You’ve taked and talked: to well meaning family and friends, maybe to other therapists. Maybe you’ve written about it in your journal. You’ve gained understanding. You feel you have self-awareness about where you are stuck, maybe even how. But it’s not enough! Why???

We live in a very head-y culture. We are taught that our minds are the capitans of the ship. Most of us received significant messaging that reason and rational should be enough to empower us to make good decisions, to be the people we most want to be.

Who we are is NOT housed in our heads, though. Who we are is deep, DEEP in our bodies. The truth is we are every cell of our bodies. Also, the image of our minds as capitan; it’s actually the exact opposite. Our minds are constantly responding to what is true in our bodies. If a choice evokes fear, for instance, even if its something we consciously really want, our bodies will send our brains a message that this isn’t safe. Some of this does happen on the conscious level. You know something evokes fear and you want to know how to work with the fear enough to the thing anyways. So much of this conversation occurs underneath our awareness, though. 

Somatic therapy is about bringing this connection, this ongoing, moment to moment conversation between our minds and our bodies into our awareness. When we start to listen to our bodies, we discover some of the missing context that is contributing to those areas of stuckness. 

When we learn how to shine light onto these deeper layers of what is true for us, we can start to learn how to dance with them. Somatic therapy enables us to get to the ROOT of things. When we get to the root, we can tend on that level and deeper change becomes possible!