I’m listening to yet another interesting book which mentions, discusses, and champions Somatic Experiencing®️ (Sacred Medicine by Lissa Rankin, MD.)
For those who don’t know, SE™️ is a trauma healing modality.
Working with a practitioner, you get to know your body and inner sensations, perhaps for the first time. And the practioner shows you that you can trust that you body actually can handle stress.
Depending on your past, your body might only start out able to handle a little bit of that stress at a time. This is valuable information to have. It allows you to understand why you do things you’d rather not, like check out for instance.
Further work- in partnership with your trusted practitioner- expands your capacity to handle stress.
Once this foundation has been laid, your practitioner can lead you through “renegotiating” the traumas in your past that were specific events. In a way, this is finding the completion that your body has been looking for since the event happened.
Even if they weren’t specific events, we often hold on to the pattern in a less-than-cognitive way. This would be complex- or developmental trauma. So the work helps that stuff, too.
The training to get your certificate in Somatic Experiencing takes place over eight trainings, over three years. (The process to become an SEP, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, requires that you do your own work with SEPs and get consultation hours.)
I have just enrolled in the third training (Beginner III) which will happen in November.
And I am thrilled!
One of the reasons this training is over such a long time, instead of all at once, is to allow the student’s mind and body to integrate the information. This means using it. With other people.
And that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve had a couple of clients/guinea pigs since the first training, last February.
My level of practice has stepped up. I still am absolutely a beginner, and I ask for beginner-level compensation.
But the work is real. It’s happening.
And I’m really beginning to integrate it into the whole of my work (as a Freedom Guide,) although I still call them “SE practice sessions.”
That’s the other thing that’s amazing about this modality. You are *supposed* to integrate it into the work you already do. Plenty of psychotherapists learn SE. But so do physical therapists, body and energy workers, coaches, etc. If you work with people, you can make a case for admission.
So this is what I’m doing.
And we all know… we love to talk about the stuff we are doing!
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