body:

Somatic Therapy Techniques for Activating the Healing Process

Somatic experiencing therapy employs a definite collection of methods that are intended to interact with the trauma in a manner that triggers healing without overloading the nervous system and re-traumatizing the individual. The main somatic experiencing methods are:

• Tracking. The therapist directs the individual to feel sensations, movements, and impulses in the physical body as they occur during the session to develop the somatic awareness upon which all somatic experiencing work is based.
• Titration. Intentionally operating with small amounts of trauma-related activation, alternating between the brink of activation and safety in the resources, and letting the trauma be processed gradually without overwhelming.
• Resourcing. Proactively creating and utilizing both internal and external resources, such as memories of safety, competence, and support, that constitute the stable base, out of which the trauma activation may be approached.
• Finishing defensive responses. Aiding the completion of the fight, flight, or freeze response that was interrupted during the initial traumatic event, so the survival energy can flow through.

Grounding Techniques You Can Practice Daily for Nervous System Regulation

Regulation of the nervous system does not occur only during therapy sessions.

Evidence-based grounding practices that should be performed daily include:

• Feet-on-floor grounding. Pushing both feet squarely into the floor and focusing on the feeling of physical support under the feet that will cause the proprioceptive system to work and indicate physical safety.
• Long exhale breathing. Making the exhale longer than the inhale that directly stimulates the vagus nerve and shows a measurable decrease in heart rate within minutes.
• Cold water contact. Splashing of cold water on the face or holding ice a little stimulates the mammalian diving reflex, resulting in rapid parasympathetic activation and control of emotions.

The Role of Body Awareness in Releasing Stuck Emotional Patterns

The fundamental skill of somatic experiencing therapy is body awareness — because emotional healing can’t bypass the body where the frozen patterns are kept. The majority of the individuals with trauma experiences have been taught to downplay or disregard body cues as a coping mechanism, either because the distress signals of the body were too intense or because their responses to the distress generated more pain.

Recognizing Your Body’s Signals and Responses

To acquire the skills to detect the body cues when processing trauma, it is necessary to determine the differences between various attributes of the physical experience. Somatic experiencing therapy involves monitoring the location, quality, intensity, and movement of sensations.

The work requires distinguishing activation sensations (constriction, heat, pressure, immobility) from discharge sensations (trembling, spreading warmth, deep breaths, a sense of expansion or release).

Mind-Body Connection Strategies for Lasting Stress Relief

The mind-body relationship in trauma therapy works in both directions: body-based therapeutic interventions modify mental and emotional conditions, and psychological interventions modify physiological conditions.  The American Psychological Association (APA) argues that combining somatic and body-based therapies with cognitive and relational therapies has more comprehensive outcomes in trauma than each modality alone, especially with complex and developmental trauma that manifests itself along a variety of pathways that require different therapeutic strategies.

How Mental Health Center of San Diego Integrates Somatic Methods Into Treatment

Mental Health Center of San Diego combines somatic experiencing therapy with body-based healing techniques into holistic treatment of trauma, which encompasses physiological, psychological, and relational aspects of trauma recovery. Our clinicians have been trained in the field of somatic experiencing and know that real emotional healing requires working with the nervous system itself, not just the narrative and cognitive layer of traumatic experience.

Contact Mental Health Center of San Diego today to speak with a care specialist about somatic experiencing therapy and trauma-informed treatment options.

FAQs

1. Can somatic experiencing therapy help release trauma stored in muscles and tissues?

Yes. Somatic experiencing therapy is specifically developed to treat the trauma that is stored in the muscular system and autonomic nervous system as an unsuccessful defensive reaction and chronic survival activation. The therapy helps the person to complete and discharge the physiological survival responses which were interrupted during the initial traumatic experience by directing the individual to observe and engage safely with body sensations.

2. How quickly does nervous system regulation occur with body-based healing practices?

Grounding measures can be used to promote acute nervous system regulation, such as breathing in long exhales, contact with cold water, and feet-on-floor grounding, which can be achieved in a few minutes of practice. The more profound and enduring regulation that somatic experiencing therapy offers in working with the chronic dysregulation patterns of the nervous system is generally achieved over weeks to months of continuous therapeutic effort, and most individuals report significant changes in their baseline autonomic regulation.

3. What physical symptoms indicate your body is processing and releasing trapped trauma?

Physical symptoms with which the active trauma processing and release is most often linked in somatic experiencing therapy are spontaneous trembling or shaking as the nervous system releases held survival energy, warmth in formerly tense or cold parts of the body, spontaneous deep breathing or sighing as the diaphragm releases chronic holding, yawning as a parasympathetic discharge response, involuntary small movements in the limbs as incomplete defensive responses complete, and a general sense of settling, softening, or increased spaciousness as the survival activation fully discharges.

4. Is somatic therapy effective for people who do not respond well to talk therapy?

Somatic experiencing therapy is also best suited to individuals who have not responded completely to the therapeutic process of talk therapy, since it operates via the body and the autonomic nervous system, as opposed to verbal storytelling and reflective thought. Pre-verbal trauma, trauma that overwhelmed the cortical processing systems during the event, and trauma, the main effects of which are physiological, and not primarily cognitive, are all responsive to somatic approaches that address the location of the trauma.

5. How does pendulation help your nervous system reset during overwhelming emotional moments?

Pendulation assists the nervous system in resetting itself in situations of intense emotional upheaval by teaching the nervous system, via repeated practice, that activation does not need to become overwhelming, but that the process of getting off the precipice of distress and back to safety is possible and reliable. The resource to mild activation and back to the resource pendulation cycle increases the range of tolerance within which the nervous system may stay regulated, progressively expanding the ability to get closer to harder material without floods.