Unlock Your Body’s Wisdom to Heal Trauma and PTSD
Have you ever felt like you were running a race that never ends? That feeling of being constantly on edge, your heart pounding for no clear reason, or a profound sense of numbness that disconnects you from the world around you. These are not just feelings, they are echoes of the past, held within the very fabric of your body. When we experience something overwhelming, something our mind and body cannot fully process, the experience doesn’t just disappear, it gets stuck.
This stuckness is the hallmark of trauma. It’s a physiological state, a survival response frozen in time, replaying in our nervous system. Traditional therapies often focus on the story, the thoughts, and the emotions, which is incredibly valuable. But what if the key to unlocking that frozen state wasn’t in the mind, but in the body itself? This is the revolutionary premise of a gentle yet powerful approach called Somatic Experiencing. It’s a path to healing that listens to the body’s silent story, helping you release a lifetime of stored tension and finally, truly, come home to yourself.
What Exactly Is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing, often called SE, is a body-focused therapeutic approach designed to heal trauma and other stress-related disorders. Developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, it is founded on the understanding that traumatic symptoms are not caused by the event itself, but by the residual energy of that event that has not been resolved or discharged from the body. This trapped survival energy remains in the nervous system, where it can wreak havoc on our emotions and physical health.
SE therapy works by helping individuals gently access and release this stored energy. It does this without requiring them to relive the traumatic event. Instead, it guides them to develop a greater awareness of their internal bodily sensations, the "felt sense", and uses this awareness as the primary tool for healing. The goal is to help the nervous system regain its natural rhythm and balance, restoring a sense of safety, vitality, and wholeness.
Dr. Levine developed this approach after observing that wild animals, despite facing constant life-or-death threats, are rarely traumatized. He noticed they have innate biological mechanisms to regulate and discharge the high levels of energy aroused during survival situations, often through involuntary shaking or trembling. Humans possess the same regulatory systems, but our highly developed rational brains often interrupt or override these natural processes, causing the energy to become trapped.
How Does Trauma Get Trapped in the Body?
Trauma becomes trapped in the body when a natural survival response is thwarted or incomplete. When faced with a perceived threat, our autonomic nervous system (ANS) instantly kicks into high gear, preparing us to fight, flee, or freeze. This floods our body with a massive surge of survival energy, a cocktail of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, designed to give us the power and speed to save our own lives.
In an ideal scenario, we would use that energy to fight off the threat or run to safety. Once safe, our body would naturally discharge the remaining energy and return to a state of calm. However, many traumatic situations render us powerless. We may be physically restrained, too small to fight back, or the threat may be so sudden and overwhelming that our system slams on the brakes and goes into a freeze state, a kind of suspended animation.
When this happens, that immense survival energy has nowhere to go. It is neither used for action nor discharged naturally. This undischarged energy becomes locked within the nervous system, disrupting its ability to regulate itself. The body remains in a state of high alert, constantly scanning for danger, or collapses into a state of exhaustion and shutdown. This is the physiological root of traumatic symptoms, from hypervigilance and anxiety to depression and chronic pain.
What Happens During a Somatic Experiencing Session?
A Somatic Experiencing session is a gentle, collaborative exploration focused on your present-moment physical sensations, not on dredging up the past. The therapist creates a highly supportive environment where you can safely begin to notice the subtle signals your body is sending. The focus is on building your capacity to tolerate and process difficult sensations and emotions in small, manageable doses, which gradually helps your nervous system to reset itself.
You will not be asked to recount your traumatic story in detail, a process that can often be re-traumatizing. Instead, the therapist will guide you to notice what is happening inside your body right now. This might involve tracking sensations like warmth, tingling, tightness, or spaciousness. The entire process is paced by you, ensuring you never feel overwhelmed and always remain within a window of tolerance, a state where you feel grounded and capable of processing your experience.
The work is subtle yet profound. By bringing compassionate awareness to these internal states, you begin to untangle the knots of trauma held in your physiology. The session is a journey of rediscovery, helping you reconnect with your body’s innate intelligence and its powerful capacity for self-healing.
How Does the Therapist Create a Safe Space?
The therapist creates a safe space by establishing a strong, attuned, and trusting therapeutic relationship. This safety, known as co-regulation, is the absolute foundation of SE work. From the very first moment, the practitioner’s primary goal is to help your nervous system feel secure enough to begin the delicate work of healing.
They do this through their calm presence, attentive listening, and by constantly tracking your physiological state for signs of comfort or distress. The therapist models a state of groundedness and regulation, which your own nervous system can mirror and learn from. They will consistently check in with you, respect your boundaries, and ensure that the pace of the therapy always feels manageable to you. This unwavering focus on safety allows the defensive parts of your brain to relax, making it possible to access the deeper, stored traumatic energy without becoming overwhelmed.
What is Titration in SE?
Titration is the core SE principle of touching into traumatic material in very small, incremental amounts. This process prevents the nervous system from becoming overwhelmed, which is what caused the trauma to get stuck in the first place. The therapist guides you to dip a toe into a difficult sensation or memory, and then immediately guides you back to a place of safety and resource within your body.
Think of it like this, if you were severely dehydrated, you wouldn’t gulp down a gallon of water at once, you would take small, slow sips. Titration works the same way for the nervous system. By processing only a tiny piece of the distress at a time, you give your body the chance to integrate the experience, discharge the associated energy, and build confidence in its ability to handle these sensations. This slow, deliberate process gradually expands your capacity to be with your experience, piece by piece, until the entire traumatic charge has been neutralized.
What is Pendulation in SE?
Pendulation is the natural rhythm of regulation that SE therapy seeks to restore. It involves the gentle shifting of your awareness back and forth between something that feels difficult or activated, and something that feels resourceful, calm, or neutral. This rhythmic process helps the nervous system move out of a fixed state of either high alert or shutdown and rediscover its inherent flexibility.
The therapist will help you identify a place of resource, which could be a feeling of groundedness in your feet, a sense of warmth in your hands, or even the memory of a peaceful place. You will then be guided to briefly touch upon a sensation of activation, like tightness in your chest, before swinging back to the feeling of resource. This back-and-forth movement, like a pendulum, gradually helps the nervous system digest the traumatic energy and reinforces the experience that you can move through distress and return to a state of ease. It teaches your body, on a fundamental level, that these states are not permanent and that regulation is possible.
What are SIBAM Elements?
SIBAM is an acronym that stands for the five core elements of experience that a Somatic Experiencing practitioner tracks during a session. These elements are Sensation, Image, Behavior, Affect, and Meaning. By paying attention to these interconnected channels, the therapist gets a holistic picture of how your whole organism is processing the traumatic memory.
Sensation refers to the physical feelings in your body, like heat, cold, vibration, or pressure. Image can be an internal picture, a memory fragment, or a metaphor. Behavior includes subtle movements, postures, or gestures. Affect is the emotional feeling tone, such as sadness, anger, or fear. Finally, Meaning refers to the thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations you attach to the experience. The therapist doesn’t analyze these elements intellectually, but rather observes how they flow and shift, using them as a map to guide the healing process and help you complete the self-protective responses that were frozen in time.
Who Can Benefit From Somatic Experiencing?
Anyone whose life is limited by the symptoms of unresolved stress or trauma can benefit from Somatic Experiencing. This approach is profoundly effective for individuals who feel stuck, disconnected from their bodies, or who find that traditional talk therapies have not fully resolved their issues. It is for those who experience chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, panic attacks, or an unshakeable sense of dread.
SE can also be life-changing for people who live with a sense of numbness, depression, dissociation, or chronic fatigue. Because it works directly with the nervous system, it is also highly beneficial for addressing physical symptoms with no clear medical cause, such as chronic pain, digestive issues, migraines, and fibromyalgia. It is a therapy for anyone who wants to move beyond simply managing their symptoms and towards a deeper, more embodied sense of peace and vitality.
Is SE Only for PTSD?
No, Somatic Experiencing is not only for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), although it is exceptionally effective for it. Its principles apply to a wide spectrum of human suffering rooted in overwhelming experiences. This includes "shock trauma," which results from single, life-threatening events like accidents, assaults, natural disasters, or major surgery.
Furthermore, SE is a powerful tool for healing "developmental trauma," which stems from chronic or repetitive adverse experiences during childhood, such as neglect, emotional abuse, or growing up in a chaotic environment. These early experiences shape the developing nervous system, and SE can help to gently rewire these ingrained patterns of dysregulation. It is also used to treat anxiety, depression, addiction, and other conditions where the nervous system’s capacity to self-regulate has been compromised.
How is SE Different from Talk Therapy?
The primary difference between Somatic Experiencing and most forms of talk therapy lies in their direction of processing. Traditional talk therapies, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), are generally "top-down" approaches. They start with the cognitive mind, working to change thoughts and beliefs in order to influence emotions and, ultimately, bodily responses.
Somatic Experiencing, in contrast, is a "bottom-up" approach. It starts with the body’s physical sensations, the "language" of the nervous system. The focus is on tracking these sensations to allow the body to release stored energy and complete its innate healing processes. As the body regulates, this then positively impacts emotions and thoughts. Another key difference is that SE does not require a coherent narrative of the trauma, making it accessible for those whose memories are fragmented or who find talking about the event too overwhelming.
What are the Core Principles of SE?
The core principles of Somatic Experiencing are built upon a deep respect for the body’s innate wisdom and its capacity to heal itself. The therapy is guided by concepts that help individuals reconnect with this internal intelligence. These principles create a framework for safely navigating the complex terrain of trauma stored in the nervous system.
At its heart, SE is about slowing down and listening. It honours the idea that the body holds the key to its own release. By following these guiding principles, the therapist and client work together to create the conditions under which the nervous system can finally complete its unfinished business and return to a state of equilibrium and flow.
Why is Felt Sense Important?
The felt sense is profoundly important because it is the primary way we experience the language of our nervous system. It is our capacity for interoception, the direct, non-verbal, physical awareness of our internal state. This includes sensations of tightness, openness, warmth, cold, tingling, trembling, or spaciousness. In our fast-paced, thought-driven world, many of us have become disconnected from this vital source of information.
In SE therapy, cultivating awareness of the felt sense is the central practice. It is through these physical sensations that we can track the activation of traumatic energy and the subsequent discharge and release. By learning to listen to and trust the felt sense, you are no longer at the mercy of overwhelming emotions or confusing symptoms. Instead, you gain a direct pathway to understanding and influencing your own physiology, empowering you to actively participate in your healing journey.
What Does ‘Resourcing’ Mean?
Resourcing is the practice of identifying, creating, and strengthening experiences of safety, stability, calm, and competence. A resource can be anything that helps your nervous system feel even a little bit better, more grounded, or more settled. It is a foundational element of SE because it provides the necessary container of safety for trauma work to proceed.
A resource can be internal, such as noticing the feeling of your feet firmly on the floor, the sensation of your breath, or a memory of a beloved pet or a beautiful place in nature. It can also be external, like holding a comforting object or simply feeling the support of the chair you are sitting in. The therapist helps you find and amplify these resources, so you have a safe "home base" to return to whenever you begin to feel overwhelmed. This process builds resilience and teaches your nervous system that it can navigate distress and always return to a state of relative ease.
How Does SE Complete a Self-Protective Response?
Somatic Experiencing helps complete a self-protective response by allowing the body to finally carry out the actions it was unable to perform during the traumatic event. When we are in a freeze state, our impulse to fight or flee is suppressed, but the motor plan for that action is still loaded in our nervous system as immense potential energy. This is a primary source of traumatic symptoms.
During an SE session, as small amounts of this energy are accessed, you might notice subtle, spontaneous movements beginning to emerge, such as a slight pushing motion in the hands, a tensing of the leg muscles as if to run, or a turning of the head. The therapist will gently encourage you to mindfully notice and allow these impulses. By consciously and safely completing these tiny, symbolic movements, the trapped survival energy is finally discharged, and the nervous system can recognize that the threat is over and stand down from its defensive posture. This completion is deeply satisfying and profoundly regulating for the entire system.
What are the Signs That SE is Working?
The signs that Somatic Experiencing is working can be both subtle and dramatic, and they unfold both during and between sessions. One of the most common signs within a session is the experience of spontaneous physical releases, such as trembling, shaking, a sudden feeling of warmth or coolness, or deep, involuntary breaths. These are not signs of distress, but rather indicators that the nervous system is discharging long-held traumatic energy.
Between sessions, you may begin to notice significant shifts in your daily life. You might find that you are sleeping more deeply and waking up feeling more rested. The constant background noise of anxiety may begin to quiet down, and you may feel less reactive to everyday stressors. Many people report feeling more present, more "in their body," and more connected to themselves and others. There is often a growing sense of spaciousness inside, a feeling that you have more capacity to handle life’s ups and downs without becoming overwhelmed. Ultimately, the clearest sign that SE is working is a restored sense of vitality and an increased ability to engage with life with joy and ease.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does Somatic Experiencing take?
The duration of Somatic Experiencing therapy varies greatly from person to person and cannot be defined by a fixed timeline. The length of treatment depends on several factors, including the nature and complexity of your trauma history, your individual nervous system’s capacity, and your personal goals for therapy. Some individuals with single-incident shock trauma may find significant relief in a relatively short number of sessions, while those with complex or developmental trauma may benefit from longer-term work. The focus is always on your body’s unique pace, ensuring the healing process is sustainable and deeply integrated.
Do I have to talk about my trauma in detail?
No, you do not have to talk about your trauma in detail, and this is one of the most significant and relieving aspects of Somatic Experiencing. While you may choose to share parts of your story, the therapy’s primary focus is on your present-moment physical sensations, not on the narrative or cognitive memory of the event. Forcing someone to recount a traumatic story can often be re-traumatizing. SE bypasses this by working directly with the physiological imprint of the trauma, allowing for healing to occur without needing to verbally relive the distressing experience.
Is Somatic Experiencing scientifically proven?
Somatic Experiencing is considered an evidence-informed practice with a growing body of scientific support, particularly from the fields of neuroscience and psychophysiology. Its principles are strongly aligned with modern understandings of the autonomic nervous system, especially Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory, which explains the neurophysiological states of safety, danger, and life-threat. While large-scale randomized controlled trials are still emerging, numerous case studies and preliminary research indicate its effectiveness in reducing the symptoms of PTSD and other stress-related disorders. It is widely respected in the trauma treatment community for its neurobiologically-grounded approach.
Can SE be done online?
Yes, Somatic Experiencing can be done very effectively online through virtual video sessions. A skilled SE practitioner is trained to track the subtle physiological shifts in their clients, such as changes in breathing, posture, and skin tone, which can be observed clearly over video. The therapist can guide you through resourcing and tracking your felt sense just as they would in person. For many, receiving therapy in the comfort and safety of their own home can even enhance the healing process, making it a highly accessible and viable option for trauma recovery.
Your story matters, and so does your body’s story. Healing from trauma is not about erasing the past, but about reclaiming your present and rediscovering your own innate capacity for wholeness. The journey out of the frozen state of trauma can feel daunting, but you do not have to walk it alone.
At Counselling-uk, we are dedicated to being a safe, confidential, and professional place to get advice and help with mental health issues. We believe in offering compassionate support for all of life’s challenges. If you feel stuck, disconnected, or overwhelmed by the echoes of the past, know that support is available. Reach out to explore how our trained therapists can help you listen to your body’s wisdom and find your path back to a life of vitality and peace.
