Bodywork For Trauma
The bodywork I offer is designed to help people feel their bodies more deeply, and because many of my clients have had trauma, the bodywork is also a place to process that trauma. As we “let go” of holding and contractions in our body and muscles, we also can feel our energy and aliveness in ways we may not have for years, or even decades. This can be experienced very differently from person to person: some people find incredible relief and relaxation, while others have fear or even terror come to the surface. When we stay with our body sensations rather than reverting to the rational, strategizing mind to be with these experiences, there is the potential for spontaneous healing and somatic openings.
Somatic Openings
Rather than attempt to describe the process of somatic opening in theory (as I have done in previous writings) this blog is an overview of three very different recent bodywork sessions. In each of these sessions, my clients had profoundly different experiences in confronting the way their individual trauma was held in their body. A somatic opening occurs when we actually allow the tissues of our body to shift in such a way that we experience a different sense of self, and a difference sense of what is possible for our future. We allow ourselves to complete an action in our nervous system that was frozen as a result of a trauma, or we simply experience a way of being in our body that shifts our entire sense of our present self. It’s not that somatic openings create permanent change, but rather they open a doorway of what is possible for our future.
Client 1: somatics and anger
This particular came into the session wanting to address a numbness in her arms. She could feel much of her body, but her arms in particular felt distant, like they weren’t even hers. Very often with trauma, we are forced to numb ourselves from our body: letting ourselves feel our body sensations can pose a risk to perceived safety, and so we can very understandably learn to disconnect from those sensations as a survival strategy.
Through some bodywork and guided imagery, she began to establish more of a felt sense in her arms. I encouraged her to simply stay with the sensations that were coming online, trusting that the body can guide toward its own healing if allowed space. As the sensation built, she felt the impulse to raise her hands overhead. A vision of a powerful wild animal came to her imagination, and her arms and hands began to make aggressive clawing and attacking motions overhead. This impulse to fight and use our aggression very often gets stymied in the face of trauma, and letting the nervous system do what it needs to do - often on a very animalistic level - is critical for the client to feel a sense of completion in their need to protect, fight, and defend themselves as a biological organism. For her, this very physical motion was connected to a long-repressed anger that she was now allowing to move in her body.
After the session, she could feel her arms and she left with a smile on her face and a sense of relief.
Client 2: somatics and release
In this bodywork session I was working with a client with a history of emotional and sexual abuse. As I was working around the hips and psoas area of her body, she began to tremble some and her breath became more rapid. As with the previous client, I encouraged her to stay with the sensations, rather than get distracted with any thoughts about the sensations. As the intensity built for her, my job was to encourage her to stay with her body. For many clients, this sort of exposure to old fear can be terrifying, so going slow is important.
Soon she was able to tell when she had reached a threshold where she needed to start to calm her system and she placed her hands over her chest and began to naturally self-soothe and calm herself down. Letting that sort of trembling in the muscles happen is a vitally important way that humans discharge old energy. Although there was still more energy in her to discharge, that would come at a later time. She did a fantastic job of allowing herself to move in ways she had previously suppressed. She told me that although it was scary, she knew that she was letting herself go through the process of discharging an old fear that, in the past, she had always contained and held in.
Client 3: somatics and belonging
In my session with this third client, she had shared a history of trauma, including physical abuse at the hands of her father. After our seated conversation and standing centering practice to begin the session, we transitioned to bodywork. As I guided her to use her breath to help soften and release around areas of deep holding in her body, I spent the majority of the session with hands-on soft tissue work, helping her to let go of areas she was contracted in her muscles and fascia.
By the end of the session I could see she was visibly flatter on the table; she had let herself relax into the table rather than hold herself up, tense and vigilant like she was when she first lied down. Her eyes began to water as she spoke of feeling a connection with a deep sense of belonging in the world. When she stood up, she looked relaxed in her body and she reported feeling both relaxed and also emotional. She was tapping into a felt sense that was more connected to herself and to the world - a felt sense she had not accessed in a very long time.
Somatics for healing
If you or someone you know might benefit from a somatic bodywork session, send me a message or book online today and give yourself the time and space to listen to your body.