If you've ever read the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D., you know all about somatic therapy's impact on trauma survivors. While it's a holistic treatment -- and some write it off as fake -- it's actually done wonders for many, myself included.
In his book, van der Kolk explores alternative trauma treatments like neurofeedback, meditation, yoga, and creative expression. He's a major advocate for somatic therapy, which allows people to release the emotions "stored" in their bodies.
"Somatic therapy explores how the body expresses deeply painful experiences, applying mind-body healing to aid with trauma recovery," according to Harvard Health.
While it's not as widely researched as other forms of therapy, it's been one of my saving graces in trauma recovery -- more so than exposure and response prevention (ERP), which was my original treatment plan as a child.
I've been in therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) since I was six years old, and it only ever kept me alive. That's about the extent of help I got from exposure therapy. I would be able to function, sure, kinda...but never thrive.
Granted, I hadn't realized my OCD was trauma-based, and this important distinction saved my life. It wasn't until I was an adult that I started to dig into my past and uncover some deeply painful traumas from my early years, including a child-on-child sexual assault that left a lasting imprint. I hadn't known just how much it had impacted me until I found myself physically shaking while recalling the memory to a new therapist.
I was in my early 20s at the time, and I didn't even know where to begin to heal from an event that happened over two decades ago. All I knew was that it impacted how I viewed myself, how I showed up in relationships, and my comfort level with intimacy. I carried so much shame that I could barely form a sense of self.
But as my therapist revealed to me, trauma can be stored in the body -- even if the mind has repressed it. In addition to acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), neurofeedback therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), she recommended I explore other somatic therapies like yoga and breathwork.
At first, I was a skeptic. Nothing and no one had been able to break through my layers of anxiety, panic, and chronic shame before. But as I stepped onto my yoga mat for a deep hip-opening yin yoga practice one evening, I began to cry. It was like years of pent-up emotions were finally surfacing, fighting their way out of me.
What an incredible release.
Amy Glover of the HuffPost shared the same experience: "I'll be honest, I hated the idea when I first read it, dismissing [somatic therapy] as poorly-researched woo-woo (the practice is far less studied than, say, CBT)," she wrote. "There's only one problem -- I've cried on a mat in the cool-down period of a yoga class for no apparent reason way too often for me to ignore the association."
There are various forms of somatic therapy, from dance therapy to grounding -- all of which involve the body and movement. Integrating and aligning the mind and body has healed me in ways I never thought possible. It's a long journey, but one I'm proud to be on. Reconnecting with myself and my body was the only way I could learn to love and accept all parts of myself -- even the wounded parts I had once rejected.
So, whether you believe it or not, there's something to be said about somatic therapy. At the very least, perhaps it makes you feel safe enough to be still, and still enough to feel emotions you've possibly been repressing.