Coming Home to Yourself: Body Centered, Somatic Therapy
my brain and
heart divorced
a decade ago
over who was
to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become
eventually,
they couldn't be
in the same room
with each other
now my head and heart
share custody of me
I stay with my brain
during the week
and my heart
gets me on weekends
they never speak to one another
- instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week
and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:
"This is all your fault"
on Sundays
my heart complains
about how my
head has let me down
in the past
and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future
they blame each
other for the
state of my life
there's been a lot
of yelling - and crying
so,
lately, I've been
spending a lot of
time with my gut
who serves as my
unofficial therapist
most nights, I sneak out of the
window in my ribcage
and slide down my spine
and collapse on my
gut's plush leather chair
that's always open for me
~ and I just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up
last evening,
my gut asked me
if I was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head
I nodded
I said I didn't know
if I could live with
either of them anymore
"my heart is always sad about
something that happened yesterday
while my head is always worried
about something that may happen tomorrow,"
I lamented
my gut squeezed my hand
"I just can't live with
my mistakes of the past
or my anxiety about the future,"
I sighed
my gut smiled and said:
"in that case,
you should
go stay with your
lungs for a while,"
I was confused
- the look on my face gave it away
"if you are exhausted about
your heart's obsession with
the fixed past and your mind's focus
on the uncertain future
your lungs are the perfect place for you
there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either
there is only now
there is only inhale
there is only exhale
there is only this moment
there is only breath
and in that breath
you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out."
this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves
and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs
I packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs
before I could even knock
she opened the door
with a smile and as
a gust of air embraced me
she said
"what took you so long?"
by jon roedel
Sadly, the kind of split described in the poem above can be common. In stress and mental illness, people can cut off from the body to cope with their pain. In American culture, we often try to think our way through our problems to a solution. My clients are frequently confused why they can’t shift a relational dynamic or make a change in their mental health through rational thought process and cognitive analysis alone. The idea that thought, emotions, sensation and the body’s processes are interconnected is foreign. Our felt sense or lived, present experience is left out of our lives and therapy. For many hearing one’s own intuition, recognizing the body’s reactions, feeling our hearts or listening to one’s gut has been lost.
In somatic psychotherapy, the connection between the mind and body is thought to be core to our well being. Our emotions, thoughts, sensation, even physiologic processes are seen as influencing each other and connected. This is a fact, not just a theory. Psychological studies of couples show how their heart rates and blood pressures increase when in a fight. Think about how when you get anxious you might get warm or feel your heart beating faster. These are examples of how our physiology is impacted by emotions. The reverse is also true.
Body based therapy includes the body in the therapy as a resource and guide for clients. It can support clients to find their center, manage anxiety, resolve trauma or give access to unconscious material that needs to be addressed. Body based therapy can support clients to develop resources within themselves to work with their inner reality. For example, the ability to find a calm baseline when their nervous system is going into a fight, flight, freeze response. Or to be able to release tension from built up emotions or past difficult experiences. Our bodies can also lead us to creative ways to find healing, solutions the mind alone doesn’t have access to. Somatic therapy puts the body and its wisdom at the center of the therapy.
Body based therapy asks that we come home to ourselves, in the here and now. Whatever we are feeling and experiencing in the present moment, has potential to resolve our pain. The ability to change our brains (called neuroplasticity) is something that happens when we can be with a felt sense of a new experience in the here and now. A felt sense is different from recalling or remembering something, as it includes tuning into the qualities that we feel in our body and senses.
It is not in our memories of the past or future predictions that change occurs. It is in the present moment, that we can re-write a past experience. This is experiential therapy. Experiential therapy uses the present moment in therapy to offer a healing experience, bring awareness to how we are being with others and find new insights. In order to change the ways we think, feel, relate to our reality, we have to experience something new, different or unfamiliar in therapy. These new experiences plant the seeds for us to have those experiences more outside a therapeutic container. This is the heart of making change.
Mindfulness pairs well with body based and experiential therapy. Mindfulness is simply noticing all the parts of our experience in any given moment (thoughts, feelings, sensations, impulses, memories, imagery). Body centered therapy invites the client to bring themselves present in the moment and meet whatever is present with non-judgement, perhaps even curiosity, compassion or acceptance. Strengthening this kind of awareness can have many benefits, including regulating our nervous system. There is a plethora of research on the benefits of mindfulness on mental health as well.
Breath, movement and safe therapeutic touch can also be included in body centered therapy. I work with the breath and breathing to support nervous system regulation and embodiment. I also work with safe therapeutic touch in therapy. There is a lot to say about this topic, beyond the scope of this piece. More writing about this will be coming soon.
Living a full, embodied life requires us to feel the range of our experience and this includes an awareness of the physical reality inside our skin. As in most therapy, the goal is to liberate the client from their limitations, allowing them to fully engage in rich, satisfying lives. Living in loving and peaceful connection with our body’s wisdom increases this potential.