Online Somatic Psychotherapy

Somatic therapy involves talking just like traditional talk therapy, but it also includes noticing how the body is reacting to past, present, future, and imagined experiences. Even though somatic psychotherapy includes the body it is not necessary to meet with your therapist in person. Rather than focusing on touch work like massage therapy, somatic psychotherapy involves observing bodily sensations that are naturally occurring at any given moment. Bodily sensations offer another access point into the unconscious. Noticing these unconscious sensations and experiences allows them to become conscious and integrated. This process can then lead to healing, personal growth, and greater self awareness.

Remote Touch in Somatic Therapy

Somatic psychotherapy can involve touch, but it is not necessary for effective healing to occur. If it seems like the client/patient would benefit from touch, remote touch (client and therapist imagining the supportive therapeutic touch together) and/or self touch (the client using their own hands to offer themselves support) can be amazingly effective and healing when working virtually. Touch in psychotherapy is never sexual and is only done with the client’s consent. Touch in somatic therapy can be helpful for boundary work, grounding, offering support, constriction, activation, and many other situations. If it ever seems like a client/patient being seen online would benefit from more traditional therapeutic touch, a referral can be made to an adjunct service with either a body worker or another somatic psychotherapist working in person. 

Somatics

Somatics can be defined as Western body–mind disciplines. Kelly Mullan (2014) writes in her article Somatics: Investigating the common ground of western body–mind disciplines, that somatic process involves ‘sensing in’ to the moment by moment experience of the self in order for ‘information’ from the body to inform conscious awareness (pp. 253-4). The quality of developing an inner authority by listening to the ‘voice’ of one’s own body is central to somatic theory. It is only by becoming more ‘in tune’ with ourselves that we may develop our abilities for personal transformation (p. 256). Somatic practices are linked to mind-body medicine and philosophies of the East (India, China, and Japan), but is different as it emerged from the West and often integrates either creative arts or bodily sciences as a part of the underlying philosophy (p. 253). For example, Somatic Experiencing (SE) involves tracking nervous system patterns and survival responses expressed by the body through physiological responses. 

Reference:

Mullan, K. (2014). Somatics: Investigating the common ground of western body–mind disciplines. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, 9(4), 253-265, DOI: 10.1080/17432979.2014.946092.

Healing Trauma Through Relationship

It is often said that trauma is created in relationship and therefore needs to heal in relationship. Developmental trauma, the trauma a child experiences on a daily basis due to not feeling safe with their parents/caregivers/other close relationships, is directly caused by unhealthy unsafe human relationships. The degree to which event trauma—the trauma that occurs after a life threating or potentially life threating event, turns into a traumatic experience often depends on the support one received during and after the event. Emotional wounding is created in relationship, and can be healed in relationship with a safe empathetic other. For this reason, it is very important for the therapist to create a safe therapeutic relationship with their clients/patients in order for healing to occur in psychotherapy.