As a psychotherapist and trauma therapist, a big theme in my work is somatic wisdom. The body remembers, we are all mammals, and to quote Stephen Gilligan “there is a whole pattern of intelligence and wisdom within the body to which you may or may not be attuned.”
My role involves helping people to align and centre within their bodies, so that their way of being physically can become expansive, and generate new possibilities and patterns. As Robert Dilts says, when we lose our centre, we may experience insecurity or confusion, or feel a sense of chaos. When we are centred, the feelings are of connection, confidence and peace.
All very well, but how to align and centre? Put simply, mindful awareness is what is called for. This can be with breathing, with gentle movement, with stillness, it doesn’t matter, as long as you are dropping into your body, and then opening through your body out into the world. It’s not an either/or of inside or outside, it’s an and/both of sensing into yourself, and feeling the connection beyond that is already and always there.
In therapy, the client and therapist are part of a field, hopefully a lively one which allows, accepts and generates, and brings forward new ways of being and new relational possibilities. This connected state we can then take out into the world, with a softness and openness that enables us to be with ourselves physically, and through this to be with other people.
Alignment leads to congruence, we can not sense what is right for us if we are not connected to our own being. Practice, practice, practice is the key to somatic centering, helping your bodymind become familiar with your first attention being deep down in your body, sensing the world through your physical form.
For help in attuning inwards and finding your centre, why not talk to a trauma-informed psychotherapist?
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