Is Somatic Bodywork Designed For Emotional Release?
It’s common that people expect or anticipate an emotional release when receiving somatic bodywork. I have worked with many clients who have been surprised when the session completes and they did not, for instance, burst into tears even once.
Strozzi Somatic Bodywork
The bodywork I offer is designed to help you feel your body, live in your body, and learn how you can let go of unsupportive conditioned ways of being in your body. It’s all done in the service of supporting you in being in a body that can contain more relaxation and more aliveness; you need a body that can hold room for the new story about yourself that you are moving toward.
That said, there are modalities of bodywork that have a specific aim or directionality around emotions. There are styles that intentionally cause excitation in the body in order to create a bigger and louder emotional discharge; and there are styles that minimize or ignore the ways in which our emotional life is so directly integrated into our bodies. The Strozzi method of bodywork finds a balance between these two extremes. It neither tries to whip up a lot of emotional release, nor does it shut emotions off when they do arise organically.
A Somatic Release May Or May Not Include Emotions
As we soften, open, let go, and loosen the ways we consciously and unconsciously hold tension in our muscles - any number of things might occur. This means that, yes, very often we connect more deeply with emotions that we were unaware of. This may mean that crying, grief, joy, rage come to the surface. We may cry or scream or simply acknowledge to ourselves the reality of our emotional world in a way we were not previously able to see clearly. But it may also mean that not a lot of emotion gets expressed and instead we feel a sense of relief or relaxation that we have been longing for. Very often it is simply that we learn something new about ourselves or our bodies, but there is no big emotional response attached to the learning.
Bodywork Is About Learning To Live In Your Body
In other words, large emotional releases may or may not arise. They are not the point of bodywork - they are something that often happens spontaneously on our embodiment journey. Or, they may not happen at all. What is important through somatic bodywork and coaching is learning what emotions are present for you, how they live in your body, what moods you gravitate toward, and how you can develop more agency to shift your mood by shifting how you relax in your body. After all, we are always in some sort of mood or emotion (even if it is minimal or we can barely sense it) so it is important to live in moods that support the direction we are moving in life.
When strong emotions surface and are released during bodywork, this can often feel cathartic or healing for people, however one of the major benefits of this sort of release is that it can help us feel our bodies more. This means that while the emotional discharge in the moment can be powerful, equally powerful is that we pay attention to what new sensations, narrative, moods arise for us after the release. The discharge often allows for more space to feel our bodies, which is the primary purpose of the bodywork in the first place.
Somatics Is About Being Relaxed and Alive
If emotions arise during bodywork, great! If not, great! What matters is that we use the work to feel our bodies more fully so that we can better learn how we were historically conditioned to be in our body and how this either does or does not serve us in the present day. As we learn to live in a body that is soft, relaxed, and alive with energy, emotions have space to move more easily. When we can let emotions move more easily, they neither overtake us and cause harmful outbursts, nor do they get bottled up and stuffed away. Instead, emotions can rise in us and we can soften our bodies and let them move in ways that feel authentic, appropriate, and grounded.
If you’re interested in finding out how somatic bodywork can support you, contact me.