Safe therapeutic touch can have powerful effects. Maybe you feel you’ve been holding on so tight for so long you don’t know how to let go. Maybe you’re fearful of what you might feel if you did. Maybe you would like to learn to trust your body again, to feel a sense of EASE, to feel HELD, to feel WHOLE, spontaneous, free from the ‘stuck’ feeling that stress and chronic pain bring. Somatic bodywork can help you achieve this.
What does it feel like to be you?
Think how you might describe how it feels to walk barefoot in the sand to someone who has never been to the beach.
You could try your best but until that person actually walks barefoot in the sand it is impossible to fully appreciate.
It is the same with describing how something feels, there will always remain aspects that words can’t describe.
The intention of Somatic Bodywork
The intention of Somatic Bodywork is to help you explore areas of ‘stuckness’ from a place of safety, a place of rest, where you can get out of your own way, free from preconceptions and limiting beliefs. Connect with the physical experience of being you, in your own body, and explore the sensations associated with thoughts and feelings – otherwise known as Somatic Awareness.
Many of us have very little Somatic Awareness
It’s only when the pain alarm sounds, making something ache or hurt, do we become aware e.g. of tightness across the shoulders, tension in the lower back or the knot of anxiety in the belly.
We become disconnected
The problem is by the time the pain alarm sounds (cue physical symptoms) the nervous system has gone into survival mode. Typically, we respond by resisting or distracting ourselves from the pain / the discomfort. The result? We become even more disconnected from our bodies!
Wherever you go, your body goes with you
Your relationship with your body affects your relationship with everything and everyone else
Somatic Bodywork can help you re connect
By bringing awareness to sensation, allowing – not resisting – and being as present, open and connected with it as possible, we can start to open ourselves up to our deeper layers, process the origins of pain, turn off the alarm and feel more spacious.
Therapeutic touch and muscle tension awareness techniques assist you to notice how you are inhabiting your body. Sometimes we think that we are relaxed but, when guided to really notice tension in the body, we notice that we are not relaxed at all.
This approach to bodywork is gentle. You will be guided to notice your breath and your body. Using the appropriate level of touch for each individual, I intuitively sense what pressure to use and when and where to touch, using Myofascial Release techniques to locate and release tension and holding patterns.
It is recommended that Somatic Bodywork be undertaken along with with Emotional Processing.
Photos
Footsteps on beach: Zack Minor on Unsplash
Sunset: Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash