The Intent & Hope Behind Befriending the Body:

In my experience, healing from complex trauma requires a collection of modalities, strategies, and tools that are tailored to our unique experiences and nervous systems. Befriending the Body is a generalized introduction to somatic healing and exploration. It is one piece in the healing puzzle of complex trauma.

I created Befriending the Body with the intention to provide an introductory experience to somatic practice and developing a healing relationship with the body. Because this course isn't tailored to individual experience, there may be portions of the guide that don't work for you. That is okay. My hope is that as you discover what does work for you, you may consider seeking a more tailored and personal experience with a trauma-trained somatic practitioner.

Healing Pillars of Somatic Practice:

Let's talk about the healing pillars of somatic practice. If you've been using the written guide of Befriending the Body, these pillars will be familiar to you. I will share with you how these pillars can be used with the video guide.

While there are a variety of somatic practices we can use, we want to keep in mind some basic healing pillars as we pick up different tools. These healing pillars create a compassionate context or relationship to experiment with and practice new body-based practices.

How Is More Important Than What

While specific somatic practices can be helpful and supportive for us, HOW we practice tends to be more important than WHAT we practice. For example, if we are picking up a somatic practice that is driven by our Inner Critic and the desire to get our emotions under control, we are likely to experience that practice as dysregulating and less supportive. We will address this in the program by finding ways to work with our protective defenses. Our aim with somatic healing is to develop a curious and compassionate relationship with our bodies in their full experience, including challenging and difficult emotions and sensations. We will be utilizing somatic practices to develop that relationship. The hope is, that regardless of what the practice is, the foundation is a gentle way of relating to ourselves and our bodies inside the practice.

Containment

The purpose of somatic practices, or body-based supports, is NOT to stifle or shut down emotion and sensation. The purpose IS to create a supportive container to feel into our emotions and body sensations. The practice is the way we hold space for what needs to surface and be felt. Our somatic practice gives us structure to stay present with what we are feeling while also offering our body regulation. The somatic practice is meant to support connection to the body in a regulated and resourced way. As we connect to our bodies, we can anticipate emotion and sensation.

As you move through the video guide, you may notice an uptick in emotional experience. While creating safe spaces and containers for emotions does invite difficult feelings to emerge, it also creates space for pleasurable feelings to emerge as well. We can't selectively numb our emotions, so when we numb painful emotions we are often numbing pleasurable ones too. As you notice yourself thaw out emotionally, remember you are coming into the FULL spectrum of your emotional experiences, including pleasurable experiences.

Discomfort Vs. Dysregulation

As mentioned before, somatic practices are meant to be supportive containers for connection to the body, emotions, and physical sensations. Some of the emotions and sensations that surface could be uncomfortable or painful, such as grief and anger. Learning to be with our painful emotions in a resourced way, which is a regulated way, is how we learn to listen to the body story and integrate all parts of ourselves.

Discomfort can be a part of our somatic practice. Discomfort differs from dysregulation and dissociation. Dysregulation is when we are experiencing emotions, and we are disconnected from our inner resources and healing Self, that disconnection can take the form of dissociation.

It is quite normal for complex trauma survivors to encounter dysregulation and dissociation at times as they begin somatic practices. This isn't a failure. It's feedback. Whenever we respond to the feedback of dysregulation or dissociation by making adjustments or taking breaks, we act in a healing way towards ourselves. I will model this for you throughout the practices.

Unique Toolbox

It is really important to remember that some somatic practices will not work for us and some somatic practices will. If we find a practice that doesn't work for us, because it is triggering or dysregulating, we don't have to continue using this practice. The somatic toolbox of each survivor is different. We find the tools that support us, and we gradually learn what tools support us in different situations. We begin to customize our somatic practice to meet the unique needs of our body depending on what we are experiencing.

As you explore the different practices in this guide, here are a few things to consider as you build your unique toolbox:

• It can take time and repetition to become familiar with a practice. It's normal for practices to feel awkward, silly, vulnerable, and uncertain. In some cases, the more you practice the more supportive the practice becomes.
• There are practices that might not work well for your current context, and perhaps might work well in other contexts. This can be true in the short-term and long-term. For example, I might discover that intentional body shaking is really supportive in an activated sympathetic state, but isn't really helpful in a shutdown state. Also, I could discover that in my current phase of recovery, I don't find deep breathing helpful, but months or years later when I'm in a different phase of recovery, it is just what I need.
• There may also be practices that never really work for you no matter how many times you come back to them. That's ok too.

Body Feedback and Adjustments

One of the ways we begin to develop our unique toolbox is by listening to the feedback we get from our bodies as we explore different somatic practices. As we gain more experience with somatic practices and our bodies, we can begin to tune into the feedback our bodies deliver as we move through our practice. We might receive feedback about slowing down or speeding up. We might receive feedback about how a particular movement feels grounding. We may receive feedback that a particular tool isn't working today, and we need to try something else. In this way, we slowly start a dialogue with our bodies, learning to attune to subtle cues for support. We learn to respond to those cues in a compassionate way.

The body has a language, and we are learning to understand the language of the body. Learning a new language is challenging. Even when you've studied a language in books, actual conversation can be really confusing and hard to understand. Through this guide, we will learn to tune into body language and decipher its meaning. In this way, we begin a dialogue.

Up Regulation and Down Regulation

As we support the body through the healing process, we can bring attention to our different nervous system states: fight, flight, freeze, collapse, and safe & social. Depending on the state of our nervous system, our body will need different kinds of support.

If we are experiencing low energy, lack of motivation, dissociation, etc., we may need an up-regulator - a practice that brings energy into the nervous system. If we are experiencing big emotions, a desire to run, overwhelm, etc., we may need a down-regulator - a practice that helps process high energy and grounds us. Somatic practices can be up-regulators or down-regulators, sometimes both. It is important to keep in mind that we can also determine what practices work as up-regulators and down-regulators for us as we customize our toolbox.

Throughout the videos, I will offer suggestions of what might be an up-regulating or down-regulating practice, but I want to be clear that these are only suggestions. I'd invite you to stay open to the feedback and dialogue of your own body. While a practice may be generally down-regulating, that isn't always true for everyone. The same is true for up-regulation. In the most general sense, we are working towards what brings healing energy into our nervous system and what helps us process big energy inside of us so we can stay grounded.

Pendulation Versus Perfection

Remember these practices represent somatic skills that may feel unfamiliar and scary to you. Offering our bodies support can initially feel quite threatening as they signal to the body that there are safe and supportive places to hold and process pain. To many parts of us, pain in any form - supported or unsupported - is dangerous.

Our inner systems have been oriented towards survival and pain management through survival skills, which often include suppression, avoidance, and dissociation. Practicing new pain management skills - like supportive somatic practices - will most likely feel scary, and the practice itself will be imperfect and messy. That's ok. We may find that as we practice these new skills, old coping skills will continue to show up and with vengeance. We shift and grow through pendulation, which is the back-and-forth movement between what was and what is becoming.

We may encounter the Inner Critic, in the form of perfectionism. Perfectionism is often more about performing rather than exploring and discovering. At times, we may feel like we are "performing" somatic practices rather than experiencing them. That's ok. Many of us start from this protective place. If we notice something in us wanting to do somatic practices perfectly, we can be gentle with that part of us that is worried about what might come up if we were to loosen our control. Perhaps as this part of us gets more experience with a somatic practice, they will feel safe enough to allow us to experience more.

Gradually, as our familiarity with and confidence around somatic tools grows, other coping skills, like perfectionism, can begin to diminish. However, this takes time and lots of imperfect practice. Keep practicing. Be as gentle as you can as you learn.