What to Know About Somatic Therapy, According to Therapists
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MANY MENTAL HEALTH therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, focus on the mind with the idea that changing how you think can influence how you feel. But somatic therapy takes the opposite approach—by starting with a focus on the body itself.
“Somatic therapy is a bottom-up approach,” explains Avi Klein, L.C.S.W., a Men’s Health adviser and founder of Downtown Somatic Therapy in New York City. “Instead of the idea of I'm going to work with my mind and change my mind, I’m going to work with my body and my feelings.”
Most people experience physical sensations along with their emotions, he says. “We cry. We scream. We punch something; we run away. It’s in our body.”
With somatic therapy, you learn to tap into those reactions and start to pay attention to your feelings, and then work with them to understand yourself and your mental health and well-being, Klein says.
While somatic therapy isn’t a new concept, it has become more popular over the past few years since the publication of The Body Keeps the Score by psychiatrist and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., in 2014, and its recent persistence on the bestseller list. The book focuses on how traumatic experiences affect your capacity for pleasure, trust, and self-control—your body tries to defend itself and those defenses can become patterns that get in your way.
Somatic therapy encompasses several different types of therapy that share the idea that “the body and mind are not separate,” Klein says. It’s a little different from CBT or talk therapy, however, and can take people a little time to get the hang of it. But once they do, somatic therapy can offer many mental health benefits, especially for people dealing with trauma.
What is somatic therapy?
“Somatic therapy is a body-based therapy,” says Scott Lyons, Ph.D., a licensed holistic psychologist, author, and founder of The Embody Lab, an online learning platform for body-based trauma therapies.
“We know that the body contains our feelings, our sensations, our memories, and that all of those things are not contained just within the brain,” he adds.
The nervous system takes information from the body to the brain just as much, if not more so, than it takes information from the brain to the body, Lyons says.
“When we talk about body-based therapy, it's really like the brain is recording what the body is experiencing, which can include trauma and other stressors, throughout the day,” he explains. “All of those things come up and get recorded, but they actually take place throughout the whole body.”
Types of Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy can encompass many different modalities, Klein says. These can include:
Eye-movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR), which uses physical stimulation, such as eye movements, to reduce the vividness and emotion of a traumatic event.
Breathwork, where you focus on intentional breathing to boost awareness of your body.
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (ADEP), a multidimensional approach that draws from attachment theory, body-focussed treatments, and other modalities to focus on exploring negative thoughts and emotions and building resilience.
Somatic experiencing, which uses sensation, imagery, behavior, affect, and meaning to help people involve their bodies in processing trauma.
Hakomi, which emphasizes mindfulness and your body, such as paying attention to your posture and movements, to more deeply understand your emotions.
Each works a little differently but is centered on using the body to access memories, emotions, reflexes, or trauma, Lyons says.
What does a somatic therapy session involve?
Somatic therapy sessions vary depending on the individual and exact approach your therapist utilizes, Lyons says. But, essentially, you’ll be invited to slow down and become aware of your breathing, how your weight is settling, and the sensations and emotions residing in your body.
“Often, in talk therapy, we just talk our way through the things, and we’re not actually feeling our way through them,” Lyons says. “We can’t process what we don’t feel.”
A somatic approach prevents you from talking your way out of certain feelings, or intellectualizing, he says.
Some people might struggle to get into somatic therapy at first, Klein says. To help, therapists usually coach them through, at least in the beginning. They might ask questions like, “Why don't you try tensing your hands and seeing if that tension feels good or not good, or if it’s speaking to some anger that you're feeling?”
The Benefits of Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy has been shown to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research. It can also help with anxiety and depression, Klein says.
Connecting with your body can increase feelings of self-awareness and well-being, Lyons says. “Being in our body, being in our experience—that leads to things like better decision-making, more self-esteem, more accurate self-regulation.”
Somatic therapy encourages you to develop a deep relationship with your emotions by feeling them, Klein says, admitting that’s not easy for everyone. But, when you do, you no longer struggle with yourself to suppress, deny, or rationalize your emotions.
“That’s a huge relief to people,” he explains. “A lot of people who feel anxiety often feel anxiety because they're in situations that are bringing up emotions that they don't want to feel.”
When you’re encouraged to slow down and pay attention to what’s happening in your body, Klein says, “You can get to a very deep place fairly quickly over the course of a therapy session.”
So some people may only need a few sessions to feel like they’ve achieved what they need, while others need more time, he explains.
Who can benefit from somatic therapy?
People with a PTSD diagnosis or who have experienced trauma often benefit most from somatic therapy, Klein says. It’s also helpful for people experiencing anxiety, depression, and grief.
Too often, when you experience something, you may suppress your emotions and sensations, which creates a numbness, Lyons says.
“Somatic therapy really helps an individual come down into their body, have more awareness, and from that awareness, start to slow things down and process and metabolize them in a way that's really the only way to truly metabolize trauma and other stressors,” he explains.
How to Find a Somatic Therapist
Somatic therapy is growing in popularity but isn’t yet mainstream. As a result, Lyons says, it can be challenging to find a somatic therapist.
The United States Association for Body Psychotherapy offers an online directory to help find a therapist. Lyons’ The Embody Lab also offers a directory.
Once you find a therapist, it’s important to interview them to learn about their experience providing somatic therapy, Klein says. Ask how long they’ve been practicing, what training they have, and how you can evaluate if the therapy is helping.
Consider how you feel when you’re with the therapist, too, Lyons says. For instance, do you feel safe?
“It's about the embodied presence of the practitioners themselves,” he says.
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