“Trauma is an internal straight jacket created when a devastating moment is frozen in time. It stifles the unfolding of being, and strangles our attempts to move forwards with our lives. It disconnects us from ourselves, others, nature and spirit. When overwhelmed by threat, we are frozen in fear, as though our instinctive survival energies were ‘all dressed up with no place to go.”
– Peter Levine, Ph.D.
Trauma is an extreme form of fear accompanied by a state of perceived helplessness—and often hopelessness. Symptoms of trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can include emotional numbness–removed from reality, impotent rage, chronically intrusive memories of trauma that seem to be happening in the present moment, inability to distinguish flashbacks from real occurrences, and being incapable of acting, immobilized with fear or anxiety. The good news though, is that all humans are born pre-wired with a process for recovering from traumatic symptoms.
Somatic Experiencing® is a body-based trauma resolution therapy. It offers a road map to identify where a person is caught in the flight, fight, freeze, or collapse responses and offers clinical tools to resolve these physiological states. Through increased body awareness, sensation tolerance, and guided imagery, clients are carefully guided to safely release the stuck energy of traumatizing experiences.
Here at Mindful Guides, our work is informed by the healing principles of Somatic Experiencing®. Many of our clinicians are certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioners, and all of us understand that effective therapy only happens when the body is consciously included in treatment. Somatic Experiencing® can result in a number of benefits including relief from traumatic stress symptoms, increased resiliency and resourcefulness, a heightened sense of empowerment and an increased capacity to be in the here-and-now and connect with others. For more info, visit traumahealing.org.