Welcome to Insight Mind Body Talk. 

Our topic today is somatic expressive therapy. Our guest is Victoria Ellington-Deitz. 

Victoria is a licensed professional counselor and a registered somatic movement therapist. She works with teens and adults. She helps clients experiencing anxiety, stress, trauma, depression, anger, self-harming behaviors, and problems regulating behavior and emotion. She also works at Insight Counseling and Wellness. I’m lucky enough to call her my colleague. 

Welcome, Victoria. I’m excited to learn more about somatic expressive therapy. 

Let’s start by explaining the model and the intention of somatic expressive therapy.  

Somatic expressive therapy is a body centered therapy created by Dan Levin, who trains out of Life Movement in Massachusetts.  It focuses on the felt sense; the feelings and sensations we have in our body. The expressive part is using art, movement, writing, journaling, any kind of expression to help understand and deepen our connection with the body centered part of our knowing. 

Our thoughts have all kinds of opinions. They want to lead us to interpret what we’re experiencing. Yet so much of what we’re experiencing is unconscious or implicit. This is a way of allowing our thoughts to take the back seat and developing a deeper listening for what is really going on. That helps us get to our deeper beliefs, deeper emotions, and understand patterns that we get stuck in but are not sure what has happened.  

What does it look like the process?  

Depending on the person, there are many different ways to use somatic expressive therapy.  

First, we sit down together and it’s always an invitation, wherever the person is comfortable. It might start with talking. Is there a situation that the person struggling with? If so, we can check in and see how’s your body reacts. Do you notice any sensation?  

We could also start with a body scan. A body scan is noticing your body and then turning inward and scanning for any sensations or emotions. We have a body scan meditation on the podcast website so you can practice a body scan after this if you’d like. 

We’re gleaning information. We’ll find a sensation in the body. Often what comes up is tension in the shoulders. We’ll go to the shoulders and ask what it’s connected to. Is it connected to the situation? We can then go to drawing or to the art piece. Maybe there is a movement to accentuate the feeling in the shoulders. The intention is to glean more information. Our thoughts want to interpret for us but here we’re trying to work directly with the sensation. 

Let’s say we’re using art and you tell me you have no art skills. That was already a slight judgement. Like how would I even create or draw attention in my shoulders zone? I love stick figures and coloring and blobs.  

It’s a way of helping us, especially if we’re going towards something that has overwhelmed our nervous system, to look at it objectively. It gives us one degree of separation from what’s going on internally, which our biology often causes us to move away from. 

We are using somatic expressive therapy, using attention, to move towards attending to what is going on with us. We can attend to patterns, emotional feelings, or overwhelm that seems scary to us, or we don’t want to move towards. It’s a survival strategy to avoid, shut down or disengage. 

It sounds like this process you’re describing first honors the emotions in our body and what’s happening and then uses our body’s wisdom to get more information. 

The art helps engage your prefrontal cortex which allows us, in a way, to step into that one degree of separation where it’s safer to explore. It’s not so alive in the system, it’s on the page.  

Can you share with me an example of what that looks like, so that we can imagine it and understand it more?  

Often, we carry tension in our shoulders. If we turn towards our body, we automatically feel this tension. To identify that, we would move our attention towards the body, have a short body scan, just noticing. Then we can go to drawing. Can you draw a simple picture or a symbol of what that feels like, what that tension is? Some are very simple; some people get elaborate and that’s fine too. 

Then we use the picture as an external way of looking at the tension in our shoulders. We talk directly to the sensation. We’re dipping into the slower part of our processing; some people call it wisdom brain. It’s just the slower thinking. We have quick thinking that we need every day. It keeps us safe in day-to-day interactions. Then we have slower thinking, broader thinking, more perspective, bringing in different factors to fully explore the situation.  

We asked the picture to explain any concepts of the world. It sounds like a belief. How does that resonate with you? So, checking in with the body, checking in with that sensation, does that resonate, there could be a belief in there that you are responsible.  

Then we move towards emotions. The intention is to notice, to attend to, but also find out what that area needs. What did your shoulders need?  Can we add an image? Is there a visualization there? Is that belief really working for us? As we explore, we’re continually checking in with the person, first somatically and then using the art to express that tension. 

Suddenly a drawing about shoulder tension or a symbol drawing, can lead us to a place of, wow, I feel like I’m really expected to carry the outcome of not only myself, but everyone around me, to make sure everyone’s okay, to make sure everyone’s emotions are okay, to make sure good things happen. 

It takes that slower knowing, that slower processing system, to find that wisdom. We don’t do that often. We are just trying to get through that day and resolve what happens next.  

Often, when I lead meditations, people say, I didn’t even notice my jaw had tension until slowing down and going inward. I didn’t notice my shoulders. One of them was curling up and in because of tension and stress until I slowed down and explored that. Then, what beliefs are being held in my body? 

We are not taught to slow down and to navigate our body sensations. It’s not taught in our culture. To sit back and listen to that slower wisdom or listen to our body, through our bodies or any way that we can sit quietly.  

Once the information about what’s happening is discovered or some deeper beliefs uncovered, what happens next in the process? 

Then, we become curious about it and how to help. A lot of times the need for safety comes up. Our body holds a lot of experiences where we felt unsafe, unsupported, or that our system was overwhelmed.  

Biologically it’s unconscious. We automatically close up and organize ourselves away from it. So, when we turn towards it, fear can arise because we get the signal from our alarm system that we shouldn’t go there. There’s danger. But it’s a biological misunderstanding. Dan Levin describes it as swimming upstream. We have to swim against our natural instincts to become curious about this pattern. 

When safety comes up, we get to talk about. We get to figure out how we can create a sense of safety and move forward from there. Everything comes back to creating this safe container for the exploration to happen.  

I can imagine that part of the work of somatic expressive therapy would also involve helping settle the nervous system and helping the whole brain and body feel safe. How does that show up in this work?  

Often when we are dysregulated or we feel overwhelmed or, however, it comes up for us when we feel scared, our thoughts are going to explain it. Often, we can’t rely on our thoughts because they are really quick and based on past information. We work with the immediacy of our body and that taps into connection with our nervous system. 

Moving towards the body, there’s an unconscious message that it’s scary. When we can feel our body, even if we’re not in our body, we can feel where we are in relation to our body. That is a step toward soothing our nervous system. There’s more of a connection. Asking what it needs is regulating and helps us feel more ground. 

A lot of times our thoughts create a groundlessness. We have a sense of spinning. A sense of confusion.   

Art can really help educate our nervous system. That, yes, we’re going to heal here. We are here to reverse a lot of patterns that have not served us or are not serving us now.   

We are really big fans of the nervous system and helping the nervous system regulate and shift from activation and survival responses into what’s called ventral vagal, which is a sense of safety and connection and feeling calm and grounded.  

What are some strategies that somatic expressive therapy brings to helping the nervous system regulate? 

Often, we can’t shift directly to ventral vagal, but we can move towards equilibrium from any part of our nervous system. The goal is always to get to ventral vagal, but you can tap into the positive qualities of sympathetic arousal, like play. It’s personal and we get to experiment. Having ways of being that activate or open up different parts of our brain can lead us there. 

Also, in general, curiosity. I use the word curiosity a lot. It helps open up different parts of the brain instead of the parts that want to close us in and keep us safe. 

Another concept we use a lot is gratitude. The intention of gratitude is to help activate a different part of our brain that helps us shift away from the narrow perspective of our fear response. 

If I wake up full of fear and anxiety. I’ll notice that and, if I can, call it out. There’s the fight or flight response. There’s my fire alarm. Then start wherever you can. I’m going to start by thinking, I’m grateful. 

Another concept or way of being is learning to savor. Savoring is a way to help our senses open up and shift away from our alarm response. It is just noticing and really taking things in. Seeing the blue of the sky, really seeing it. Feeling the coolness of the air or a breeze. Feeling a soft blanket, really on purpose, noticing that. I like to savor the last bite of a really good meal. 

This morning I was sitting on the couch having my morning coffee time and my cat was purring and she was all snugly under a blanket. I just savored it for two or three minutes, slowed myself down to feel the purse sensation, to hear it, to just be with the taste of the coffee, to feel relaxed on the couch and snugly. Those moments help ground you and get you through all the difficulties. 

The next is self-appreciation. I like to open it up to just appreciation. Sometimes negative self-talk can really take over because it is connected to our fight or flight response, it’s connected to survival. Some of us have really good self-monitoring systems. If that self-monitoring system is keeping the self-appreciation system out of reach, then we can go to appreciation. It’s not to negate the things that are difficult, it’s to help open different parts of our brain, to create a network in which we can receive. It is important to activate other areas of our brain that then fire together and wire together.  It’s activating and creating other neural networks so that it becomes easier and easier to offer gratitude, to savor, to maybe then offer self-appreciation. What we’ve known through experience is being proven. The mindful self-compassion website has all of the studies. This stuff is so cool.  

I wanted to bring up something that’s not often discussed when we think about therapy but is understandable and almost expected to be a part of the therapy process. When we offer ourselves compassion, or we savor, or we practice gratitude, sometimes it can ‘poke the beehive’. Can you explain that a little bit more?  

When we move towards compassion, in a supported way, and attend to places that didn’t have support, often what comes up is fear and negative self-talk. That’s because compassion is foreign, not necessarily to us, but to our biological system. 

Our body holds on to all the situations that we’ve felt overwhelmed in and when we move towards experiencing them as a sensation, they don’t have the network to receive, so what can come up are really difficult emotions. Shame and fear are the two that I see most often.  

If someone is doing really good, gentle, kind, productive work, the result or immediate response isn’t what they expect. If they feel shame instead of relief, that can be confusing. Why am I doing this then?  I didn’t expect to feel worse. Compassion or support come in and there are no receptors, so it bounces back. Then we automatically think, what’s wrong with me?  

What do you recommend then in those moments?  

I think education about biology is so important. It’s not the person’s fault, it’s just how their nervous system and their brain are organized. We then get to work to create those networks. We get to reframe that reaction toward understanding that this is your system saying, I don’t know how to take that in, and becoming curious and how to do that. Doing this with a guide can help validate that this is common, this happens to all of us and how we can be curious and take care of ourselves so that we can continue forward instead of protecting ourselves and turning away. 

The therapy process isn’t perfectly linear. There are experiences that sometimes feel a little harder before they feels better, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. 

I think that often we aren’t given the room to be in the moment with ourselves and show up and welcome what comes up. Having that space and time, it takes practice.   

‘Looking at the stuff isn’t bad, it’s just hard, but we can do hard things and when we do hard things, we transform.’  

Thank you so much, Victoria. Thank you for joining us.