Somatic therapy involves increasing awareness of the body to help manage a sense of safety, calm, and state of being present. Through somatic work, you learn to process emotions, feelings, beliefs, memories, and experiences using skills that target engagement with physical sensations with the aim to enhance a sense of safety and self-agency.

Why is the body important?

The nervous system controls your fight-or-flight responses, activation and alertness of the body, digestion, and the resting state. Often, your experiences with the world (e.g., work, relational conflicts, family responsibilities) and within yourself (e.g., stress, catastrophic thinking, memories of past situations) direct your nervous system to react accordingly. However, when you’re focused on “doing” or “fixing,” you can lose sight of how such experiences impact your body’s physiology. So when you’ve come home from a long day’s work and you just want to enjoy your time with loved ones, you might find it difficult to relax or be present. Or when you’re doing a mundane task such as grocery shopping, you might start to discover a sense of panic wash over you in Aisle 2, and you’re unsure as to why. Sometimes you might experience pent up emotions come out in a small disagreement with a loved one and you wonder how you can manage such explosion of feelings when it seems to “come out of nowhere.”

Regardless of your experiences, practicing to connect with your body can support you in your journey to managing and processing different feelings so that you can navigate life meaningfully and mindfully.