a typical Somatic Experiencing session
What most people ask when they call me is: what does a typical session entail?
People come to my office. On the outside it doesn’t look like much. I call it Grandma’s house. Inside, it’s an inviting environment that facilitates letting down. Clients come in, and the invitation is to become present-moment-aware in the space and to examine what is in your field in the present moment. What presents in the field drives the session. Let’s consider for a moment in this hypothetical story that what might be anxiety.
Ok, so what does your experience of anxiety in this moment feel like?
I feel like my insides are jumpy.
Insides jumpy? Ok. It’s great that you can notice that. Where do you notice the jumpyness?
Mostly in my chest and stomach.
Your chest and stomach, ok. I’m wondering if you might notice your feet on the ground and your seat in the chair. What happens there?
Oh, I kinda forgot I had legs for a minute. Yes, it’s good to notice they’re there.
Great, so as I see you plant your feet more firmly and become more aware of your strong legs, I’m wondering what happens next with the jumpyness…
It feels a little less jumpy.
A little less jumpy– wow, ok, and as you notice it’s less jumpy and that you’re seated here with me, what happens next?
Now this is going to sound strange, but—
(I cannot tell you how many times a day someone says this to me).
I hear that all of the time. It might not be strange to me…
I just saw this image of when–
And, that’s how a session goes. We work with what presents and we pull that thread and see what else it might be attached to. Memory is stored thematically, not chronologically. The mind files the “jumpy anxious memories” from the 1900s in the same drawer as the ones from today. So, we begin to uncouple the emotion of the past from the present moment. The sensation in the body continues to change, and together we track the changes, and inevitably, what happens next is you take a spontaneous deep breath or you cry a few tears or you tremble in an extremity or your eyes begin to blink and whatever the what was is complete.
How do you know it’s complete? You feel more at ease. The jumpyness doesn’t have the same charge. Memories of jumpyness have new meaning. The next time you experience jumpyness, you don’t feel overwhelmed and swept up in the vortex of it. These are just examples, of course.
Over time, the person who arrives to my office is a different person than the one who initially began working on their nervous system regulation. Your capacity to respond to life in a regulated way increases. You attract new people and experiences. When you experience overwhelm, you have a different baseline of regulation to which to return. The hallmark of a healthy nervous system is not one that is calm all of the time. We need our instincts to fight and flee in order to remain safe in the world. A healthy nervous system rides the waves and recovers efficiently. Each session mimics a wave. On the next session, we pull a different thread. The session unfolds similarly and entirely differently.
When are you finished with this work? How long does it take?
That’s up to you. I’ve studied this work for the better part of a decade, and I still see a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner via Zoom periodically. I still drive farther than I’d like to for Somatic Table Sessions. I aspire to keep my skills fresh and always to remember what it’s like to be in the seat of the client. And, I’ve found that many clients do this work routinely for a year or so, and then they find they just want to come in for maintenance from time to time.