Somatic Experiencing
Befriending your body.
I help clients reconnect with their bodies and restore a sense of safety, trust, and stability, by slowing down and deeply attuning to your nervous system rather than rushing through healing.
Do you wake up in the middle of the night filled with anger or fear? Or maybe you are having racing thoughts and panic attacks? Maybe you find you are over reacting to what might seem like small triggers? You might be feeling completely overwhelmed at work and being too quick to react? Or are you having difficulty in relationships?
Conversely you might find you are feeling numb and disconnected from your body, or you may experience chronic pain, like pelvic pain? Maybe you are having trouble getting motivated to do anything and find you procrastinate a lot.
These are classic signs of unresolved stress and trauma showing up in your body, your feelings, your behaviour and your relationships.
Why the body holds what the mind can’t resolve
Most of us grew up in environments where we were taught that our body and mind are two separate things. We might have also learned that distressing emotions were bad and to be ignored or pushed away. We learned to push through pain and keep on going. Many of us have unresolved trauma or habits or patterns of how we show up in the world that we have worked on for years and not been able to change. This often leaves us feeling stuck or having the same scenarios pop up in our life time and again and we wonder why does this happen?
Often talk therapy falls short when it comes to addressing any type of chronic stress or trauma because trauma is not stored in the part of the brain that is responsible for conscious logic and rational thinking. It is stored in the body and it is your autonomic nervous system (ANS) — run by the primal brain — that governs a lot of these responses.
Your body's ANS responses are not controllable, because the ANS is our threat detection and threat response system; for survival purposes it must be faster than our conscious mind and neocortex. By going into the body and working with the nervous system, we are able to work with instinctive responses, patterns of unhelpful behaviour, and feelings of overwhelm and being out of control.
How unresolved Trauma Shows up in our life
Unresolved stress and trauma shows up in our bodies in many ways. Sometimes we have a big event — like a car accident — that we keep having flashbacks of. But often it is not in the memories but our behaviour, actions and the sensations we feel.
When trauma is experienced early in life our body becomes wired for danger, and this strong imprint stays within our body deep in our ANS. This shows up as a body that has never experienced the feeling of being fully relaxed. As a result the body can experience a range of health issues later in life, unless the imprint in the nervous system has been worked with somatically. Some of those health issues include chronic fatigue, migraines, fibromyalgia, asthma, skin conditions, gut issues, autoimmune disease, chronic pain. The list is long and extensive.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, trauma and shock that are stored in the body. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight and freeze, or are chronic fawners/people pleasers, SE helps us release and recover these patterns and brings us back to our blueprint of health, aliveness, wellness and resiliency in our bodymind.
SE was created and founded by Dr Peter Levine PhD, and is backed by 45 years of successful clinical application. It is a body-oriented therapy that can be applied across multiple professions — including coaching, psychotherapy, teaching, medicine and physical therapy — for healing trauma and stress disorders. SE is the result of the multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices and medical biophysics.
How I work
In these sessions, I use approaches from Somatic Experiencing, embodiment practices, lymphatic practices, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, somatic experiencing touch modalities and coaching to help you connect with your body and befriend it, and work through any stress or trauma that is stored in there. I think of it as nervous system coaching, and it is much slower and gentler in nature than the other coaching modalities I work with.
We work with the natural physiology of the body to unwind and resolve any stress and trauma that is stored in there, and I educate you with strategies to better resource yourself in the day to day of your life. We are building your capacity to listen to your body and connect with the natural impulses it has, so you can better deal with the challenges that life throws your way.
I use both a talk approach and somatic touch approaches, depending on what is coming up for you, and we will talk together about different approaches and work out the best one for what's arising for you.
I support people in restoring a deep sense of safety, connection and stability in their bodies and relationships. This is deep nervous system healing for those ready to reconnect with themselves and others.
My Special Focus Areas
Chronic stress, burnout, feelings of overwhelm and anxiety, OCD, AdHd
Medical trauma
Sexual, birth and gynaecological trauma, pelvic pain and trauma
Working with clients pre, during and post cancer treatment
Preparation for surgery or other significant medical procedures
Relational Trauma
Working with clients who feel disconnected from their emotions, where this is causing challenges in their relationships or physical health
Working with grief
Working with highly sensitive people who get overwhelmed easily by feelings and emotions
Healing ancestral trauma passed down through family systems
Trauma and stress arising during major life transitions — becoming a parent, postpartum, menopause and midlife, and transitions like divorce
How do we begin?
I aim to create a safe environment where we can work to the pace of your nervous system. For those of you feeling disconnected from your body, I offer a gentle, structured, and relational approach to trauma healing.
You can book a 60 minute or 90 minutes, whatever you prefer, and we work online via zoom OR if you are in Melbourne, you may like to book an in person session. I work in the Hawthorn area of Melbourne at Beingwell, 41-43 Church Street, Hawthorn.
Ninety minutes is recommended for most sessions in order to deepen your therapeutic process.
If you are a new client who I haven’t worked with before, we have an initial consultation so that we can can meet and talk about what you would like to work on and talk through the process. This meeting is 30 minutes long and will be online via zoom. When you book, you will automatically be sent a calendar appointment with a zoom link in it. Upon receiving your booking, I will send you an intake form to complete. Please submit this prior to our initial consultation time.