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The word somatic is derived from the word, Soma, which is Latin for body. The goal of Somatic therapy is to develop awareness and tolerance to physical sensations. Instead of focusing on the specific triggers, like emotions, thoughts or situations, somatic therapy works on increasing your tolerance to the physical sensations that make these triggers overwhelming. 

Think about it: when you feel overwhelmed or triggered, it is the physical sensations in your body that make the experience overwhelming. When someone has significant anxiety, the anxiety is made unbearable by nausea, difficulty breathing, tension, a pounding heart, ringing in ears, and many other sensations. In more severe anxiety and panic attacks, the sensations can include chest pain and hyperventilation from shortness of breath. These descriptors are not emotions or thoughts, they are physical responses. These physical sensations, while triggered by different events and experiences, can be noticed, tolerated, and reduced through somatic techniques. 

Somatic therapy engages directly with physical sensations. At the core of somatic therapy is a concept called “felt sense.” Felt sense is the physical sensations you experience at any given moment. While felt sense can be associated with emotions or experiences, the goal of somatic therapy is to identify the sensations first and foremost.

For example, when I am angry, I am feeling an emotion. But with that emotion, I notice that in my body, I feel a heat around my eyes and in my face, a tension in my shoulders and hands, an expansion across my chest and a tightness in my gut. Those physical sensations are the felt sense I experience when I’m angry.

For people who struggle with identifying their emotions, focusing on felt sense can be like a weight has been lifted. You do not need to identify what you are feeling or thinking about a situation. As long as you can identify what sensations you experiencing in your body, you can begin to connect with the experience and move forward in somatic therapy. For others, feeling their body is very difficult and intellectualizing is easy, which makes somatic therapy more challenging. I would argue this type of work benefits both groups, because getting to know your body is an essential part of healing.

Somatic therapy is primarily a form of trauma therapy. This therapy is most successful for people who have tried talk therapy and couldn’t tolerate it, have completed talk therapy but still have symptoms, or plan to do talk therapy in the future. Trauma is largely stored in the body, but the thought processes and core beliefs that underlie or stem from traumatic experiences are also important to address.