Though we want to change, our efforts are unproductive. We begin to question, What exactly is the issue? In psychotherapy, we talk about your life history, your current issues, your feelings, and your relationships — all of the factors that are at play in your life. Through this process we become more aware of what exactly the issue is, and what is influencing its growth or its stagnation.
“You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.” Jane Hirshfield
Sometimes, there are tenacious issues that elude us and yet still have an influence on our lives. They sometimes communicate to us through ways other than rational thoughts. For example, people sometimes manifest stress in their bodies and complain about a bad back, or headaches, or excessive fatigue, rather than express a vulnerability they feel at work or as a parent. You’ve heard of psychosomatic pain. Somatic Psychotherapy is about listening to the body, as well as the mind, to gain access to the issues.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi
The Somatic approach in psychotherapy involves attending to mind/body/emotional life as one entity. Therefore, in addition to talking about and understanding all the issues that are influencing your life, we may use other techniques to get at the deeper issues. Somatic Psychotherapy is an embodied experience that makes no distinction between body and mind; rather, they are viewed as one entity.
Jerod Patrick Gilbert, LMFT 