About Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) was developed by Peter A. Levine, PhD to address the effects of trauma. Levine developed this approach after observing that prey animals, whose lives are routinely threatened in the wild, are able to recover readily by physically releasing the energy they accumulate during stressful events. Humans, on the other hand, often override these natural ways of regulating the nervous system with feelings of shame and pervasive thoughts, judgments, and fears. Somatic Experiencing aims to help people move past the place where they might be “stuck” in processing a traumatic event.

THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM AND SOMATIC EXPERIENCING THEORY

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is triggered into action when we’re faced with adversity and it governs the fight, flight, or freeze instinct. Although designed to be self-regulating, the ANS can become dysregulated, particularly when full expression of one’s response to trauma is repressed. As a result, the body continues to respond as if it is under threat. Negative symptoms of trauma—such as anxiety, hyper-vigilance, aggression, and shame—result from denying the body the opportunity to fully process the traumatic event.

Unresolved trauma can lead to posttraumatic stress (PTSD), sleep problems, mood swings, immune system problems and more. Somatic Experiencing restores the body’s ability to self-regulate in order to achieve balance and integrity.

YOUR SOMATIC EXPERIENCING SESSION WITH STARRY

Somatic Experiencing provides a gentle and sensitive exploration and balancing of the nervous system’s responses. In this way, a person gradually lets go of triggers and underlying symptoms of trauma. The SE trauma resolution method does not require the client to re-tell or re-live the traumatic event. Instead, it offers the opportunity to uncover and complete —in a slow and supported way— the body’s instinctual fight, flight and freeze responses. This resets the nervous system, restores inner balance, enhances resilience to stress, and increases people’s vitality, equanimity, and capacity to actively engage in life. Starry offers an environment of total acceptance and compassionate support to facilitate the release of trauma throughout your body.

You will sit across from Starry and track and report sensations as they rise up in your body. Tingling, heat, impulses to move, tension, density or lightness, colors… all kinds of sensations and energy can arise once we begin. It is integral to the process that you first learn to find and then “linger longer” in the neutral or pleasant sensations so we spend time establishing your body as a safe container or refuge. There are specific, neuro- scientifically-proven techniques that accomplish this change in your nervous system’s baseline feeling of “goodness.” You will practice these simple, life-affirming techniques. For your body, this will be revolutionary. Starry is trained to follow your body’s cues and guide the journey toward self-healing and harmony.

The length of time and number of sessions in which a client will work with Starry will depend on several factors, including the severity and duration of the trauma(s) and the degree to which the trauma has affected the individual’s nervous system. It is typical for a client to resolve major patterns in 6-8 sessions. A conversation with Starry in the initial session may be helpful in providing this kind of information. A key component to enhancing one’s ability to self-regulate is the practice of alternating, or “pendulating,” between the sensations associated with trauma and those that are a source of strength and comfort.

Starry will help you find places of safety, whether that be a place in the body that is not activated by the trauma, or a physical place to retreat to in one’s mind. Experiencing the sensations related to the traumatic event in a safe way allows a person to fully process the trauma. Clients also achieve heightened awareness of their physical responses to stress, and this skill can serve them in everyday life.