healing trauma Somatic Experiencing Therapy

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is one of the most effective trauma healing tools taught worldwide. It is an approach that allows the therapist to guide the client through challenging states and situations and offers a basic approach to understanding and managing the effects of shock and trauma. The bodily experiencing method works directly with the client’s autonomic nervous system, allowing the client to complete innate defensive responses and restore balance to the nervous system.

Created by Peter Levine, PhD, this therapy works on the principle that trauma gets trapped in the body, leading to some of the symptoms people with PTSD or people who have experienced trauma might experience. Through this method, practitioners work on releasing this stress from the body. One aspect of this disregulation is known as the freeze response, to our body’s primitive defense against danger. This response would activate if someone were being chased by a tiger. Unlike the “fight or flight” response that takes place in response to an acute threat, which causes the sympathetic nervous system to increase heart rate, breathing, and focus, the “freeze” response can cause the opposite.