Somatic Psychotherapy. What is it? How does it work?

The premise underlying body psychotherapy is that your physical condition is a perfect manifestation of your psychic attitudes. If you don't buy that, you may as well stop reading here and look into other forms of therapy.

What body psychotherapy does is help you make connections between muscular "holding" (tension) and the memories that are being "blocked" or kept from consciousness. If you release the tension and surrender to the feelings and actually bear them, then they can go away forever. Easier said than done though. We all hold back from facing the full impact of our fearful memories, simply because it's terrifying to us to revisit and re-experience something that we couldn't process in the first place. These memories originate from childhood events for which we had no support. Mom was either unavailable, or simply unable to help us cope with some major hurt so it promptly went “underground” into the deep recesses of our unconscious.

Once that connection is made, “re-membered,” you immediately feel a lost part of you has been re-integrated into your wholeness. You realize that the old memory is just that, a memory, not a present reality about which you are powerless. You may ask, then, “How do I make those connections? And, once they are made, how do I release the memory, the pain, the knee-jerk reactivity I have to certain situations?”

Here's how it looks in a session. You can even try it by yourself, but it works better with a witness who can validate whatever emerges. Validation is truly healing. You could experience a little bit of it right now, if your inner witness is well developed. Take ten or twenty quick breaths, through your mouth into your chest. What happens to you when you do that? You get out of sorts, right? It’s not comfortable. You might get dizzy or split off; you might tear up, or choke up a bit; you might simply not take in that much air into your chest; or, perhaps some part of your body will get rigid, like your diaphragm if you find yourself forcing air out with a strenuous exhale…

Many things happen when you take rapid “charging” breaths: you take in a lot of oxygen, and your body begins to feel an aliveness that, unfortunately for you, needs putting a stop to, because you can’t bear the emotional tension. So, some muscle kicks in and blocks further breathing: “I can’t take-in any more air,” your body seems to say.

Why not? You can easily take in that much air when you’re running, exercising, or having sex, right? So why can’t you take that much air just sitting down without going into discomfort? It’s because you begin to feel too much, and your body isn’t used to bearing that much feeling, that much excitement. It’s a speed limit that your body has: you feel overwhelmed. Your heart begins to beat faster, your skin might feel damp… all of the makings of a panic attack, right? So where does your mind immediately then go? It goes to the place it always goes. Where is that for you? It’s different for everybody.

Body psychotherapy helps you become conscious of your own personal, habitual “go-to” places—psychologically speaking—when you’re overwhelmed. It’s always the same one or several places. It’s a place of early childhood, or sometimes even of infancy. Do you recognize it? Do you become like an irrational child when your “buttons” are pushed and you are “shoved beyond your limits of tolerance” in certain situations? What do you know about yourself then? Certainly not much! You are in a trance, a near-unconscious place… recognize that dynamic? It happens to all of us.

You don’t have to get triggered to that extent in order to recall your body memories, or to learn about how they are held, trapped through tense musculature. Body psychotherapy helps you go slowly. Through gentle exercises, you begin to reconnect your emotions with the physical body sensations that arise in you through charge breathing. You learn to inhabit your body and interpret what it feels and what it wants in tense situations. You probably already know what you want when there isn’t much to be upset about, and most of the time what you want then is quite reasonable. However, you also probably split off into an irrational child when the stress exceeds your speed limit.

The child in you often demands what you reluctantly recognize as ineffective: “I want the world around me to change.” Been there, right? Wouldn’t you like to learn how to handle this child-this reactivity-and effectively manage your inner child’s emotions? Wouldn’t you like to see this inner child grow up, once and for all? It’s doable, and it’s as easy as breathing—conscious breathing, of course.

Your body is a lot smarter than your mind. It knows things in a fraction of the time it takes your mind to figure things out. Body psychotherapy helps you access that lightning-speed gut intelligence: once you free yourself from your own personal brand of chronic “holding” (tension) in your body. A side benefit from this, is that when you release the physical tensions that prevent the free-flow of oxygen and other chemical goodies, you automatically help heal whatever physical ailments that have been plaguing you from so much tense holding!