Have you ever had a thought that made your cheeks flush or your palms sweaty? Maybe you did something that caused your stomach to tighten or made your heart beat a little faster? If you have, then you’ve experienced “somatization,” the mind-body connection.
For many years we, as a community, have embraced the concept of the mind-body connection. This concept highlights the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are closely tied into our physical health and functioning. This interaction can be seen on a daily basis through feelings of nervousness, anger, or stress that might cause tension, temperature changes, or other physiological symptoms in our body. This can also be seen in more significant ways through experiences like anxiety, which can have a direct effect on the size of our hippocampus, the secretion of stress hormones, and even our gut health.
So how do we approach somatization in the therapeutic space? Some well-established interventions, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, are helpful in addressing anxiety, depression, trauma, chronic pain, addiction, and many more concerns. These interventions, commonly referred to as “top down” approaches, focus on targeting thought patterns that contribute to somatization, utilizing a cognitive approach to bring awareness to our mind-body connection and decreasing our symptoms. A number of “bottom up,” or body-based interventions, have been developed and used with positive effect, particularly with regards to trauma. These interventions collectively fall under the umbrella of what we call “somatic therapy.”
Somatic therapy is a combination of mindfulness, movement, and talk therapy that utilizes the concept that our bodies register and hold on to our emotions. These stored emotions, when unresolved, can result in issues like chronic pain or insomnia and can interfere with the process of recovering from traumatic events. A core understanding within somatic therapy is that our body reacts to intense emotions and trauma on a cellular level, causing a variety of systemic issues. Because of this, interventions that target the body are indicated.
What does somatic therapy look like and who can benefit from it? As mentioned, individuals suffering from trauma can benefit from this intervention as well as those suffering from complicated grief, depression, anxiety, intimacy issues, and more. Somatic therapy can take on various shapes and sizes, allowing for a unique and curated approach for many individuals. Below are some examples of how somatic therapy is currently used in the field.
1. Grounding – Grounding refers to our ability to center ourselves in the present moment with a specific focus on our bodily sensations. The goal of grounding exercises is to regulate our nervous system and bring us to a place of feeling safe within our body and our environment. Through this feeling of safety, our body is able to release itself from our fight-or-flight response, lower our cortisol levels, and ultimately reduce feelings of anxiety and stress. One common way to practice grounding is to stand with your feet placed firmly onto the earth, noticing sensations in your body as they travel through your feet and into the ground, allowing yourself to be present in the moment. Another common practice is to tap into our five senses using the 5,4,3,2,1 method; identify five things you see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
2. Act of triumph – The technique, “act of triumph,” is often used within the framework of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy was developed for the treatment of trauma and trauma-related disorders with a specific focus on how certain events and our reactions to them have manifested within the body. The aim of this treatment is to understand how the body reacts to our experiences through symptoms such as emotional dysregulation, motor inhibition, and numbness, through the implementation of three distinct phases of treatment: safety and stabilization, processing, and integration. Act of triumph falls within the second stage and is characterized by the movement of the body to complete actions that were previously incomplete during the time of trauma. These actions revolve around what the individual would have wanted to do or had the urge to do while experiencing a specific traumatic event. This might look like pushing away an attacker, running, or seeking shelter, actions which might have been impossible at the time. While utilizing this technique, individuals are provided with the opportunity to execute these actions in a safe environment with the ultimate goal being to bring a sense of empowerment back to the individual. This contributes to the larger context of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which emphasizes bringing awareness to the physical symptoms related to trauma, understanding the impact of our experiences on our mind and body, separating the past and present to allow for appropriate physiological reactions, and regaining a sense of control over our emotional and physical functioning.
3. Pendulation – The term “pendulation” as it relates to somatic therapy was coined by Dr. Peter Levine within his therapeutic approach, Somatic Experiencing. Pendulation is a technique that focuses on the noticing of opposing feelings in our body and pendulating between the two. This can be done through first addressing emotional distress, or trauma, on a physical level with a body scan to pinpoint where painful emotions are most felt. Pendulation then asks us to shift our focus away from the painful emotion and onto a part of our body where our emotions feel less intense, maybe even comforting. Having brought awareness to these two opposing emotions within our body, individuals are asked to pendulate, or shift, between the two; bringing our awareness to the part of our body that feels intense emotion and allowing us a safe space to retreat from that emotion when it feels too overwhelming. This technique of pendulating to and from an area of pain is meant to regulate the distress associated with the pain and begin the process of healing.
While these are just a few examples of somatic therapy interventions there are many more techniques and frameworks that can allow individuals to address their emotions on a physical level. The more we witness the impact of somatic therapy interventions, the more aware we become of the power of the mind-body connection and the importance of tending to both the mind and the body in order to heal. Through this work, we can further understand the importance of expanding therapy outside of just our cognitive functioning, bringing awareness and attention to our body with the hope of more complete and effective healing.
-by Lily Decker, Gatewell Practicum Student