"Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness."

Somatic Experiencing (SE™) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP™) are both innovative, body-oriented psychotherapies designed to address the profound impact of trauma and stress on the mind and body. These therapeutic approaches recognize that trauma is not just stored in the mind but also deeply rooted in the body, influencing our physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. By integrating body awareness techniques with traditional therapeutic methods, SE™ and SP™ offer holistic healing strategies that enable individuals to process and release traumatic stress

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP™) is a body-oriented approach to trauma treatment developed by Dr. Pat Ogden that combines traditional psychotherapy with techniques to increase awareness of bodily sensations. SP integrates cognitive, emotional, and physical dimensions, addressing the physical manifestations of trauma that often remain untouched by standard talk therapy. By emphasizing the body’s role in the healing process, SP enables individuals to process and transform traumatic experiences in a holistic and embodied way.

SP helps facilitate change and healing through three primary mechanisms: Resourcing, Sensorimotor Sequencing (SMS), and Reinstatement of an Active Defense (RAD). Each mechanism focuses on different aspects of body awareness and response, helping clients develop resilience, heal trauma, and create new, adaptive patterns of behavior.

1. Resourcing is foundational in SP and involves building internal and external resources that enhance an individual's ability to cope with stress and manage difficult emotions. In therapy, clients learn to identify and cultivate resources that might include specific body postures, movements, memories, or sensory experiences that evoke feelings of safety, strength, or comfort. These resources help regulate the nervous system, enabling clients to remain within their window of tolerance during sessions. Resourcing also empowers clients to create new associations with past experiences—ones that foster resilience rather than reactivity. The goal of resourcing is to enhance stability and increase one’s ability to face challenging situations while feeling supported from within.

2. Sensorimotor Sequencing (SMS) is a process of helping clients identify, track, and process incomplete physical responses that were originally triggered during a traumatic event. Traumatic experiences often leave the body in a state of incomplete arousal, where fight, flight, or freeze impulses were interrupted or could not be fully acted upon. In SMS, the therapist guides the client to mindfully track and complete these sensorimotor impulses in small, manageable steps, also known as “slivers of memory.” By safely exploring these movements, clients release residual energy stored in the body and gain a renewed sense of agency. This gradual sequencing helps restore the natural flow of the autonomic nervous system, leading to a reduction in the physical manifestations of trauma.

3. Reinstatement of an Active Defense (RAD) involves identifying and completing defensive responses that were thwarted during the original trauma. When an individual is unable to act upon their natural defensive impulses, such as running away or pushing back, the body stores this energy, which can manifest as anxiety, hypervigilance, or tension. RAD focuses on revisiting these thwarted defenses and discovering how the body wants to complete the action—what the client needed to do but couldn't during the traumatic event. By facilitating and completing these defensive movements in therapy, clients often feel a sense of empowerment and mastery over their experience, which helps counteract feelings of helplessness and restores a sense of agency.

By focusing on these three mechanisms, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy provides clients with a unique and holistic approach to trauma recovery. The process starts with resourcing, ensuring clients have a solid foundation of safety and stability. Then, sensorimotor sequencing allows for the gentle release of stored traumatic energy through movement and body awareness. Finally, reinstating active defenses helps individuals experience a sense of completion, mastery, and empowerment over their past experiences. This progression allows clients to integrate their traumatic memories in a way that feels less overwhelming and more manageable, enabling healing to occur at a deep, somatic level.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy addresses not only the cognitive and emotional aspects of trauma but also the physical sensations and impulses that accompany it. This multidimensional approach allows clients to engage with their entire being—mind, body, and emotions—helping them recover from the effects of trauma and move toward a more connected and resilient self.​​

The felt sense is a rich and nuanced way of experiencing bodily sensations, often described through various categories of sensation. In terms of intensity, sensations can feel sharp, dull, intense, weak, hard, soft, pressurized, or solid. When focusing on muscle sensations, individuals might describe feelings such as trembling, achy, shuddering, crampy, shivery, twitching, pulsing, fluttery, shaky, throbbing, tense, or spasming. These sensations often provide insight into emotional or physical stress. Skin sensations are equally varied and might include feelings like itchiness, prickliness, tingling, sweatiness, moisture, clamminess, dryness, flushing, or even goosebumps.

When it comes to temperature, sensations can range from frozen, icy, cold, and cool to numb, warm, hot, boiling, or steaming, which often reflect emotional states or body tension. Constriction sensations may manifest as feelings of being stuck, knotted, blocked, tense, contracted, tight, congested, constricted, breathless, compressed, or even suffocating. These are common when the body is responding to stress or anxiety. On a larger scale, whole body sensations might be described as trembling, heavy, thick, vibrating, flaccid, full, puffy, jittery, gurgling, energized, light, calm, fidgety, jumpy, tingling, faint, fuzzy, wobbly, spinning, or buzzing, offering a broader sense of how one feels overall. Finally, expansion sensations bring a sense of openness and movement, and can be felt as expansive, floating, fluid, radiating, waves, moving, flowing, relaxed, glowing, or streaming.

This language of sensation helps individuals connect more deeply to their bodily experiences, aiding them in processing emotions, physical feelings, and psychological states in a more embodied and mindful way.

Somatic Experiencing (SE™) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP™) are both body-oriented therapeutic approaches that emphasize the integration of bodily sensations with emotional processing to heal trauma and stress-related disorders. Both methods recognize the profound connection between the mind and body, utilizing mindfulness and somatic awareness to help clients attune to their physical experiences. SE™ focuses specifically on releasing physical tension and stored energy from trauma, aiming to restore the body’s natural self-regulation abilities. In contrast, SP™ combines traditional talk therapy with body-centered techniques to address trauma, attachment, and developmental issues, providing a more comprehensive framework that includes cognitive and emotional aspects of psychotherapy.

Despite these differences, SE™ and SP™ complement each other well, offering a synergistic approach that can be tailored to meet the unique needs of each client for a more holistic and effective healing process. By integrating somatic techniques with traditional psychotherapeutic approaches, both SE™ and SP™ honor the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. Whether used as standalone treatments or in conjunction with other therapeutic modalities, SE™ and SP™ hold great promise for promoting healing, growth, and transformation in individuals dealing with trauma and related issues.

Suggested SE™Readings: 

• Kain, K, & Terrell, S. (2018). Nurturing Resilience: Helping Clients Move Forward from Developmental Trauma - An Integrative Somatic Approach. Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books.
• Levine, P (1997). Waking the tiger: healing trauma : the innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences. Berkeley, CA., North Atlantic Books.
• Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, NY, Penguin Books.

Suggested SP™Readings: 

• Ogden, P. (2021). The pocket guide to sensorimotor psychotherapy in context .(Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). W.W. Norton & Company.

Suggested SE™ Videos: 

• Peter Levine: What is Pendulation in Somatic Experiencing®
• Peter Levine: How to Overcome Toxic Shame
• Kathy Kain: Objecting Without Contracting or Let It Be So  (The exercise starts at the one hour mark and lasts about 12 minutes)

To learn more about SE™ or to find a Somatic Experiencing Practitioners (SEP) in your area, please visit TraumaHealing.org. For more information  about Sensorimotor Psychotherapy™ (SP™) or to locate Sensorimotor Psychotherapists near you, visit the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI). ​​