Connection Somatics

Harnessing the Power of Neuroscience for Healing

Connection Somatics is a neuroscience-informed model designed to process the complexity of painful past experiences by utilizing the body's innate mechanisms of integration and acceptance. This innovative approach taps into our biological wiring, promoting healing and transformation through our natural capacity for connection and social interaction.

Unresolved Experiences Build Throughout a Lifetime

As unresolved emotional experiences accumulate throughout our lives, they push us deeper into a hole we can’t escape on our own. Our past increasingly grabs hold of us, making it difficult to live in the present and reach our fullest potential. In an effort to feel okay, we bury our past pain, hiding it from both the world and ourselves. This lack of conscious access to our past makes it hard to articulate, which is why talk therapy often only scratches the surface. The core material that needs to be digested and integrated lives in the body.

The Consequences of Hiding Our Inner World

It is a biological imperative for others to understand and see us, so hiding our internal world results in deep insecurity. Feeling alone in a challenging world locks our nervous system into survival mode, causing us to operate more from fight, flight, or freeze responses. This diminishes our ability to thrive and achieve our dreams, leading to depression, anxiety, compulsion, addiction, procrastination, poor life choices, unhealthy relationships, and chronic illnesses. Worst of all, we blame ourselves for these struggles, even though it isn’t really our fault.

The Transformative Power of Social Connection

The most powerful change agent for our neurological programming and stress responses is social interaction. This concept, understood by our ancestors for thousands of years, is now being scientifically validated through new advancements in neuroscience. As social beings, our biology is intrinsically geared toward connection. Despite the modern world's push for independence, we are not designed to survive alone. It takes two brains to regulate one, whether we are infants or 80 years old. Without the right support, we are too vulnerable to explore the inner sensations needed to release past wounds.

The Role of Attachment in Social Programming and Stress Responses

Attachment forms the core of our social programming and stress responses. Early attachment experiences shape our ability to connect with others and regulate our emotions. Secure attachments provide a foundation of safety and trust, allowing us to explore the world and form healthy relationships. In contrast, insecure attachments can lead to chronic stress responses and difficulties in emotional regulation. Understanding and healing our attachment wounds through Connection Somatics can profoundly impact our overall well-being, helping us to build stronger, healthier connections and respond to stress more effectively.

Somatic Sensations are a Bridge to the Unconscious

Somatics refers to the field of study that focuses on the body’s internal sensations and experiences. In Connection Somatics, the body is seen as a bridge to the unconscious mind. Our bodily sensations, especially those found in the chest and abdomen, are direct pathways to accessing and processing unconscious material. These sensations often hold the key to unresolved emotional experiences, allowing us to bring them into conscious awareness where they can be integrated and healed.

Thriving Through Connection Somatics

Healing through Connection Somatics enables us to live life to the fullest. By metabolizing the full spectrum of our experiences and learning to feel safe in connection with the world around us, we unlock our ultimate creative potential. This model helps us move beyond mere survival, allowing us to thrive and achieve our dreams. Through this profound integration, we can overcome depression, anxiety, and other chronic conditions, leading to a more fulfilling and connected life.

 Connection Somatics FAQs

  • Unlike traditional talk therapy, which primarily focuses on verbal communication and cognitive processes, Connection Somatics emphasizes the importance of bodily experiences and physical sensations.

    The more significant the unresolved past experience, the more we are likely to have lost conscious access to that narrative. What that means is that trauma often cannot be accessed consciously, but rather lives in the unconscious and can be processed more effectively through sensations.

    Somatic information is especially helpful when it comes to healing early childhood experience, because we are so fully steeped in physical sensation when we are young and we don’t develop our internal narrative until we are around 3 years old.

  • Talking is still an important part of Connection Somatics, but conversation is utilized very differently than with traditional psychotherapies such as Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT), Psychodynamic Therapy or Psychoanalysis. The conversation in Connection Somatics tends to be more reciprocal, with the practitioner doing more talking than you would typically find in talk therapy. The talking components of the session are not designed with a search for insight in mind, but rather to organically prime the system with understanding and in order to strengthen somatic processing. With this approach, insight is found primarily through the sensations in the body, which we find to be more informative than the limited information we have verbal access to.

  • During a Connection Somatics session, you can expect a combination of talking and body-focused exercises, similar to guided meditation. Conversation will be more organic and reciprocal in nature than in typical talk therapies, with more talking coming from the practitioner than what you might be used to. The Connection Somatics practitioner is a healing guide whose goal is feed your system with understanding and connection in order the strengthen your abilities to process and digest painful past experience.