Individual sessions will have focus on the psychosomatic aspect of the work and bodywork will be an integral part to access chronic and emotionally held tensions. Consultations are aimed to resolve and work with chronic physical issues – developmental trauma, incidental or physical trauma and psychological trauma. Chronic tensions and illnesses are often caused by emotional residue frozen in the body tissues. SE and SER are short term approaches that generally take up no more then 3-5 sessions.
Read here for:
An overview on the mechanism of trauma
Coupling dynamics further explored
Case-Histories and Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress
Somato Emotional Release (SER )
SER in other words can be translated as emotional release from the body. The original work and definitions hold upon the idea that trauma stores itself in the appropriate body tissues when an issue is unresolved. These trauma’s or restrictions can be tracked, found and palpated through listening techniques using the hands. Often they are felt as knots or concentric circles in the tissues where energy/emotion is frozen in time. A practitioner will place her hands on these “knots” when allowed. While the patient is in a supine comfortable position with the eyes closed a dialogue is started to re-negotiate the trauma/conditioning and to free up the (energy) body. The form of dialogue being applied is multifaceted and can include: communicating with an organ or cells, younger selfs, exploring sensations, changing a perspective, reliving an event, etc. Being successful really depends on the practitioners intuition, energy and experience as well as the patient’s willingness and openness to work.
Roland is a Certified SER therapist since 2005
Somatic Experiencing (SE) ®
Trauma is an internal straitjacket created when a devastating moment is frozen in time. It stifles the unfolding of being, strangling our attempts to move forward in our lives. It disconnects us from ourselves; others , nature and spirit. When people are overwhelmed by threat, we are frozen in fear. It is as if our instinctive survival energies are “all dressed up with no place to go”. Somatic Experiencing ® offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity to heal as well as an intellectual spirit to harness this innate capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed. Somatic experiencing ® is a short term naturalistic approach to the resolution of post traumatic stress reactions. It is based upon the ethological observation that animals in the wild utilize innate homeostatic mechanisms to regulate and neutralize the high levels of arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors. Somatic Experiencing normalizes the symptoms of trauma, which bind this arousal, and offers the steps needed to resolve the activation and heal trauma. Although humans possess mechanisms virtually identical to those in animals, the function of these systems is often overridden by neo-cortical inhibition (by the rational mind). This restraint leads to the formation of a constellation of symptoms, including pain, patterns of bracing and collapse, intrusion, anxiety and cognitive dysfunction. Through the focal awareness of bodily sensation, individuals are able to access these restorative physiological action patterns allowing the highly aroused survival energies to be safely and gradually neutralized. Unregulated arousal previously “locked in” the neuromuscular and central nervous system can be discharged and completed, thus preventing and resolving traumatic symptoms.
SE summary written by Peter Levine, Ph.D. 1997
