Somatic Therapy and Massage

What is Somatic Therapy? And how can massage help?

The term somatic has become more of a buzzword lately, and I couldn’t be happier about it!

Derived from the Greek “soma,” meaning “body,” somatic refers to anything of or relating to the body.

Psycho-somatic refers to the mind-body relationship, but from what I can tell, most people are referring to psycho-somatics when they use the term somatic.

Many of you have heard of the book The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

I like to say that the body tells the story….

And it also holds the key.

Every cell in our body holds memory. Our DNA is stored structurally, while our story, our purpose, our wisdom and our ancestral knowledge are stored energetically.

Every trauma and every blessing, however big or small, gets processed by our nervous system. We typically tend to think of the nervous system as “electrical,” but its more fluid than that. The nervous system relies on the release of hormones and nutrients, just like our endocrine and our muscular systems. We tend to break these systems into parts so that we can understand them better, but they are always intricately connected and influenced by each other.

This means that everything that we experience, from witnessing something on the street or on social media, to experiencing very personal life-changing events, gets processed and stored, in both our consciousness and in our physical bodies. The two are always together, whether we acknowledge and work with them as a unit or not.

Whenever we stimulate the body, the subconscious and unconscious parts of ourselves are also stimulated, and brought to the surface of the mind.

Here’s an example of a recent experience of mine…

I got a massage last week and had my therapist focus on upper body. My neck and especially my traps felt tight, and I’ve been experiencing some numbness in my right hand that I think is related to tightness in my neck and shoulders.

Towards the end of the massage, when I was really relaxed, she started to go deeper into the sides of my neck. She found a trigger point - a point of tissue that radiates pain to other places in the body, and is marked by “exquisite pain.” As she held this point, waiting for it to release, I heard the memories of the pain that had been held there.

I heard sobbing, screaming… and memories of some of the most tragic moments of my life surfaced spontaneously to the forefront of my mind. The trigger point also connected to a place on my skull where I’d gotten a concussion years ago. The memory of that moment came up, as well as beliefs that drove that moment to come to fruition…

Beliefs about scarcity, poverty, of the youthful notion to use my looks to get ahead in life, beliefs about what I deserved or didn’t deserve, about how I was going to make ends meet and be successful.

She only worked that one muscle fiber for less than a minute, but so much came up. It’s a place in my body that stores a particular flavor of emotions, and I later realized that its a muscle that is typically tight, one that I am always trying to give a good stretch to, but without much success.

All of this arose in what felt like a flash, and as she moved on to other muscles, the intensity subsided.

Later that night, I spent some time journaling and pondering over that experience, allowing it to fully come through to be healed. I took note of the beliefs and trauma that surfaced, and cared for those parts of me in a way that only I can do. I wrote out new beliefs, set new boundaries, and came to peace with elements of my past.

Our bodies also hold the key to our innate wisdom. Whenever I have a question or am debating taking action on something, I listen to my body. I use my yoga practice to let the answers arise from within, triggering wisdom centers in my body to surface in my mind. Often towards the end of a yoga practice, or towards the end of a long walk or a good work out, something will come up… a glimpse of mental, emotional and spiritual freedom that mirrors the freedom I feel in my body.

You don’t have to use massage to access this deeper inner wisdom. Almost any physical activity, if done well and with the intention of allowing, surrendering, and permitting the unseen qualities within us to show themselves, will present a nugget of wisdom and healing.

If you’d like, you can tell me about an intention you have for your massage, or some belief or trauma that you’re working on healing. Our consciousness together creates an even stronger field for these things to arise. But you also don’t have to. It’s a very personal journey we’re on, and I respect and honor everyone’s ability to heal themselves.

I don’t have a specific style of massage that’s labeled as somatic. As I mentioned earlier, everything is psycho-somatic. The body and mind are never separated. Consciousness is born in the body, and the Body gives life to consciousness.

Craniosacral therapy is particularly helpful in crossing this bridge. CST works to balance cerebrospinal fluid. I like to think of cerebrospinal fluid as liquid consciousness, carrying messages from the mind to the body and back again.

But any form of bodywork will open doorways to the inner world, as long as we are present and open to witnessing it

If you’d like to learn more about somatics and how you can heal mentally and emotionally through physical practices, you could

• Book a massage with the intention of somatic therapy

• Learn about the chakra centers in the body

• Start paying attention to signals from your body, like what a “yes” feels like and what “no” feels like

• One of my favorite books to refer to is Heal Your Body by Louise Hay

The resources for this topic are massive, and growing!