WHAT IS SOMATIC EXPERIENCING®?
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-based (bottom up) modality for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.
Dr Levine’s studies were based on the fascination about why animals in the wild are not traumatised by routine threats to their lives, while humans are readily overwhelmed and traumatised. He realised that the same instincts and related survival based brain systems and nervous system activation, that are involved in forming trauma symptoms, can be enlisted in the transformation and healing of trauma.
This “Instinct to heal” and self-regulate is therapeutically engaged through the awareness of body sensations and emotions that contradict those of paralysis and helplessness restoring resilience, equilibrium and wholeness.
It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. SE provides effective skills appropriate to a variety of healing professions including mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, education, and others.