The body holds the secret
Your somatic world
Getting to grips with ourselves
Somatic work is one of those buzz words that always leaves me searching for something more simple, more commonplace. Yet there is something about the word ‘somatic’ that just lands perfectly.
Somatic, from the Greek for ‘of the body, describes all the work that looks at how we experience our lives as embodied human beings. After all, we are not brains in vats or hearts in holes, we are living breathing pulsating creatures whose feelings and thoughts are generated and contained within our ever changing and ever present bodies.
Working the system
The most obvious and life changing example of this is the nervous system, which sits there inside us like a highly sensitive great aunt, just ready to erupt into uncontrolled sobbing or retreat into frozen fury. And yet our nervous system is working constantly to help us to respond to external stimuli in order to keep us safe. This system can be hijacked however, by past events, early and recent traumas and unhelpful patterns of behaviour.
Together we can learn how to ‘work the system’ and create a well oiled somatic response that leaves you feeling in control, no matter what life throws at you.
Imagine your somatic world as a thermometer, going up into the red (hyper arousal) and down into the blue (hypo arousal).
I will help you to identify where your nervous system is on the scale at any given moment and notice what triggered this shift. Just being able to identify this is hugely important work.
My somatic approach
But we will also explore how you can deliberately and purposefully move yourself up and down the scale at will so that if you’re feeling yourself heading up into the hyper ‘red’ zone, where the next step is throwing something across the room or shouting those things you will only regret, we can learn how to gently move yourself down just enough that you are able to hear the messages your body is sending you so you can change your triggers or your responses to them.
Similarly, if you find yourself inclined to shut down and withdraw, drifting down into the hypo ‘blue’ zone, we can discover exactly what will bring you up into that middle neutral zone to enable you to connect both with others and yourself, returning to a place where healing can happen.
I have used this approach with countless clients who are now happily navigating up and down their nervous system with ease and confidence, managing depression, panic attacks and overwhelm. It is solid, practical and evidence-based work that offers relief in the long term.
The nervous system is our primal response to threat. We want to be able to hear it. But we don’t want to be held hostage by it. Whether it is causing moments of high anxiety or periods of shut down, it is vital to learn your individual and subconscious trauma responses.
Whether it is:
fight response, where you head into a heightened state, either ready for or even initiating conflict
flight response, where no sooner does the slightest hint of unsafety appear and you are leaving that environment / job / relationship
freeze response, that most fundamental response to threat, adopted as our only available response, often due to past traumas
Whatever your response, we can identify, honour and work on rebuilding your understanding of safety, learning to navigate other ways to respond to perceived threats and restoring your trust in your innate ability to cope with life’s demands.
Trauma and threat
Balance - peace - harmony
Learning to navigate how your thoughts and feelings show up somatically is integral to a balanced and functioning life. By spending time in our sessions experiencing these three elements co-existing in safety and with control, you will feel empowered enough to take this work out of our sessions and back into your life and your relationships.
Shut down, withdrawal and emotional disconnection are not inevitable. They are choices we make when we don’t know what else to choose and what else to do.
Anxiety, panic and overwhelm are our responses when we feel unable to sit with and control our emotional temperature. It is possible to feel it all and still be okay.
Together we can work in harmony with your body, not against it. Learning from it and guiding it, with compassion and love.
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
— Peter Levine
Testimonial on decoding the body
“I knew all about the nervous system when I started working with Eleanor. I had read up on the polyvagal theory and understood exactly what was going on when my body went into panic mode.
But I didn’t have the first clue what to do about it. I had tried all the techniques I’d found on youTube and Instagram, but nothing seemed to work for me. I contacted Eleanor with little hope that anyone would be able to help, after nearly a decade living in a body that regularly didn’t feel like it was mine.
From day one, she helped me. Just talking through the history of how and why I responded in certain ways was a revelation. And when that was combined with weekly homework trying out as many approaches as we could, we finally found approaches that worked for me, not cookie cutter stuff from the internet.
I feel as if I understand my body before anything even happens. It’s like I have a little radar inside me that pings in an alert and then I can use our grounding activities to calm myself down. She explains everything so well, with all these visuals and metaphors that really help to make sense of it all, but behind it there’s also a really deep understanding.
Most importantly, I feel safe and understood in our sessions and I know that she’s always there for me, even if it’s a Saturday night or a Sunday morning.”
“I look forward to our sessions every week and know that whatever happens, Eleanor is there to listen and to hold me securely in place. I am slowly beginning to feel myself again. It’s a long journey, I know, but I feel as if I’m on the right path now.”
— Emma, 47
Case Study: Moving through trauma
Emma came to me having survived a narcissistic mother and a narcissistic partner. She was having trauma responses most days and yet her environment was calm and peaceful. She was safe, but felt fundamentally unsafe. Her responses ranged from the heightened responses of rapid breathing, increased heart-rate and sweaty palms to almost complete shut down. She desperately need help to make her body realise that she was no longer in threat.
Together we gently worked through her traumas, using a combination of therapeutic approaches to allow her to firstly feel held and heard, and then to feel empowered to recognise her stories and re-narrate them. She combined cognitive approaches with a deepening understanding of how her nervous system would kick into action, and began to recognise both the triggers and also her own body’s warning signs.
She learnt ways to de-escalate when things became heightened, and ways to re-engage when she was going into shut down. We worked together systematically and gently to rediscover her safety, build her awareness and move towards the future. Our most recent sessions have started to look towards goals for the future and even perhaps new relationships. Baby steps together at the start are now allowing Emma to begin to take bigger strides forwards. And whatever happens, she has the safety of our sessions every week to recalibrate and stabilise, giving her the first signs of being able to trust her body, her mind and her self.
To make a change we need to take a first step
Book in a free initial call and let’s work together to create a life of balance and peace
