SOMATIC EXPERIENCING (SE™)
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a powerful therapeutic approach developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, based on his extensive research into stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics. SE™ is grounded in the understanding that trauma resides in the nervous system rather than in the event itself. This innovative approach focuses on helping individuals renegotiate and discharge the physiological activation associated with trauma, facilitating healing from the inside out.
How SE™ Works
SE™ operates by closely tracking and guiding the client’s bodily sensations, which are often the key to releasing pent-up trauma energy and restoring the body’s natural equilibrium. The process begins with the careful identification of physical sensations that are linked to traumatic memories or experiences. These sensations might include tightness in the chest, a fluttering sensation in the stomach, or tension in the shoulders. By bringing mindful attention to these sensations in a controlled and safe environment, clients can begin to process and integrate their traumatic experiences more effectively.
One of the unique aspects of SE™ is its emphasis on gradual exposure. Rather than delving directly into the traumatic memory, SE™ gently guides clients to experience their physical sensations in small, manageable doses. This method, known as “titration,” allows the nervous system to process the trauma without becoming overwhelmed. Over time, this approach helps to release the stored energy associated with the trauma, leading to a reduction in symptoms such as anxiety, hypervigilance, and dissociation.
Skills Taught in SE™
In addition to the direct therapeutic work, Somatic Experiencing also teaches clients a range of skills that support their ongoing healing and resilience:
- Grounding Techniques: Grounding helps clients anchor themselves in the present moment, reducing feelings of dissociation or overwhelm. These techniques may involve focusing on the contact between the body and the ground, noticing physical sensations, or engaging with the environment through sight, sound, or touch.
- Body Awareness: Clients are encouraged to develop a deeper awareness of their bodily sensations, learning to recognize early signs of stress or dysregulation. This awareness forms the foundation for self-regulation and helps clients intervene before their nervous system becomes overwhelmed.
- Self-Regulation Skills: SE™ teaches clients how to modulate their arousal levels by recognizing and responding to their body’s signals. This might involve using breathing exercises, movement, or other calming techniques to help bring the nervous system back into balance.
- Pendulation: This skill involves moving between sensations of discomfort and comfort within the body, helping the nervous system to oscillate and gradually release stored trauma. Pendulation allows clients to explore difficult sensations without becoming stuck in them, promoting a more fluid and adaptive response to stress.
- Resourcing: Clients are guided to identify and connect with internal or external resources that provide a sense of safety and stability. These resources might include memories of supportive people, safe places, or personal strengths. Resourcing helps to build a sense of security that clients can draw upon during challenging moments.
- Tracking Sensations: Clients learn to track their bodily sensations in a detailed and non-judgmental way. This skill helps them to stay connected with their physical experience, providing valuable information about their emotional state and helping to guide the therapeutic process.
- Boundaries and Containment: SE™ supports clients in recognizing and setting healthy boundaries, both physically and emotionally. Containment techniques help clients manage intense emotions and sensations, preventing overwhelm and fostering a sense of control.
The Benefits of SE™
Through the gentle and mindful attention to physical sensations, Somatic Experiencing (SE™) helps clients develop a greater capacity for self-regulation and resilience. As clients learn to process and release stored trauma, they often experience a reduction in symptoms such as anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and post-traumatic stress. SE™ not only helps individuals heal from past trauma but also equips them with the tools to navigate future stressors more effectively, leading to a more balanced and empowered life.
SENSORIMOTOR PSYCHOTHERAPY (SP™)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® (SP™), developed by Dr. Pat Ogden, is a body-centered, trauma-informed approach that integrates traditional psychotherapy with mindful awareness of bodily sensations, movement, and nervous system responses. This neuroscience-informed therapy is highly effective for treating trauma, anxiety, PTSD, and the lasting impact of developmental and relational injury.
While traditional talk therapy often focuses on thoughts and emotions, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy works directly with the body—where trauma, attachment wounds, and early relational experiences are often held. By integrating cognitive, emotional, and somatic processes, SP supports deep, lasting healing that includes both mind and body.
In addition to treating single-incident trauma, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is especially effective for addressing developmental and relational injury—including the impact of early attachment disruptions, neglect, inconsistent caregiving, or chronic stress. These early experiences can shape patterns of emotional regulation, self-perception, and relationships. SP helps bring awareness to these patterns and supports meaningful change by working with both the body and implicit memory systems.
How Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Works
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy addresses two overlapping but distinct areas of healing:
- Trauma resolution
- Developmental and relational repair
Each area involves different, though complementary, therapeutic processes.
Treating Trauma: Three Core Mechanisms of Change
In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, trauma is primarily addressed through three key mechanisms: Resourcing, Sensorimotor Sequencing (SMS), and Reinstatement of Active Defense (RAD). These processes help regulate the nervous system, resolve stored survival responses, and restore a sense of safety and agency.
1. Resourcing: Building Safety, Stability, and Regulation
Resourcing is foundational in trauma therapy and somatic therapy. It involves developing internal and external supports that enhance emotional regulation and resilience.
Clients learn to access resources such as grounding body postures, supportive movements, calming sensory experiences, and positive memories. These resources help stabilize the nervous system and expand the window of tolerance, allowing individuals to engage with difficult material without becoming overwhelmed.
2. Sensorimotor Sequencing (SMS): Completing Unresolved Survival Responses
Sensorimotor Sequencing focuses on identifying and processing incomplete fight, flight, or freeze responses stored in the body.
During overwhelming experiences, natural defensive responses are often interrupted or inhibited. Through careful tracking of bodily sensations and small, manageable movements, clients are supported in gradually completing these responses. This helps release stored survival energy, restore nervous system balance, and reduce symptoms such as anxiety, hypervigilance, and chronic tension.
3. Reinstatement of Active Defense (RAD): Restoring Agency and Empowerment
Reinstatement of Active Defense involves helping clients access and complete defensive actions that were not possible during the original traumatic experience.
By safely exploring these previously thwarted responses—such as pushing away, setting boundaries, or escaping—clients often experience a renewed sense of strength, agency, and empowerment. This process helps transform feelings of helplessness into a more integrated and self-directed experience.
Working with Developmental and Relational Injury
When addressing developmental trauma and relational injury, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy shifts focus from discrete traumatic events to long-standing patterns shaped by early life experiences.
In this work, we explore and understand:
- Different parts of the self (e.g., protective parts, younger parts, adaptive parts)
- Childhood states that may still influence present-day emotions and reactions
- Adaptive strategies that once helped an individual cope but may now create limitations or distress
These patterns are not viewed as pathology, but as intelligent adaptations to past environments.
Through mindful awareness of the body and present-moment experience, clients begin to recognize how these parts and patterns show up in their posture, movement, emotional responses, and relationships. Therapy supports the gradual integration of these experiences, allowing individuals to develop greater flexibility, self-compassion, and relational capacity.
For many individuals, this process leads to:
- Improved emotional regulation
- Greater sense of self-coherence
- Healthier boundaries and relationships
- Reduced shame and self-criticism
A Holistic, Body-Based Approach to Healing
By combining trauma-focused interventions with developmental and relational work, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy offers a comprehensive, integrative approach to healing.
This approach is particularly effective for individuals experiencing:
- Trauma and PTSD
- Anxiety and chronic stress
- Emotional dysregulation
- Attachment and relationship difficulties
- Developmental trauma and early childhood wounds
By addressing not only thoughts and emotions but also the body’s implicit memory and nervous system patterns, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy supports deep, sustainable change. Clients often experience increased resilience, improved relationships, and a greater sense of connection to themselves and others.
EXPLORING THE FELT SENSE: A LANGUAGE OF BODILY SENSATIONS
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.
"The body speaks its own language; a language we can all understand if we choose to listen."
Tara Brach
My Training and Credentials:
I completed a comprehensive three-year training program in Somatic Experiencing® (SE™), earning certification as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP™). This advanced training reflects a deep commitment to body-based trauma therapy and nervous system regulation. I have further expanded my expertise through master-level trainings with leading SE™ faculty, including Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing®, and Dr. Kathy Kain, an internationally recognized expert in somatic trauma therapy.
In addition, I have completed several Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) trainings, including Level 1 (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Trauma Themes) and Level 2 (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Developmental and Relational Injury) through the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI). My ongoing training at SPI includes in-depth coursework, experiential learning, and clinical consultation, allowing me to integrate Sensorimotor Psychotherapy into my work in a precise, attuned, and effective way.
Together, these advanced trainings support my ability to offer trauma-informed, neuroscience-based psychotherapy that addresses both the psychological and physiological impacts of trauma, stress, and emotional overwhelm.