How Somatic Experiencing Works: Can It Benefit You and Your Healing?

May 7

A woman leans back in a big chair with her eyes closed and her hands behind her head as she does resourcing (a somatic experiencing exercise)

How does Somatic Experiencing (SE) therapy differ from traditional therapy? Who and what does it work for? Does it complement talk therapy or is it a substitute?

These are all questions I’ll answer in this blog. I offer Somatic Experiencing to my clients to help them with pain, trauma, anxiety, and more. Like any healing method, somatic work isn’t the solution for everyone. But it helps a lot of people.

Let’s dive into Somatic Experiencing techniques and research so you can figure out if it’s for you.

What Is Somatic Experiencing?

Somatic Experiencing therapy is a mostly bottom-up approach to repairing your nervous system and strengthening your mind-body connection. Bottom-up healing focuses on your body and the lower part of your brain.

A key aspect of SE is that it works with sensation and helps clients tune into their felt sense, as well as their thoughts and emotions. Working with your fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown responses is also essential for SE. We observe and work with your nervous system reactions during sessions to increase resiliency in your daily life.

Somatic Experiencing was created by Peter Levine to treat trauma, but it can help with so much more.

Who Can It Help?

SE can help with physical and emotional symptoms and conditions, including:

Grief
Addiction
Fibromyalgia
Chronic pain
Depression and anxiety
Concussions and other accident-related injuries

You don’t have to have trauma to experience the benefits of SE or any other somatic practices¹. Everyone is different. Your need for healing might be more subtle than the above manifestations.

Maybe you:

Engage in unhealthy habits and behaviors.
Struggle to maintain healthy relationships that contribute to your growth and happiness.
Feel stuck in your career and/or your relationships because of fear or a lack of motivation.

Freeing stuck energy in your nervous system can often help with these issues. If you have big reactions or get overwhelmed often in daily life, it may be because you experienced highly stressful events or trauma and weren't able to discharge the energy that mobilized during those events. Your brain could be assuming danger when it perceives similar threats, causing your body to shift into survival physiology. In these cases, even if you're technically safe, your system doesn't sense enough safety.

SE specifically helps the brain and body perceive safety and discharge stress energy that continues to mobilize with certain triggers.

It can be intimidating to embrace somatic work if you’ve never done it. It’s discouraging if you’ve worked with a somatic practitioner and didn’t have great results. I hope to ease your concerns by talking about somatic healing and what it looks like in general and for my clients.

Other Signs Somatic Experiencing May Benefit You

I’ve mentioned that you don’t need to experience a traumatic event to need somatic healing. Here are some situations that might be familiar to you.

You struggle with forming and maintaining healthy relationships

Relationship and social challenges can signal a need for nervous system healing.

This can look like:

Emotional reactivity when engaging with your partner, children, friends, or coworkers.
Shutting down easily in the face of conflict or even constructive criticism.
Experiencing a lot of anxiety and fear in social situations, including everyday conversations.

One of my clients felt more love for himself, his wife, and his kids after our sessions together.

You suffer from a lack of motivation and struggle to pursue your goals

You may find it difficult to establish and maintain motivation at home or work. Many people blame their lack of motivation on laziness, but there’s usually a deeper issue.

Somatic Experiencing might be able to help you uncover the source if you:

Feel like you can’t move past your overwhelm.
Have little interest in hobbies or social activities.
Lack the motivation and energy to perform well at work.

Are afraid of failing or embarrassing yourself, which stops you from trying.

You might already know why you’re unable to motivate yourself. It's likely that your tendency to get overwhelmed is holding you back. Lack of motivation often results from nervous system dysregulation.

Somatic healing brings feelings of safety to your nervous system. This leaves more room for enjoyment and critical thinking, which are nearly impossible in survival mode.

You have unexplained chronic pain, fatigue, or illness

SE can alleviate or reduce unexplained symptoms and illnesses.

You might have chronic fatigue, digestive issues, or pain with no clear cause. Maybe you haven’t been able to get a diagnosis, but your symptoms are there and disrupting your life. Traditional medicine sometimes fails to find solutions for medically unexplained symptoms. If this is your situation, Somatic Experiencing might benefit you because there's often a mind-body link to these symptoms.

Somatic Experiencing Techniques

There are several Somatic Experiencing techniques that you can do at home. Doing somatic exercises on your own between sessions can help your healing process.

As is true for any other type of treatment, SE isn’t guaranteed to work for everyone in the same way. Your unique experiences impact your capacity, preferences, and results.

Working with a practitioner is often essential for many in their healing journey. I’m a supportive and active presence for my clients, guiding them back to the present moment when needed. There are several techniques I use in my Somatic Experiencing sessions to help my clients stay grounded and present.

Awareness is a central theme with all these SE techniques.

Somatic Experiencing Exercises You Can Do at Home (Between Sessions)

While you can do these exercises at home, they’re essential to SE work with a practitioner.

If you do these techniques only by yourself, without seeing a practitioner, you’ll miss out on the benefits of co-regulation. The regulated presence of a practitioner is often what helps people feel safe enough to be with uncomfortable sensations.

Grounding

Grounding involves noticing the contact you’re making with the surfaces you’re touching. This signals safety and helps you refocus on the present moment.

You don't have to be still for this exercise. You can go on a walk or run and tune into the feeling of your feet making contact with the ground.

Orienting

Orienting to sights, sounds, smells, and other aspects of your environment can help you return to the present moment.

The goal of orienting is to communicate to your nervous system that your environment is safe or neutral. When you have trauma or chronic stress, you often lack felt safety. Orienting helps your nervous system assess your current situation and learn to differentiate between safety and danger.

Resourcing

Resourcing supports your ability to regulate your emotional and physical states. It includes grounding and orienting, as well as focusing on positive thoughts, memories, or activities that help stimulate the ventral vagal state.

During sessions, resourcing might look like:

Playing or cuddling with a pet.
Holding onto or looking at an object that brings you comfort.
Focusing on a positive memory with a loved one and how it makes you feel.
Using a weighted blanket or giving yourself a hug to promote feelings of support and security.

If you’re resourcing between sessions, you could do one of the above, go for a walk, or recall a positive memory.

Somatic Experiencing Techniques with a Practitioner

Titration

Traumatic or stressful events often lead to people getting stuck in an activated state. These responses are important when we’re in danger. But they can devastate your health, happiness, and success if you’re experiencing them frequently.

If you have trauma, you likely dissociate, lash out, or freeze, even when you're not in danger.

Titration involves working with small amounts of activation at a time. A practitioner titrates the work to avoid overwhelming the nervous system. This often means bringing awareness to feelings and reactions related to the trauma or stress, without requiring the client to talk about it³.

If overwhelm does occur, we'll switch to grounding or resourcing to help you feel safe returning to the present moment.

Pendulation

Pendulation encourages awareness during moments of activation. It involves moving from uncomfortable activation to a neutral or comfortable state. Practicing this technique helps your nervous system become less likely to get stuck in activation.

During sessions, I have my clients sit with discomfort before grounding or pendulating to help them expand their tolerance and work toward deactivating stuck energy from stress or trauma.

How Somatic Experiencing Therapy Works with Traditional Therapy

Somatic Experiencing, and somatic work in general, can be complementary to traditional therapy. Many of my clients also work with a therapist. Others prefer only somatic work.

Traditional therapy focuses more on emotions and perceptions while somatic therapy is body-based. It helps you learn to pay attention to sensations and felt sense, which involves noticing and processing the feelings within your body. Somatic work is a more holistic way of understanding yourself, including your feelings and behaviors. We know the mind and body are linked, so addressing both is essential.

Unwanted physical and emotional symptoms can result from a mind-body disconnect or overactive communication between the two. These symptoms can disrupt your daily life.

Certain therapies and techniques may be more triggering than others for you. This is why it's crucial to find a practitioner you trust.

Unlike talk therapy, Somatic Experiencing doesn’t require talking about the traumatic event. Some clients appreciate this aspect. On the other hand, while it’s not likely, somatic therapy can lead to an increase in activation for some. It may cause triggers to happen more before they get easier to manage.

Somatic Experiencing Research

Somatic work is a newer type of therapy. Somatic Experiencing research is somewhat limited, but anecdotal evidence supports somatic work. Several studies have shown its efficacy in treating physical and emotional illnesses.

A review of research presented between 2010 and 2018 revealed the benefits of SE for patients with PTSD symptoms². The review found that alternative treatments like mindfulness, yoga, and SE led to an average of 44.1% to 90% improvement in their symptoms.

Recent studies have shown a decrease in trauma and PTSD-related symptoms⁴. One study observed greater self-esteem, fewer depressive and anxious symptoms, and greater overall well-being in female breast cancer survivors following Somatic Experiencing interventions⁵.

Somatic practices also have fewer potential side effects than other medical interventions.

Is Somatic Work for You?

It’s essential to look for a practitioner who’s certified in Somatic Experiencing.

My certifications and experience with Somatic Experiencing and trauma guide my facilitation style. My somatic healing clients have seen improvements in several areas of their lives.

They’ve been able to:

Reconnect with their bodies and emotions.
Improve their relationships with themselves and others.
Experience more enjoyment and gratitude in their daily lives.
Reduce the frequency and intensity of their painful physical symptoms.

If you’re ready to find out what Somatic Experiencing can do for you, please reach out. It’s important we both feel like it’s a good fit before we move forward because I’ll play a huge role in your healing as your somatic practitioner.

Amy Hagerstrom