As I work with clients I find that how I explain Somatics evolves. Lately I have been describing the process as follows. The somatic process is Emotionally Focused work. By focusing our emotions we are able to glean valuable information from them about our selves and our relationships. This information is culturally marginalized and not highlighted as important, yet our emotions provide us with meaning, feeling, navigation, and a sense of ourselves. Emotions are bodily events, movements, sensations, the feeling of heat, the feeling of sorrow, and each of these can be seen and felt through the nerves, flesh, posture, guts, etc. We spend a lot of time in our culture focusing the talents of the mind. If the mind/reason could figure out and resolve emotional themes, then psychology would not exist and we would have a different looking culture. The mind is not so equipped at resolving emotional patterns. Emotions deal with our being, with a timeless sense of our felt and lived experience. This is why some emotions are patterns that we continually revisit which gives the feeling that we have always been here. When it comes to reason and thinking, it is much more "Do" oriented, action, linear, moving forward in a progressive line. Somatics nurtures our innate capacity to focus our feelings, much like we do with the mind, by focusing of the raw sensations of the feeling and seeking what the feeling is saying. The language of emotions speaks very differently, but through focusing on the raw feeling of the emotion one can really make changes based on the felt experience of the meaning and need of the emotion. For instance sorrow is felt in many locations in the body and can be a cue that perhaps one is lonely, cut off from others, unable to speak ones truth, etc. Through focusing emotions people find their own solutions to tricky situations by listening in to the vital information of their bodily experience of feeling. So what about numbness? This too is a cue. Perhaps the numbness is a feeling that is cutting off emotions, which again is important information pointing to a fear of feeling. This is at least what i am thinking about today.
Enjoy
Scot