Somatic Yoga Therapy
Somatic work focuses on a body-centred, embodied approach best known for helping process trauma and stress responses in the body. Regardless of your experience and needs, somatic work can support you in this process, and help you build interoceptive skills aka improving awareness of your internal landscape, i.e, hunger, thirst, heart rate, respiratory rate, muscular tension and so on. Cultivating interoception is key to developing knowledge of how your body responds to stress, and its physical response to previous traumatic experiences.
For many, the healing starts here.
Holding trauma and stress in the body plays havoc across all layers of our being, known as the koshas. Integrating all layers through movement, breathwork and mindfulness is an important part of the process. Each layer (physical, energetic, mind, wisdom, bliss) impact each other, and the process involves blending those layers into an empowered being and becoming deeply connected to who you are beneath the stories.
It is important to note that trauma does not need to be a life-threatening experience. Many people experience ‘small t’ trauma; this may include grief, bullying, constant criticism, relationships that break down, job loss, financial worries, illness. These experiences can affect your sense of security and feeling grounded, your sense of self and personal power may feel disrupted, and you may experience feelings of guilt or shame. See ‘The Mind Body Connection’.
How does Somatic Yoga Therapy work?
- Focuses on physical sensations in the body, i.e., muscular contraction, breath awareness, tingling, pulsing, hot, cold. It is mindful observation and enquiry of actual, barebones experience redirecting attention from the thinking mind and unhelpful narrative.
- Creates shifts in the nervous system that supports completing the stress cycle, i.e., experiencing a fight, flight or freeze response to a threat, and returning to rest and digest. The problem arises when the body stays stuck in a sympathetic response. SYT gently helps the body learn how to downregulate, enter a parasympathetic state and begin to process stuck emotions.
- Leads from a bottom up approach, i.e., breathing, movement and mindfulness practices (body to brain), to promote nervous system balance and increase vagal tone which is key to reducing the stress response and access rest and digest.
This is a gradual process which goes at your pace to ensure a titrated widening of your window of tolerance aka the ability to regulate your nervous system during challenging times. The magic is in the journey. I invite you to trust it.
Book a free 15 minute call to see how Somatic Yoga Therapy may be able to support you.
“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
~ Pema Chödrön