Somatic Therapy resolves symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, shock, and other traumas that accumulate in our bodies and neural pathway.

When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, freeze or fawn, somatic therapy helps us to release this energy, recover and recalibrate, and move back into a healthy baseline. In this state we are in our Window of Tolerance, which refers to the best state of ‘arousal’ or stimulation in which we are able to function and thrive in everyday life. When we are functioning within this window, we are connected, grounded, able to learn effectively, play, and relate healthily to ourselves, others and the world around us. We are in a Ventral Vagal state.

Do you know what your trauma response is? Do you get reactive? Do you get fired up, angry, lash out, through your words, actions and body language? Do you flight, withdraw, get panicky, go silent, avoid? Or do you freeze? Do you shut down, dissociate, block and numb out? Or do you fawn? Please and appease others? Over apologise, stifle and deny your needs, feelings and emotions?

Our trauma response is determined by the energy behind it that is in our bodies (sensory and memory banks) NOT the action itself. A trauma response is essentially a coping mechanism(s) that is triggered within us when we feel under threat. It is generally activated through the external environment, through people, places and things that “poke” at past painful memories, our limiting beliefs and childhood wounding. Our trauma response is directly informed by how our caregivers attuned us during the attunement and attachment process in our developmental years. Attunement essentially is our ability to be aware of and respond to a child’s needs. It is intertwined with the emotional attachment process. How our caregivers were wired neurobiological, how they were attuned by their caregivers, moulds and shapes our nervous system, coping mechanisms, and shapes the lens through which we feel and see the world

Are you conscious of the energy system you are dominantly in? What energy is your behaviour driven by? Is fight, flight, freeze, fawn? In other words, Sympathetic flow or Dorsal Vagal flow?