Cancer as a Gateway
Multi-Dimensional Approach To Healing
Somatic Psychology: "of the body"
The body holds the psyche's unconscious material in images, sensations, and feeling. Somatic psychology works from the "bottom up", determining through sensation what one may be feeling, as opposed to "top down", where we try to analyze with our mind to understand. Various techniques to help facilitate comfort and familiarity in working with body sensation in psychotherapy include: breathwork, visualization, movement.
Somatic work needs to be taken slowly, developing a capacity for listening to more subtle information than we are used to in this culture. Often, the way we keep ourselves busy in our lives is a way of fending off the feelings that exist in our bodies. In somatic work, we learn to slow down, allowing our feelings to make themselves known to us.
Trauma Treatment:
The body is where trauma first is registered. If you think about somebody surprising you from behind, you do not think or feel first, but your body responds with increased heart rate, shallow breath, etc.. So it is with trauma, the body is the first to respond and holds the key to healing.
Have you been injured in an event, or witnessed someone else's injury, and the images won't leave your mind?
Do you avoid thoughts, feelings, people, and events that bring those images forward?
Do you feel either anxious and jumpy, or numb and disconnected from yourself and others?
Is it difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep, or do you have repeated nightmares?
Through working in a safe environment with a therapist your can trust, you can begin to return to your body and the knowledge it holds. You can learn to feel and release what haunts you today. You can re-inform your nervous system to regain a sense of connection to yourself and others. Trauma healing is about reclamation, about feeling safe enough to return to your experience here and now without feeling overwhelmed by emotions, or numb to living.
Call to start on your own path to healing.
