Somatic Co-Regulating Touch Therapy

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Co-Regulating Touch Work support nervous system regulation and trauma resolution. 

In this therapy a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner provides light touch contact over common areas of the body that store trauma signaling patterns. 

This is provided as a choice within a Somatic Therapy session.  

Where on my body?  

I may bring support around tension in muscles, the shoulders, kidneys/adrenals (which are active in our stress response)  

joints, the feet and the head. 

How: 

The client is fully clothed, and can choose to lie on a massage table or remain seated in a chair. 

The practitioner's hand placement is still; in other words there is no massage or manipulating or moving the body. 

I have a massage table in my office, as many Somatic Experiencing Practitioners do.   

Trauma resolution and resilience may be more possible with touch work, in some situations when the conditions are right and feel safe. 

Touch work may be helpful in cases where you know that there was early childhood trauma, but you do not have a memory or much narrative to go with it. 

It's not necessary to have the story or memory; what is necessary is to currently experience some distress or problem in your life now, that is telling you something is wrong and needs healed. 

Examples of completing a piece of the trauma that is unfinished or unresolved:  

I wish someone explained this to me sooner, so I hope this helps:  

They may need to say something out loud that they didn't get to say at the time of the traumatic incident, or they may have needed to move in a certain way to defend oneself (pushing, fighting or running away) and didn't get to do that. 

Or maybe they needed to feel or express an emotion that they couldn't safely express during that time, 

They may need to separate feeling fear from becoming immobile (passive or freeze and not fully living life or responding in healthy, self protective ways) 

Or they may need to reconsider a belief about themselves they had at the time, that isn't true (such as I'm a bad person, it's my fault, I am powerless, or I don't belong). 

Timing is important in somatic touch work. 

Touch work is not where we begin. 

We support some conditions first 

that help your body to benefit the most.  

During the touch practice, the practitioner and client are having a conversation, checking in and sharing current moment experience. 

This isn't a spa experience or passive experience. However, most people say they feel relaxed afterwards. They also may feel tired from the internal work they did. 

In this approach, we focus less on the story of what happened, and more about the current moment sensations, images, feelings and awareness. 

We track and follow your body's natural response, and support resolution. 

Sensation examples you might notice could be heat, cool, tension, a sense of flow, expansion, contraction, warmth, cool, tight, tingly, numb, open, smooth or something else.

There is no right or wrong sensation, and no agenda to "feel something" better than another thing- the idea is to welcome whatever arises, and support the body to let the thing (whatever the experience is) to continue to move through naturally, release and integrate. 

With successful trauma resolution, the person usually feels more of a sense of expansion, freedom, flow and renewed connection with their deepest self and their lived life. 

They increase their capacity to be embodied and present in the current moment, and with their current environment. They may enjoy and engage in their relationships more. 

They know their body signals better, and often say they respond more kindly to themselves with more self compassion.