The Root Of It: Your Partner in Mental wealth & health

When the body feels safe, the mind can rest and the nervous system can regulate naturally. Clarity returns, emotions settle, and life feels easier to navigate. It's in this place that thriving becomes possible - in a state of "flow" and connection.

Everything that shows up in the physical, emotional and mental body is feedback. The body is always talking to us and it is our job to learn to listen, honor and respond to its needs by learning to speak its language. Somatic processing work trains and equips you to notice and release stress, anxiety, fears, depression, PTSD, trauma, and a number of other emotional and physical health issues that have been activated in the nervous system.

What Does Somatic Mean?

The word somatic comes from somato, referring to all the soft tissues of the body, including muscles, connective tissues, and organs. Simply put, "somatic" means "relating to the wall of the body." Somatic processing techniques focus on how our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations are all connected. Many of us carry the effects of stress or past experiences in our bodies—sometimes as muscle tension, pain, illness, fatigue, low energy, mood changes or a sense of unease we can’t quite explain. 

Somatization is the word used to describe when emotional distress is expressed in the physical body through physical symptoms.  Some level of physical response to emotion is part of daily life. Stress or worry may naturally appear as muscle tension, a quickened heartbeat, or a sensation of unease in the stomach. 

Somatic therapy helps us slow down and listen to those messages with care and curiosity. 

Somatic memory, also referred to as body memory in its simplest terms is a memory being stored not only within the brain memory but also the body memory. Many body workers, energy healers and mental health therapists explain this phenomenon as memories being stored in fascia (the thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place) or musculature (the muscles of all or a part of the animal body). However these somatic memories can be experienced as feeling like they are within the organs, organ systems and even skeletal structure as well.

Somatic or body memory is the concept that the body itself can store memories, as opposed to only the brain. This concept has begun to gain notable attention in the field of research and study of cellular memory. Cellular memory is a much more expansive understanding of somatic memory stating that every cell in our bodies hears, listens, and remembers.

“Somatics is the study and practice of exploring and understanding the fabric of your soma through your internal awareness.” –  Livia Shapiro

Somatics describes any practice or modality that uses the mind-body-spirit connection to help a person connect to their internal self or internal landscape in order to listen to signals the body sends about areas of pain, injury, discomfort, or imbalance.

Somatic practices help people to access more information about the ways they store and experience memories, stress, stuck emotions, and past situations (like trauma) in their body. 

‘Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience. The term is used in movement therapy to signify approaches based on the soma, or “the body as perceived from within." Somatic techniques may be used in bodywork, psychotherapy, dance, or spiritual practices.’ 

Somatic Work

Integrative Psychotherapy defines somatic work as “helping the body re-negotiate events on a body-based level so you can experience relief. This is because past events get trapped in the body and play themselves out with intrusive images, thoughts, tension, panic, unhealthy relationships and a feeling of sadness or despair as apart of the learned neuropathways activated throughout childhood. 

‘Somatic psychotherapy is a unique therapeutic approach that embraces the interconnection between the body, emotions, cognition, and sense of the spiritual self. It is applied in the treatment of psychological and physical responses to trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders, as well as in responding to a vast range of life issues including depression, anxiety, and childhood attachment barriers. 

Somatic approaches draw from scientific evidence that feeling, sensation, expression, movement, and emotions are embodied through the course of development, in patterns impacting how we function including how we relate to ourselves and others. 

We take a holistic approach to counseling, focusing on the mind, body, and spirit. Our counselors are trained in a variety of evidence-based techniques and therapies to help our clients achieve optimal mental health.