Deepening Spiritual Practice with Somatic Awareness
Spiritual practice and somatic awareness can complement and enhance a practitioner’s healing journey and self-discovery. In yoga, mountain pose is a grounding asana where the practitioner is standing on two feet with her arms by the side of the body palms facing forward, legs firm, the crown of the head reaching up, shoulders relaxed, heart lifted, and collar bones broad. Breathing is full and steady through the nose. While standing and breathing in mountain pose, in addition to the physicality of the pose, the mind coming back to what the body is experiencing is a part of this practice. In a spiritual practice like yoga - the mind, body, and brain are all working together to heal, nurture and care for the very individual they serve.
In addition to talk therapy a somatic psychotherapist provides body-based therapy to help a client heal on a cellular level as well as a cognitive level.
Your somatic psychotherapist might incorporate mind-body exercises. These could include yoga postures, which center the body and the mind, Alexander techniques, Feldenkrais methods or Somatic Experiencing, to name a few. These somatic exercises are performed mindfully, focusing on the inner experience and expanding internal awareness. Movement creates sensation which supports expanding somatic awareness.
Dr. Peter Levine first introduced Somatic Experiencing as an integrative mind-body approach to help trauma survivors heal. Research revealed Levine’s somatic approach was found effective when utilizing a whole-body approach to psychotherapy to help clients access and release stored negative body-based experiences. One might be able to relate a somatic experience in a yoga posture designed to release stored negative body-based experiences. A “hip-opening” posture may be the perfect pose to explore somatic sensation. In a yoga class, you may have heard the teacher say, “We store a lot of stories in our hips - the largest joint in the body.” If the practitioner is able to surrender to the pose through breath and body awareness, an opportunity arises to observe physical and emotional change.
This is the balance of spiritual practice with somatic awareness gently caring for oneself in the process of healing old wounds.
What is happening underneath the surface of it all is we are asked to come back to our experiences in that moment again and again with compassion and patience towards ourselves and whatever story is arising about self. In psychotherapy, we have the opportunity to go through an experience, express what needs to be expressed, and be released in the presence of a caring person who is trained to hold space without judgment for their client. With a therapist trained in Somatic Experiencing, the client has the opportunity to express themselves with their body as well as their words resulting in a calmer nervous system and a deepening of the healing experience. Eastern yoga and Western somatic practices beautifully complement each other in that they are both mind-body based and allow the practitioner to connect with their inner experience on a cellular level allowing for felt change and relief from physically stored experiences in the body.
In yoga, the practitioner is granted the time to explore their body sometimes in uncomfortable ways which challenge the nervous system to expand its capacity in difficult situations. In this way, somatically trained therapists can reach into their intervention toolbox to support clients going through difficult experiences. Some of these approaches are grounding the client through their senses, boundary setting, co-regulation, and self-regulation, and strengthening a sense of safety by remembering resources such as loved ones and safe spaces.
All of these interventions provide anchors for the client to come back to as a safe space to process trauma, allowing engagement and processing of triggers from a different perspective.
Next time you’re on your yoga mat or in a somatic therapy session, know that the two practices complement each other. If you’ve been practicing yoga for years and don’t think you need therapy because of your yoga practice, I invite you to think again. You may discover how talking about what comes up for you in the presence of a compassionate therapist affects your yoga practice. The next time you’re on your mat, you may notice your mind has moved onto another story instead of replaying the one that seemed to always grab your attention. And the same goes for those who want to talk and talk and talk and stay up in their head about everything instead of getting some quiet time and working with the body to see what she has to say. Of course, the sweet spot is getting the best of both worlds in therapy with somatic experiences.