On these pages you can find the contact details of registered Somatic Experiencing Practitioners, SOMA Embodiment and Ego State Therapists.
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a naturalistic approach to the understanding and healing of trauma developed by Peter A. Levine over the past 40 years and taught throughout the world. SE is a clinical methodology based upon an appreciation of why animals in the wild are not traumatized by routine threats to their lives while humans, on the other hand, are readily overwhelmed and traumatized. Fortunately, the very same instincts (and related survival based brain systems) that are involved in the formation of trauma symptoms can be enlisted in the transformation and healing of trauma. Therapeutically, this “instinct to heal” and self-regulate is engaged through the awareness of body sensations that contradict those of paralysis and helplessness, and which restore resilience, equilibrium and wholeness. Because human responses to potential threat vary so greatly, it is difficult to identify or classify sources of trauma. Most people associate trauma with events like war, violence, extremes of physical, emotional or sexual abuse, crippling accidents, or natural disasters. However, many ''ordinary'' or seemingly benign events can also be traumatic. For example, so-called minor automobile “whiplash'' accidents frequently lead to bewildering and debilitating physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms. Common invasive medical procedures and surgeries (particularly those performed on frightened children who are restrained while being anesthetized), can be profoundly traumatizing. Somatic Experiencing utilizes basic tools (and “building blocks”) but also works differentially with various sources of trauma.
These diverse categories include:
• Medical: Hospitalizations, surgeries, invasive medical procedures, anaesthesia, burns, poisoning, fetal distress and traumatic birth.
• Accidents: Falls, high impact accidents (including auto accidents), head injury, electrocution.
• Suffocation: Drowning, strangulation.
• Attack: Rape, war, bombings, physical abuse, mugging, molestation, physical injury, stabbing, gunshot wounds, animal attacks.
• Natural and man-made disasters: Earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, floods, terrorism, dislocation from the natural world and community.
• Horror: Seeing an accident (especially with blood, gore and dismemberment), watching someone else being abused, raped, killed or tortured, killing or hurting someone.
• Developmental: Neglect, abandonment, loss and ongoing abuse.
• Torture, repeated rape and systematic abuse
SOMA-Embodiment Therapy
SOMA-Embodiment work has been developed through years of accumulated professional experience and practice by Sonia Gomes Silva and Marcelo Muniz. SOMA owes a debt of gratitude to the insights and conceptual frameworks created by four great masters: Peter A. Levine, Dr. Ida Rolf, Stephen Porges, and Hubert Godard.
Embodiment is an essential aspect to be addressed by anyone working with Trauma Healing. We define Embodiment as a conscious perception of our body´s presence. We find it in coherence and fluidity, tracking through the sensations in the continuous process of movement. This allows the person to express his/her authentic capacities and at the same time, enjoy graciousness of gesture and optimum tonus in our encounters with our fellow human beings. A deeper quality of Embodiment can be achieved through Touch and Movement Education. With this procedure, the practitioner may be able to stimulate an Internal Release that will promote a new Functional manifestation. From that, new possibilities of self-expression giving better function towards health can emerge. As we deal with Trauma, we start to notice the inherent complexities intertwining, between Body, Mind & Brain. These often create restrictions, which become reflected in a freezing or narrowing of the Inner and Outer Spaces, consequently diminishing the Life Force Energy.
SOMA approach acknowledges that Traumatic experiences can cause blocks in which remain stuck in the body in many levels, thereby reducing the body’s capacity for Embodiment, Orientation, Integration and Perception. In order to complete Traumatic Resolution we first need to work with the following: the perceptual system and the gravitational organization. Education in orientation is required. At this stage we will incorporate continuity and movement fluidity, tracking and embodiment explorations in order to expand perception and to address biological rhythms for self-regulation.
Ego State Therapy was developed by Prof John G. Watkins (Ph.D) and Mrs. Helen H. Watkins (MA). This approach is based on the premise that human personality is composed of separate parts (so-called Ego States), rather than being a monolithic entity. These different parts of the self develop naturally to cope with life and developmental challenges and crises in all individuals and provide diversity to self-experience. Parts can also develop as a result of trauma or impactful life experiences contributing to divisions in the self. Ego state therapy focuses on understanding and treating the different aspects or dimensions of the self by respecting the unique self-individuation of each person. The goal of ego state therapy is to elicit the ego states, to work with them therapeutically, to attain peace amongst them and to integrate them into a family of self.
What are the goals of Ego State Therapy?
• To locate ego states harboring pain, trauma, anger, or frustration and facilitate expression, release, comfort, and empowerment (It is unresolved states that come out and make us feel out of control. They are our internal tender spots
• To facilitate functional communication among ego states (the statement "I hate myself when I am like that" indicates two states lacking in proper communication and appreciation), and
• To help clients learn their ego states so that the states may be better used to the clients' benefit (e.g., allowing the client to, at one time, be open to enjoy emotional experiences and, at another time, be assertive to feel expressed when challenged
Professionals who have completed training in the use of Ego State Therapy have reported greater success with complex patients, particularly those who previously appeared to be untreatable, such as those with complex PTSD and anxiety, personality disorder patients, and dissociative spectrum patients.
Ego State Therapy is uniquely suited to healing the fragmentation that results from various types of trauma and cumulative trauma, including attachment disorders, childhood abuse and trauma, developmental trauma, trauma usually occurring at maturity such as rape, assault, car collisions and work injuries, as well as damage caused by war and natural disasters. We have also found Ego State therapy to be helpful in working with traumatized children and adolescents, as well as with patients of all ages whose issues appear refractory to various types of good treatment. In these cases, it has been our experience that internal conflicts of the self, have prevented the client’s positive response to therapy methods. Ego State Therapy has helped to create a more functional internal family of self, which promotes greater functionality in every area of life. Ego State Therapy as an intervention strategy can easily be combined with other approaches such as Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Eye Movement Integration (EMI), Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).