Somatic mental health counselors integrate body awareness into counseling sessions and help clients become more aware of how emotions feel and manifest in their body. The verbal narrative of what has happened in our lives is only one part of the story and we can learn a lot about how those narratives impact us and what they really mean by exploring a deeper narrative, the narrative of the body.
The body is an expert in telling our unconscious stories.
So, what does somatic awareness look like?
Somatic awareness happens in the here and now. A somatic therapist might ask questions like, “What sensations are you feeling in your body? What do you notice about the quality of your breath right now? They might notice your tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures and postures and help you notice them as well. What gestures or postures don’t match up with the verbal narrative? Which ones do? We can learn what is true for each of us by observing these interactions in the moment.
Somatic awareness involves three types of perception
Interoception:
Awareness of our subjective physical experience, body sensations, breath
Proprioception:
Another kind of unconscious internal awareness: the relationship of our body to itself and the space around it. It involves balance, agility, and coordination. Proprioception allows us to control the force or effort of movement.
Exteroception:
Awareness of the space and people around us. All sensory data is interpreted differently from person to person depending on their sense of safety, experience, attachment style and a variety of other factors.
In somatic therapy, the client’s interpretation and response to the sensory world gives us information about their past and present experience.
If you’d like to try out a somatic awareness body scan exercise, this video from John Hopkins, is a great place to start!
