Somatic therapy is a relatively new approach to psychotherapy that incorporates a person’s body into the therapeutic experience. While most forms of speaking therapies are based on identification and modification of thought processes, somatic therapy understands that there is a close relationship between the mind and the body. The term somatic originated from the Greek word soma indicating body and this form of practice focuses on how various somatic experiences such as touch sensation, body motions and even somatic experience can help expound and solve psychological aspects.
Assertiveness can be a form of the therapy that can benefit those individuals who suffered a trauma, stress or some other emotionally disturbing situation in their lives because this type of therapy is aimed at helping people liberate the stress and energy that is accumulated and stored in their muscles. Today, we will be looking at what somatic therapy is, the process entailed in the therapy and who stands to benefit from the therapy.
What Is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a type of therapy that is available today that involves consideration of the fact that people’s ordinary emotional and psychological anxiety burdens have an impact on not only the mind but also on the body. Even emotions such as trauma, anxiety, depression or other mental health disorders can be lodged in one’s body to manifest in tension, pain or even some forms of chronic diseases.
In somatic therapy, therapists help clients to observe themselves at the somatic level and as a result, clients are able to work on issues that have found over-expression at physiological level. Sensory-motor processing of these experiences is the goal of somatic therapy in order to regain the ideal current of energy and mental health.
The Mind-Body Connection
The fundamental concept that is usually practiced in somatic therapy is the cognition of the mind and the body connection. And when individuals go through traumatic or stressful events in our lives, our whole-body mechanism tends to store up that stress in muscle tension, tight muscles, or somatic symptoms. These bodily responses can persist for a long time after the event or stressor has occurred resulting to chronic conditions.
For instance, a man who seems to have just passed through a traumatic episode might exhibit signs such as stiffness of muscles or rapid shallow breathing. These physical responses are a life saving response of the body; however, they deny people the ability to address and recover from their pain. She explains that somatic therapy takes advantage of this aspect by assisting the clients in identifying those sensations and letting go the feelings that are underlying the physical symptoms.
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How Somatic Therapy Works
Somatic therapy involves; the use of some therapeutic techniques that draw the attention of the client to both mental and physical processes. The process typically involves:
1. Body Awareness
Somatic therapy begins with how people build an awareness of bodily sensations and forms or motions within their bodies. Thus, the client is urged to pay attention to the physical sensations in his or her body, which can be chest constriction, fists, or rapid breathing, for instance. When attending to these sensations, it means that people can always relate them to feeling and experience.
2. Grounding and Centering
Some of the grounding techniques assist people in ensuring they are in touch with the environment and or the current events happening around them. This can include concentration on stimulating one’s sense of feet, and special movements or breathing patterns to follow that provides a feeling of solidity. Counselling starts from the foundation, which can be reassuring to the clients making them feel like they are in the present world if they are being counselled regarding past traumas or any other painful incidents in their life.
3. Movement and Gestures
Somatic therapists are likely to direct clients to move in the manner which they would naturally. This may comprise of stretching, shaking or even minor body movement like changing from one comfortable position to another. This makes movement important as it assists in tackling and reducing stress and energy that may be build up in the body. In this way, rather freely, the body loosens and thereby the person frees himself, often from the emotions. Also, You can download People-Health Mobile app from https://rb.gy/btei8w
4. Tension Release
The other major component of somatic therapy is about how to let go of holding energetic charge anywhere in the body. This can be through use of breathing techniques, body mind connection as well as physical activities. Once the tension is established, it is should be reduced/former and the client can learn how to unburden herself with the sufferings.
5. Emotional Integration
When clients relax their body they tend to feel more of what is inside them. Patients’ reaction is stimulated in this process; they can recall various unpleasant events that they have gone through. The feelings represented here as one is overwhelmed with are prompted during the therapy with the help of the therapist and the client eventually ‘gets over’ them.
Benefits of Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy has numerous advantages especially to persons who have not find healing from their trauma through conventional talk therapy. Some key advantages include:
1. Healing Trauma
Somatic therapy is most useful in trauma because that information gets ‘lodged’ in the body. Somatic therapy involve in reducing the somatic counselling factors in clients including stiffness, shake, tear, sweating and trembling to enable the clients to discharge trauma easily.
2. Improved Emotional Regulation
The clients who gain the awareness of their sensations will be better controlled by their feelings. Awareness of the feelings that dictate when the body was tense or in stress helps the individual to control this feeling before severe condition.
3. Reduced Anxiety and Stress
Desensitization, breathing exercises, grounding, centering, and movement are some of the somatic therapy methods, which assist get rid of vanquishing anxiety as well as stress. Clients are thus able to slow their down their nervous systems through attending to present thoughts and physical feelings experienced right now.
4. Increased Self-Awareness
Somatic therapy contributes positively to self-awareness since it directs the clients to focus on ceased between the physical being and the emotional being. This may lead to an enhanced sense of self-awareness and thereby results in an improved mental health show.
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Conclusion
This form of treatment adopts the body as a tool of treatment of psychological and emotional issues hence making somatic therapy a unique form of therapy. Some of the available techniques are determination of body location, grounding, movements and relaxation that would help people start to counter complex issues that are emotional as well as traumatic. As such somatic therapy engages the body and assists the client to regain a good emotional equilibrium thus a more satisfactory and wholesome life.
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