What are the benefits of Somatic Coaching?
One decade into my career as a healer in the field of holistic medicine, I have arrived at a concerning conclusion: most people don’t want to feel. In particular I have witnessed adults doing any thing they can to avoid any emotion they have deemed negative. Anger, dread, disappointment, embarrassment, shame and grief are shunned and numbed by most adults I know.
The thing that sets my clients apart is that they have finally identified that all this numbing and unfelt emotions is starting to hurt more than they ever thought it could. Many come to me still hoping there is some sort of side path, some way around the feelings. I am there to meet them with deep compassion and hold them in abiding love when I tell them there is no way out but there is certainly a path through. That the feelings need to be felt and I will support them with every gift I have.
But why is Katrina talking about emotions-she is supposed to be telling me that somatic coaching makes me more productive, calmer and kinder. That connecting with my body will make me more creative, loving and a better parent. She is supposed to tell me that somatic coaching is an effective way to regulate the nervous system.
All of this is true. I have witnessed my clients learn to find ease in their body for the first time after decades stuck in fight or flight activation. I have supported my clients as they grow their capacity to extend unconditional love to their children and other loved ones. I have been lucky enough to help artists and creative business owners resume their work in the world after months of feeling stuck.
What was the common thread? Feelings people didn’t want to feel. Deep grief for painful memories, lost sense of identity and even lost relationships that had never been properly grieved. Anger at injustice, frustration over limitations, rage at betrayals left raw and without repair. Embarrassment about self image, shame about past mistakes, disappointment over what had been hoped for and lost or never realized.
It takes me a very short amount of time to find these stuck and unfelt emotions, I hear it in the words my clients use, see it in the way they hold their bodies and the tears frozen just behind their determined smiles. It takes a bit more time for my clients to feel safe enough to allow the emotions to flow. Lucky thing, this is my calling.
I take the time to show the person sitting across from me in my coaching sessions that it is safe and worthwhile to feel the whole range. Everything I do is rooted in consent so many of my questions sound like “How about we try something, I am going to describe it and if it feels like too much you just let me know. Can we try just finding in the body the feeling you described as dread for a moment?” When somatic coaching is practiced this way, the client knows that they are setting the pace and making the calls. Nothing happens if they don’t agree.
This can be considered a non-negotiable coaching practice for any trauma informed practitioner. Trauma occurs without consent, and I work in deep waters so I am fierce about ensuring that I do everything I can to ensure that my sessions are supportive and healing.
And, in fact, any unwillingness to experience and channel the full range of emotions underlines that there has been some trauma history. I am a 40 year old millennial and most of my millennial and beloved Gen X peers can clearly remember dysfunctional parenting around emotions. So not only did this leave behind unhealed trauma, it specifically hinders our emotional expression and health as adults.
As the feelings stay stuck in the body the nervous system has to work harder and harder to regulate. Because your body knows that you are filled with sorrow, rage or disappointment and stuffing these feelings down will take a toll on your body. Here is a NIH article on the links between mental health issues and chronic disease.
I help my clients feel all their emotions, and you have to go into the body for that, you have to find the constriction in your throat, the knot in your belly, the tension in your shoulders. You have to hear what the emotions want you to know about why they are there, why do they want your attention?
And yes, back to the benefits of somatic coaching, this will make you kinder to others as you have finally been kind and accepting towards your whole self-not just the parts you like.
