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The Founding Of Somatic Experiencing ®

 

Somatic Experiencing ®  (SE™) was developed by Peter A. Levine, PhD as a methodology to help survivors of trauma renegotiate their unprocessed stresses, overwhelms, fears, terrors, angers, grief and overall dysregulation. Dr. Levine developed this approach after observing animals in the wild recover readily from an encounter by their prey. Dr Levine took notice how animals go through a natural process in which they physically release the energy they have accumulated during a stressful event. We humans, due to fears of self-consciousness, shame, judgement, and other mental processes disconnect from these purely instinctual rhythms and we regularly override this natural mechanism for processing the accumulated charge and stress from a life-threatening event. Somatic Experiencing as a methodology that simulates this process in animals and takes the client through a renegotiation process of their unprocessed trauma where overwhelm is replaced with containment, safety and the use of titration (exposure in small measured amounts) and pendulation (oscillating from activation to resourced locations in the body). This renegotiation is a process of slowing down and supporting an embodied completion of unprocessed responses to the original threat the client experienced. This process brings the client’s nervous system back fully onboard into its original capacity to regulate in a more resilient rhythm.

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