Am I Ready?
How can you tell if or when you’re ready to enter a therapeutic relationship with a Somatic Practitioner? The arising of this question demonstrates a curiosity that is vital to your success on this journey.
SOMATIC THERAPY integrates body, mind, and lived experience through movement and touch to facilitate profound personal transformation. As awareness grows about this approach, people often ask what it involves and who might benefit from working with a Somatic Therapist - particularly this one.
I'm sharing my perspective to help potential clients understand if we'd work well together, while also offering current clients deeper insight into our therapeutic process and how to maximize its benefits.
This approach uses attuned touch, awareness, and movement to access depths of healing that conventional therapies might not reach. It's a journey of reconnecting with your body's wisdom, where releasing stored tension and trauma opens pathways to new ways of being.
Like any meaningful journey of transformation, real change requires dedication and consistency. Our work together typically spans several months, with regular weekly or bi-weekly sessions that allow for deep integration and embodied learning. Rather than a quick fix, this approach gradually awakens body awareness and self-knowledge, with each session building upon previous insights, creating a cumulative effect that supports lasting transformation.
To enhance your experience and support our success, let's explore the key components of our somatic therapeutic relationship.
TOGETHER - You are the expert on your lived experience - no one else inhabits your skin or knows your history. Yet you may not feel like that expert. This is where our partnership becomes vital. Through the triune of touch, talk, and movement, we work together to deepen your self-knowledge and strengthen your connection to your own expertise.
TOUCH - In our touch-based work, sensations flow as a form of communication - from my hands to your body, and then to your brain for processing. Through the sophisticated receptors in your skin and tissue, you receive and interpret these 'touch messages.' This creates opportunities to experience new sensations and possibilities you might not have known existed, inviting your body to play a more significant role in your life's narrative.
MOVEMENT - Somatic Therapy can focus on non-touch movement exercises, either guided by an experienced facilitator or self-directed as you learn to attune to your internal sensations. Movement offers unique insights by changing how we experience our body in time and space. While stillness provides one perspective, moving or being moved shifts our relationship with gravity and our environment. This physical exploration becomes a pathway to mental shifts - a key benefit of Somatic Therapies.
SENSATION - The language of our bodies is sensation. As my colleague Fernando Rojas, PhD, notes, "sensory awareness is our currency." We work with interoception - the perception of both internal and surface sensations. Such sensations can be subtle, fleeting, complex, and layered. Through our work together, you'll develop greater curiosity and skill in sensing these messages. This heightened interoceptive awareness is both a right and a necessity for living an empowered life.
INTEGRATION - Integration reconnects body and mind where stress or conflict has created separation. Through gradual exploration, patterns emerge and connections form. With a non-judgmental approach, questions arise and answers surface. This process of recognizing sensations, softening rigid defenses, and connecting bodily experiences to your life's history is deeply personal work. While we're biologically designed for this integration, life circumstances can interrupt it - our work helps restore this natural process.
SELF-KNOWING - This work is a journey toward profound self-knowing. Through understanding ourselves, we gain access to understanding the world - not as an act of grandiosity, but because we are each reflections of the whole. The inward journey leads through depths that illuminate not only our inner landscape but our connection to everything. Ancient wisdom teaches that self-knowledge is life's highest path, one that must include the body's intelligence. Somatic Therapy offers a timely pathway to this embodied awareness, inviting you to fully become yourself.
Here are some qualities that may help you to identify and confirm your readiness to commit to somatic therapy.
YOU MIGHT BE READY FOR SOMATIC THERAPY IF:
You're willing to slow down and listen to your body's signals, even when they're subtle or uncomfortable
You're curious about the connection between your physical sensations and emotional experiences
You've tried traditional talk therapy and feel there's something missing
You're ready to commit to regular sessions and practice between meetings
You're open to exploring new ways of understanding yourself and your patterns
You're willing to be patient with the process and trust that change unfolds in its own time
You have a genuine desire for self-discovery and are prepared to be an active participant in your healing journey
Let’s remember that this work isn't about forcing change or rushing to solutions - it's about creating space for natural healing and integration to emerge. If you resonate with these signs, you may be ready to begin this transformative journey.