Somatic (body-based) practices heal nervous system imbalances by fostering a sense of safety in the body. Your may not feel a sense of safety because of past experiences, whether you remember them or not.
Your nervous system controls how you experience the world, and how you experience the world dictates how your nervous system controls your experience.
Here’s how:
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) includes sympathetic (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) and parasympathetic (rest, digest, procreate) branches of your nervous system. The ANS controls all body processes you don’t have to think about for them to happen like heart rate and breathing, and can become dysregulated by signals from your somatic nervous system. Your somatic nervous system interprets information from your senses (smell, taste, touch, sound) and when these signals reach the brain a cascade of pathways are activated that change your ANS.
Sensory stimulation of the ANS can cause you to blush, increase your heart rate, cause you to breathe fast and shallow, shut down bowels or make you evacuate everything, result in insulin and cortisol production (insulin is made to regulate blood sugar and cortisol is your “stress” hormone), AND result in a state of calmness, lower heart rate and blood pressure, allow deep and slow breathing, and proper bowel movements, to name a few.
Somatic practices such as diaphragmatic breathing, mindful movement, and somatic meditation are known to improve symptoms of a dysfunctional ANS. Changing your sensory input, changes your nervous system output.
Through the use of sound (music), touch (movement), smell (breath) and full body witnessing (somatic meditation), you can heal. This is Somatic Activated Healing Method™. Breath, Movement, Mantra, Meditation. Repeat. Over time the nervous system operates with more parasympathetic balanced responses and less sympathetic imbalanced responses.
Nicole Kerr, ND, LAc, Somatic Activated Healing Method™ Coach. After 15+ years treating fertility and female health issues, Nicole has found her true calling in somatic work. The profound personal growth and physical healing Nicole experienced with Somatic Activated Healing Method™ led her to become certified to teach, lead and coach somatic practices. You can find Nicole, aka Divine Somatics, throughout CT guiding, transforming, and moving those ready to fully return home to their body.
Divine Somatics
@divine.somatics