Somatic Therapies: Using the Mind Body Connection to Heal

Only in the last decade have we really seen a melding of the sciences of neurobiology and psychology in a way that has truely impacted psychotherapy forever. The cutting edge in technology in Marriage and Family Therapy is helping clients to know how they feel emotion in their body. If we close our eyes and remember the best day in our lives (or the worst) there is a body (somatic) sensation that can arise that is an integral part of the memory. We can literally shift ourselves from a reactive (defensive/unconscious) state to an authentic (wise/centered) state by learning how to care for ourselves at the moment we are triggered. The first glimpse of us falling into old patterns occurs in the body. It can be our heart rate increasing, the chest tightening, or the whole body reacting to a threat that connects us back in time to our childhood unmet emotional needs. As much as this is a new technology, it has been with us in the form of meditation for centuries. We know now how the many systems in the body are creating depression and anxiety. I give clients tools that give them ways to use somatic therapy to generate new pathways in the brain that become adaptive filters for day to day decision making. I have blended the EMDR and Ego State Therapy with Somatic Therapy to highbred the most effective trauma protocols known to us today.