We are embodied beings.  We're wired for good reason, to experience body sensations. These sensations inform us of important information, such as that we are hungry or full…or that we are hot or cold.  This embodied information guides us in choosing whether to approach or avoid certain elements in our world.  Our body sensations are also highly involved in our “fight/flight/freeze” reactions, in which our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) either mobilizes for action or immobilizes (i.e. collapses or "plays dead"), in service of survival. 

The body also orients to safety.  When we sense that we are safe, we feel free to explore our world, seek out resources, and form secure attachments or bonds with others.  The “rest and digest” system, a part of our ANS which comes online when we are oriented to safety, allows the body to calm, and for the systems that are involved in long-term health to be maintained or restored.

When there is dysregulation in the Nervous System, a person may suffer from symptoms associated with mobilized ("fight/flight") energy such as anxiety, anger, distractibility, jumpiness, hypervigilance, loss of appetite, or difficulty sleeping.  A person may also suffer with symptoms associated with immobilized ("freeze") energy, such as feelings of numbness, feeling disconnected, disoriented, or dissociated, depression, low energy and lack of motivation.  Frequently, individuals cycle through symptoms associated with mobilized and immobilized states.  Chronic physical pain or medical conditions can often result from the prolonged stress processes taking place in the body. 

This kind of suffering frequently happens as a result of trauma or life experiences in which our internal and external resources were overwhelmed.  Often, our embodied reactions were the most adaptive survival strategies we could have had within the contexts of where they originally were activated.  Given that we tend to lay down strong "Somatic memory" or muscle memory, around experiences which have a strong emotional charge or which have been repeated many times, these survival reactions can become automatic habitual responses that we often carry forward to people, times, and places, where they no longer serve us very well or where they may no longer be needed.  Even when our rational minds may "know" this, our bodies do not.  They continue to automatically default to the well practiced patterns of self-protection that they have been conditioned to move into.

Commonly, people suffering in this way will attempt to regulate this energy or cope with it, by engaging in behaviors such as excessive alcohol or substance use, eating disorder behavior (such as binging and restricting), isolating, risk taking, overdoing/working/caretaking, and by using avoidant or anxious relationship styles.  These symptoms and coping strategies interfere with our ability to sustain our attention on our embodied experiences, which cuts us off from one of the most valuable sources of information that we have for navigating the world. 

Somatic Therapy guides clients in re-establishing a safe relationship with their embodied experiences.  The process of Somatic Therapy invites clients to slowly and safely attend to the sensations that arise as they explore and process the aspects of their lives that are impacting them.  This allows clients the opportunity to process their felt experiences, make mind/body connections, release survival energy/patterns that no longer serve, and find their way back to a felt sense of safety.  This process draws from and integrates skills of mindfulness and self-compassion.  As clients are once again able to receive the guidance and inherent wisdom of the body, they often discover and integrate new understandings, insights, and internal resources.  They can then more fully and authentically engage in their lives.

Rebecca Foxx, LCSW-R regularly integrates embodied awareness practices into her work with clients.

She is presently matriculating through the 3-Year Professional Training Certificate Program in Somatic Experiencing through the Trauma Institute and is trained in EMDR.  Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma and EMDR is a trauma treatment that incorporates somatic interventions. (Note: I primarily use EMDR as a technique to compliment other primary therapy modalities. I no longer provide straight protocol-EMDR therapy and I do not offer EMDR as an adjunct to those who are in other concurrent therapy).