About Somatic Experiencing©

Somatic Experiencing©

Life is about enjoyment, we are mainly driven by curiosity and pleasure. And sometimes this enjoyment is blocked by overwhelming events that are too big, too unexpected, or too fast for our brain to process properly. The experience is frozen in your body and this can lead to a trauma, resulting in psychological and physical complaints. This can even happen years after the event. Somatic Experiencing © was developed by Peter Levine and is a method which teaches you, amongst other things, to discharge stuck energy. Afterwards bad memories and/or symptoms really belong to the past, and you can relax more easily and enjoy the here and now. It helps you to get the self-regulating mechanism of your body going again and to increase its capacity. The result is more self-confidence and resilience.

What clients say

• I am alive!
• It feels like a heavy burden has been lifted from my shoulders.
• I now know how to deal with life.
• I feel more balanced and emotionally more stable.
• I wish I had known this sooner.
• I can finally relax again and sleep well.
• I can handle stress much better now.
• I don’t panic anymore, I can think clearly.
• Happiness is now mine.
• I can enjoy myself again.
• I participate in society again, just like my friends.

How does the method work?

Somatic Experiencing © is a bottom-up method. We use the body sensations as an input to process the symptoms of trauma. The trauma is not caused by the event itself, but by the reaction of our brain. The brain short-circuits, as it were, causing an imbalance in the nervous system. It is the symptoms of this imbalance that can get in the way of our daily lives. Look here for a list of symptoms. I help you to access the physical memories of the event and not the story itself. Sometimes we don’t know what happened because it happened in very early childhood or even prenatally, where there are no words and/or images. However, the body ‘speaks’ through the sensations so that we can still access the trauma and dissolve blockages. This may be accompanied by vibrations, shocks, or shaking. Yawning, belching and emotional release such as crying are also part of the process of discharging the trauma. We achieve this by focusing on what can be felt in your body; images, emotions and movement can also arise. If necessary, I support by touching. Somatic Experiencing © is a friendly method that restores the natural fluctuation of the nervous system. By ‘moving’ back and forth between opposite sensations such as cold/heat, contraction/expansion, pleasure/pain, the balance is restored. We also include emotions, images, and convictions in this process. This repetitive and rhythmic process helps you to develop a greater capacity against stress and to remain more in the ‘here and now’, the place where we can be curious and creative.