WHEN THE BODY SPEAKS

Understanding Somatic/ Body Psychotherapy

Our mind can be a busy little know-it-all and get stuck in over thinking,

But what does our body have to say about things?

Many of us may be working hard to numb out, distract ourselves or avoid at all costs what might be happening within our bodies. The sensations, feelings and messages that have been knocking at the door, waiting to have a voice.

Somatic therapy/body psychotherapy is an invitation to slowly begin to listen to the wisdom of the body, Rather then just our thoughts.

Our bodies are constantly communicating with us sometimes in subtle ways and other times screaming loudly. It speaks through sensation, body language, breath, emotion and nervous system responses. Learning to listen to its cues, can open a different doorway into healing.

Modern teachers like Louise Hay helped bring awareness to psychosomatics, the idea that our physical symptoms may sometimes carry meaning beyond what first appears. Such as we may hold grief in a lung infection or fear in issues with the kidneys. Though long before this many ancient traditions see the mind, body and spirit as connected and not seperate. Chinese medicine offered a beautiful framework around the relationship between our organs and emotions. Ayurvedic Medicine see’s wellbeing as a balancing act between mind, body and soul.

Somehow in Modern Medicine we have lost sight of this intricate interconnectedness within our body.

When we are in the thick of illness or injury we may not choose to make meaning and in the crisis we just have to deal with the thing, address physical symptoms and have them medically assessed and tending to. I have definately been in this place!

It may often be in retrospect that we may intuit why this may of happened at a certain time and if there is any deeper teaching for us. Sometimes the illness pulls us out of a toxic job, an injury slows us down or the sickness gets our needs met we otherwise can not ask for.

Many people may find meaning in our aches, pains and illnesses. Stories we have held our whole life finally being spoken.

In the past I was very committed to trying to heal my past without hearing my body and spent around 15 years in talk therapy. Whilst supportive in many ways and enabling me to participate more fully in life, I still felt there was a huge component missing. My head was being addressed. However, the other 90 per cent of my body didn’t seem to have a seat at the table.

So many important clues, signals and sensations had been bypassed. Clues that may have taken me deeper into my healing process, I was circumnavigating all of the islands, but never quite reaching the mainland.

There was a myriad of emotions to be felt, stories to be completed, boundaries to be expressed, anger, terror, pleasure and grief to be experienced.

For me, this became the route back home.

Not through more cognitive strategies or mental overload, but through re-learning the language of my own body.

I needed someone to meet the whole of me, not just the dangling blob attached to my neck.

After many years of neglect, numbing and harm, my body needed to be made peace with. It needed to be held and remembered, not buried even further beneath the laundry pile.

Body Psychotherapy gently opens the conversation.

It asks: What is happening in your body right now?

Where do you notice that feeling?

What happens if we stay with that sensation just a little longer?

Does our body have a message for us?

When we offer space for the body to communicate in therapy, we can begin to soften our grip on defence and protection. We may experience glimpses of what it feels like to be unguarded in our authentic vulnerability. We learn what it is like to come to our edges, to take up space in our own process and perhaps for the very first time, receive support from another.

As our capacity to stay with what we are feeling grows, so too does our capacity for life itself.

Somatics shouldn’t just be a phase. We have had a body the whole time, but many of us have forgotten that. We are remembering our humanness. We may have turned down the volume on our sensations as we doom-scroll, overwork and disconnect from our needs. Yet the body continues to speak.

Our tense shoulders.

The lump in our throat.

The knot in our stomach.

The excitement in our chest.

They are messengers. They are part of our nervous system responding to our inner and outer worlds. They remind us that we are alive.

Over the last few years my own body has spoken loudly, through peripheral neuropathy following vitamin B6 toxicity and other health challenges. My body was speaking loudly, whilst sometimes very challenging it has been another opportunity to drop further into my healing journey. The only way was in.

Life looks and feels beautiful when we have the physical capacity to engage with it. But when everyday things become difficult, an initiation of sorts begins. The body asks to be addressed on many levels and heard with compassionate hearts.

For me, somatic therapy became less about fixing myself and more about learning how to listen to the cues of my body, when it needs to rest, when it needs to move and express, the power of breath, the beauty of emotion.

Because the body speaks. Reminding us we are alive.

Beckoning for us to listen.

Curious About Somatic Therapy?

If you're looking for somatic therapy, body psychotherapy or trauma-informed therapy in Byron Bay or the Northern Rivers, I'd love to support you.