SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® (generally known as SE), a psychobiological approach to trauma resolution, is one of the most well known of these approaches.  It was pioneered over 40 years ago by acclaimed American author and clinician Dr. Peter Levine emerging from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application

 

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An SE session lasts about an hour. Typically, you will sit comfortably with your therapist, take time to settle, and then asked what you would like to explore in the session. You’ll then be guided to consciously explore freely related physical sensations, feelings, thoughts and images as they arise. Through this simple moment-to-moment process – called tracking – it’s possible for highly charged stress energy in your body to be properly engaged and released or discharged naturally. You might experience tingling, warmth, and involuntary muscle movements such as twitching or yawning. The result of this often subtle experience can be immediate; the trapped survival energy at the root of your distress is freed, allowing a new relaxation to establish deep in your body and mind.

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SE trauma resolution does not require the traumatised person to re-tell or re-live the traumatic event. Instead, it offers the opportunity to engage, complete, and resolve—in a slow and supported way—the body’s instinctual fight, flight and freeze responses. This resets the nervous system, restores inner balance, enhances resilience to stress, and increases people’s vitality, equanimity, and capacity to actively engage in life.