Somatic Bodywork Therapy
What is Somatic Bodywork?
This approach blends the psychotherapy with healing touch. Both will occur within the same session. Somatic sensations of the body and different nervous system states are explored along with verbal, emotional, and mental processes. Your body is profoundly intertwined with your psyche. It reveals deeply held, implicit information that can be difficult to access through talk therapy alone. Tapping into this information can unlock long held patterns of unwanted symptoms. Your therapist also offers somatic therapy without bodywork, but the added element of healing touch provides a increased sense of safety, ease, and accelerated progress.
Contrary to popular myth, a psychotherapist can, in fact, apply healing touch with clients as long as certain conditions are met: The quality of touch needs to be appropriate and helpful, you need to give your informed consent, and it should be within the therapist’s scope of competence. Your therapist is a registered associate marriage and family therapist, and a state certified massage therapist. With 27 years of bodywork training and experience, she has provided well over 10,000 hands-on sessions during her career and has an extensive skill set in this area.
How is it Different From Massage?
Somatic bodywork therapy occurs while you are fully clothed and relaxed on a massage table. It involves light touch modalities such as reiki, cranial sacral therapy, gentle acupressure, and light myofascial release. In contrast, massage therapy typically occurs unclothed, involves the use of massage oils, and provides a more active form of soft tissue manipulation. If you are primarily seeking active, full-body muscular manipulation, it is recommended to pursue traditional massage therapy instead. Somatic bodywork therapy is for those who are interested in the psychotherapeutic nature of the work. While your therapist is no longer taking new massage clients, she is currently available for somatic bodywork therapy.
Why add Bodywork to Psychotherapy?
A healing touch approach is not necessary for psychotherapy to be successful. However, the inclusion of it can accelerate your progress. Bodywork has the unique quality of being able to speak directly to your nervous system in a way that words cannot. It provides a transmission of relaxation and safety in a way that is difficult to produce through conversation alone.
In traditional talk therapy, it can take 30 to 40 minutes for a client to relax enough to turn their attention inward and begin depth work. This only leaves 10 or 20 minutes left in the session, which typically is not enough time to make significant gains. In contrast, when somatic bodywork therapy is applied, it only takes about 2 to 5 minutes for a client to feel safe and relaxed enough to take a deeper dive. This way of working conserves your time and resources, and is simply more efficient.
Somatic Bodywork Therapy for Trauma
Healing touch is beneficial for a range of mental and emotional issues, including trauma. Your therapist is trauma-informed and specializes in the areas of PTSD and complex trauma. However, If you have an extensive trauma background that involves physical abuse, it is best to discuss your history at length with your therapist. This is especially crucial if touch is highly activating for you in a negative way. This approach is not meant to push you into an intensive trauma flashback.
Open communication with your therapist about this is necessary. Somatic therapy will focus on creating an abundance of safety and internal healing resources. If needed, other modalities can be offered as a starting point. We can work collaboratively and slowly towards incorporating somatic bodywork therapy, as appropriate to your unique situation.
