so·mat·ic (a) : of, relating to, or affecting the body

ex·​pe·​ri·​ence (n) : direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge 

Somatic Experiencing™ is a trauma resolution and stress reduction modality created by Peter Levine, informed by his simple and profound observation that wild animals regularly face life-threatening situations but don't develop PTSD or chronic trauma symptoms the way humans do. They complete their stress responses through shaking/discharge and return to baseline. Somatic Experiencing™ theorizes that trauma and traumatic chronic stress are incomplete survival responses—moments where we couldn't complete instinctual fight/flee responses. These unfinished responses remain recorded in the implicit memory of the nervous system, creating patterns of incoherence and disconnection. In Somatic Experiencing™️ we create the conditions and resources necessary to work with the body's innate capacity to complete those survival responses, freeing up bound survival energy. Learn more about SE here.

Trauma can be understood as any moment that overwhelmed our ability to respond. When we couldn't fight, flee, or find safety, that unresolved energy gets stored in the body. This is why working with the body is so fundamental to trauma resolution; trauma is a physiological response to overwhelming survival stress, whether from a single big event or many small events linked together over time. Trauma and chronic stress can make it feel like we can't safely be in our bodies. This disconnection perpetuates our feeling of being in danger, because it severs us from our instincts, true feelings, and desires. When we restore our sense of being able to be safely in our bodies, we restore the natural flow of life force through our whole system. Trauma resolution is as much about trauma as it is about restoring what trauma takes from us—safety, choice, aliveness, connection, play, creativity, pleasure, joy, complexity and nuance. It is a restoration of your wholeness through which you can shape and experience your life.

Somatic Experiencing™ supports us not only in resolving and repairing past traumas and ongoing chronic stress but is equally as powerful for exploring our growth edges, deepening creativity, and expanding capacity for aliveness. We need to grow our capacity to not only hold space for the challenging feelings in our lives, we also need to grow capacity to receive the goodness of our lives, embody the power of our desires and longings and feel fully the aliveness that comes with being truly present in our lives. Like the gardener who knows to tend the soil, sunlight, and water when the rose doesn't blossom, Somatic Experiencing™ helps us create the conditions for our own natural unfolding.

Somatic Womb Work is a modality being developed by Dr. Jeevan Singh, Kris González DAcCHM, and myself over at Womb School. Somatic Womb Work supports you in cultivating greater womb and pelvic bowl embodiment. It guides us to the womb space as a place of reclaimed safety, as the seat of our pleasure, creativity and vitality, where deep healing becomes possible. We do this through gently and respectfully reestablishing your innate relationship to your womb and pelvic bowl, at a pace and rhythm that meets you where you are. This work is available to anyone, regardless of whether you have a physical womb.

Birth is an all-encompassing initiation into the lifelong path of parenthood. There is a you before giving birth and a you after giving birth. Birth fundamentally reorganizes you, and often this can be incredibly overwhelming, especially in a culture that lacks rituals to honor this rewiring and structures that support parents in integrating their newfound role and responsibility. When the experience overwhelms our capacity to integrate it, birth can leave unresolved imprints in the body, much like trauma does. Somatic Birth Story Integration lets you reweave these overwhelming moments into touchstones of resilience and points of power, through slowing things down and making space for your natural instincts and impulses to emerge.