About Somatic Experiencing®

Somatic Experiencing® is a set of tools for trauma healing that was developed by Peter Levine, PhD

The following description of Somatic Experiencing is quoted from the Somatic Experiencing International website. You can check out the entire website by clicking on the logo here.

WHAT IS SOMATIC EXPERIENCING®?

Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.

The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. SE provides effective skills appropriate to a variety of healing professions including mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, education, and others.

Somatic Experiencing in Rosalie’s somatic coaching practice

I completed the three-year Somatic Experiencing International professional training and received a Provisional Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (PSEP) Certificate in 2020.

Somatic Experiencing is a keystone of my somatic coaching practice. The magic of SE is in how it can allow both the practitioner and the client to follow the client’s body to access insight, information, memory and feeling experiences that cannot be reached through cognitive channels.

I will upgrade from being a PSEP to a regular old SEP after attending a 2-day in-person training to specifically practice hands-on SE Touch work that was not possible to do during the Covid lockdown. These 2-day trainings are above and beyond the full standard curricula which I and many others have completed, but normally that curricula would have integrated the hands-on practice. I am hoping this will happen in 2021 but as yet no dates have been set.

If anyone who is reading this is potentially interested in studying SE, I do whole-heartedly endorse the SE professional training as a great resource for both gaining facilitation skills and covering a lot of ground in personal healing and growth.