The following are excerpts from the Somatic Psychology program websites of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, John F. Kennedy University, and The California Institute of Integral Studies:
[From SBGI.edu]: The word somatic comes from the ancient Greek word soma, or living body. The field of somatic psychology focuses on the complex relationship between our bodies and our minds—and with the many ways that our bodies manifest and/or provide clues to our psychological histories, emotional responses, and interpersonal relationships. Somatic psychology practitioners recognize, for example, that previous traumatic experiences are often reflected in body language, posture, and expression and may lead to physical symptoms such as chronic pain or headaches, digestive or immune problems, hormonal disruptions, sexual issues, and other neurological or physical symptoms later in life. In that sense, somatic psychology practitioners believe that the body often “speaks” for us, even the painful memories we may have forgotten or wish we could.
Somatic psychology practitioners may use a combination of both traditional psychotherapy and various “body-focused” therapies such as breath, movement, body awareness, and nonverbal communication to help clients draw on the intelligence of their body in the process of personal growth and change. This holistic mind-body approach has been shown particularly effective for helping clients coping with post traumatic stress (PTSD) or other trauma, but it is also used successfully for more common mental and emotional challenges such as depression, anxiety, grief, relationship issues, and other life challenges.
[From JFKU.edu]: From a somatic perspective, life experiences are embodied experiences; breath styles, movement patterns, musculature tensions, cognitive style, emotional expression, and relational patterns are shaped by and express past and present whole-body experiences.
Somatic Psychology incorporates the body into its psychological investigations, considering bodily states of consciousness, postures and gestures, muscular patterns, chronic contractions and tensions, movement range and shapes, ways of breathing, skin and color tones, somatic habits, energetic qualities, use of space, and body pulsations and rhythms as a potential part of the therapy process.
Enormous psychological, social, cultural and political forces support the splitting and fragmentation of mindbody unity. As we know, these pressures take a considerable toll on the mental, biological, and relational health of each of us. [Somatic Psychologists] are interested in the personal and social practices and policy transformations necessary to alleviate these stresses.
[From CIIS.edu]: Somatic Psychotherapies combine traditional approaches to counseling, including dream work, talk, interpretation, and reflection, with experiential explorations. The underlying insight in somatic psychotherapies is that we enact self-feeling, identity, and connection with others through bodily means. We reach out or pull away, are warm or cold to people, are emotional or restricted in our feelings.
Through our development in families and communities, we construct embodied patterns of feeling, sensation, expression, movement, and emotion through which we know ourselves and make relationships in the world.
Work, play, and other engagements with the world are also enacted through the development of varying muscular states, emotional and feeling capabilities, and ranges of movement.
Somatic psychotherapists are trained to help clients explore the bodily means by which they conduct their daily lives. Through the use of breath work; movement exercises; touch; and explorations of feeling, sensation, posture, gesture, and expression, clients experience how they shape particular identities and interact with others.
For Somatic psychotherapists these explorations of clients’ patterns of bodily comportment and the explorations of new means of enactment are useful tools in the development of self-awareness and satisfaction in living.
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