Your Path To Healing With

Somatic Experiencing® Therapy

Table of Contents
Introduction - page 3
● What Is Somatic Experiencing® Therapy? - page 5
● 13 Benefits of Somatic Experiencing® - page 7
● Understanding Why People “Freeze” When in Danger - page 8

Somatic Experiencing® Techniques - page 9

Effectiveness of Somatic Experiencing® Therapy - page 13
Resources - page 14
Introduction
Living with trauma is exhausting. It’s easy to underestimate the impact that harrowing events
and experiences have on your physical and mental health. At times, you may not realize why you
feel so stressed and unable to cope. You chalk it up to the weather, your diet, or people around
you. You may blame your job or another daily routine. Meanwhile, the effects of trauma fester
within you and will never leave your body until you address them directly. And you don’t have to
do it alone.

While many people think of a life-altering event as one that involves a single experience like an
assault, rape, shooting or bad accident, it’s not that simple. An event that wouldn’t bother one
person can indelibly mark another one for years – losing a job, a relationship, or a family
member. Likewise, a series of experiences can accumulate to create trauma and feelings of
helplessness. Only the person experiencing the event can truly understand how it impacts them.

How a person perceives an experience and the story they frame around it are key to
understanding how they resolve and heal from that trauma. They may still hear the voices of
parents fighting or another trigger that robs them of any progress they’ve made. These
combined stresses can seriously impair a person’s ability to engage the resilience required to
find peace and healing.

Additionally, our cultural and religious belief systems, in many cases, create our perceptions
around seemingly uneventful experiences. As a result, these social constructs and belief
systems ultimately lead to further trauma due to the emotions of shame and guilt for not
meeting others’ expectations. Further, this can easily trigger the fight-or-flight response in the

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brain, shutting down the ability to see all possibilities and outcomes that could lead to wisdom
and empowerment.

There are many tools you can use to process your emotions and heal from trauma. Somatic
experiencing® therapy is one of those treatments.

Your body reacts to trauma with obvious physical responses: tense muscles, stomach aches,
and edgy nerves. Yet, it goes so much deeper than all this to undermine your physical and
psychological health. It affects your moods, sleep patterns, and how you form your thoughts
about your future.

Since the physical effects

are easier to identify and
control, even as they reflect
emotional damage, somatic
experiencing® therapy aims
to begin healing by using
physical exercises.

We’re going to begin our

journey together by learning
about this type of therapy, its
impact, and how to
incorporate it into your life.

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What Is Somatic Experiencing® Therapy?
Dr. Peter Levine created this naturalistic, neurobiological, and body-oriented approach as a way
to focus on relieving the pain, trauma, grief, and anxiety that is stored within our bodies. It taps
into the mind-body connection to treat both physical and psychological symptoms of stress,
trauma, and any resulting mental health conditions.

His inspiration arose from the study of animals in their natural settings, where they are
constantly in danger of becoming prey. Yet somehow, they show no symptoms of trauma like
humans do. Dr. Levine discovered that when in mortal danger, animals who cannot fight or free
themselves simply freeze and “play dead.”

However, the surge of energy they would have used to defend themselves must be discharged
shortly afterward. Typically, animals will “shake it off” by trembling or another physical action. If
that step doesn’t occur, that burst of energy gets trapped in the body and you still feel as if you
are in danger.

Somatic Experiencing® Therapy releases this block of traumatic shock, moves you from your
“stuck” state, and silences the alarm ringing in your head. To do this, it relies on a body-first
approach.

Therefore, unlike other therapies, you don’t need to recall the details of what exactly happened
to you. If the trauma happened in childhood, over an extended period of time, or while you were
under extreme stress, you may not even know exactly what happened. You can focus on how
you felt and how you feel now.

As Dr. Levine says, “You don’t have to know the facts of your story to be able to reprogram the
symptoms or the outcomes.” Instead, the focus goes to your sense of feeling trapped, diffusing

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 the power of the story
you tell yourself, and
then remapping the body
memory to feel infused
with life again.

Somatic Experiencing®
helps clients attune to
what's happening in their
bodies by slowing down
while waking up their
self-awareness and
self-confidence. As they
re-enter a traumatized or
dissociated body at their
own pace, they change
and heal gradually and
safely.

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13 Benefits of Somatic Experiencing®
Somatic Experiencing® Therapy helps individuals create new experiences in their bodies,
releasing them from sensations of tension and overwhelming helplessness. It aims to explore
the sensations below those feelings and beliefs and the habits that reinforce them.

By creating self-protective motor responses and “shaking off” survival energy stuck in the body,
it addresses the root cause of trauma symptoms and reconnects people to their natural states.
When done right, clients may discover these benefits:

● Better concentration

● Higher self-esteem

● Less physical pain

● Lower levels of stress and psychological unease

● Fewer negative moods and emotions, such as anxiety, worry, guilt, shame, and anger

● Less irritability and/or aggression

● More positive emotions, such as joy, interest, and alertness

● Greater confidence

● Stronger feelings of hope and resilience

● Feeling physically well

● Stronger relationships with family and friends

● Sounder sleep

● More curiosity and interest in activities

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Understanding Why People “Freeze” When in Danger
At times, the body doesn’t know how to distinguish physical trauma from mental trauma. When
you are in a state of "fight or flight," the sympathetic nervous system boosts your heart rate,
breathing, and alertness. Once you escape a scary situation, you could “reset” your physical
state once you reach safety.

Yet with emotional trauma, your brain can repeat bits and pieces of the trapped experience,
leaving you stuck, and still believing that you could fall back into a state of danger. This
hypersensitive state often leads to emotional dysregulation.

The “freeze” can show up in multiple ways:

● Physically – Sense of paralysis, slower breathing and heart rate, lack of muscular
coordination

● Cognitively – Inability to concentrate, confusion, and feeling “out of body”

This is common when a person realizes they cannot escape the threat by fight or flight. They
may be cornered or physically smaller in size than their opponent. Or they may recognize a
pattern that makes them powerless, such as an abusive partner, and lock that in as a coping
mechanism.
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Somatic Experiencing® Techniques
This gentle approach goes through various stages after an initial discussion and overall health
review. These three phases reflect the oscillation between stress and calm until the client
overcomes their trauma:

Resourcing
This may also be known as grounding. It draws on positive memories of a place, person, or
beloved item to tap into a sense of inner strength, resilience, and peace when a client feels
triggered or upset. This helps to calm a person as they revisit sensations of trauma or memories
from an event or series of events.

Titration
This is a gradual process that mimics the chemical process of finding the amount of a stimulus
or toxin that causes a reaction. In this case, the therapist slows down the exploration of
emotions so the client can deal with each aspect of the trauma as they feel ready to handle it
without retriggering.

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This slowly releases compressed survival energy in cycles, using a repeated, rhythmic process
of reading internal sensations – such as withdrawing vs. reaching or pleasure vs. pain – while
staying in the present.

Pendulation
This transition stage works between the calm of resourcing and pushing the envelope via
titration. As clients move between being stimulated and feeling safe, they arrive at a state of
homeostasis, where they no longer feel overwhelmed.

During this phase, clients may find themselves crying, trembling, or shivering to discharge the
energy trapped in their bodies. This can be regulated by using breathwork or other relaxation
techniques so clients arrive in a state of flow that takes them to a safe harbor.

Therapists may recommend self-soothing behaviors to override the nervous system during
times of escalation. While clients may have their favorites, here are some options:

● Remembering a moment of kindness and the pleasant emotions that came with it

● Recalling a moment when you felt comfortable expressing yourself freely and being your
natural self

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 ● Making soothing sounds that vibrate within your body to release trapped energy in
smaller ways

On a smaller scale, clinicians use a framework known as SIBAM – Sensation, Imagery, Behavior,
Affect and Meaning.

Sensation
Treatments begin by having clients become more aware of their bodily sensations that may not
be comfortable or reflect the reaction they expect. As they learn how their autonomic nervous
system works, the link between symptoms and suppressed emotions becomes more apparent.
They may feel heavy or light, hot or cold, dizzy or numb, depending on their experience.

Warning: This type of treatment may involve physical touch. If a client doesn’t feel comfortable
with contact, they should tell the therapist.

Imagery
Next, a therapist may “walk” through a guided imaginary scene to see how a client responds to
“danger.” The conversation during this exercise can give clues about triggers.

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Behavior
In addition to what clients say, therapists will also observe body language or posture during
sessions. This could include changes in breathing patterns or clenched muscles.

Affect
This factors in how clients express emotions in the words they choose, how quickly they speak,
and what tones they use.

Meaning
This step requires self-reflection on how the client perceives how the therapy is unfolding and
what meaning arises from their experiences.

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Effectiveness of Somatic Experiencing® Therapy
There has been limited research published on somatic experiencing®, but a few have been very
promising. Overall, a 2015 literature review on body-oriented psychotherapy determined that
these types of interventions “have been demonstrated to be effective with different populations
and settings.”

For example, in one study, somatic experiencing® therapy helped 44% of the participants escape
the clutches of PTSD. Likewise, after a tsunami in India in 2004, 150 participants took one
treatment. Eight months later, 135 of them reported a major reduction in symptoms – in some
cases, none at all.

Conclusion
Dr. Levine relied extensively on Nobel Prize winner Nikolaas Tinbergen’s research on survival
behaviors in animals for his 1976 doctoral thesis. This quote speaks volumes about our lives,
even today: "It is stress in its widest sense, the inadequacy of our adjustability, that will become
perhaps the most important, disruptive influence in our society.”

Unleashing our potential, by resolving this limitation could truly change our world – one person
at a time.

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Resources
● https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-somatic-experiencing-5204186#toc-techniques

● https://traumahealing.org/se-research-and-articles/

● https://www.healthline.com/health/somatic-experiencing

● Accumulated Stress, Reserve Capacity and Disease, doctoral thesis by Peter A.

Levine, 1976, University of California - Berkeley

● https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/somatic-experiencing

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