Soma Haus

About EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a structured therapy that encourages the patient to briefly focus on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories.

Unlike other treatments that focus on directly altering the emotions, thoughts and responses resulting from traumatic experiences, EMDR therapy focuses directly on the memory, and is intended to change the way that the memory is stored in the brain, thus reducing and eliminating the problematic symptoms.

During EMDR therapy, clinical observations suggest that an accelerated learning process is stimulated by EMDR’s standardized procedures, which incorporate the use of eye movements and other forms of rhythmic left-right (bilateral) stimulation (e.g., tones or taps). While clients briefly focus on the trauma memory and simultaneously experience bilateral stimulation (BLS), the vividness and emotion of the memory are reduced.

About Somatic Experiencing

Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence. SE is a body-oriented therapeutic geared towards helping people find healing from trauma.

Created by Peter Levine, PhD, this therapy works on the principle that trauma gets trapped in the body, leading to some of the symptoms people with PTSD or people who have experienced trauma might experience. Through this method, practitioners work on releasing this stress from the body. Many people who have experienced trauma, especially those who have experienced physical trauma such as domestic violence or sexual assault, can dissociate or disconnect from their bodies. Somatic experiencing helps them have an increased sense of awareness of their internal experience (interoceptive, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic sensations).

Psychotherapy and the Somatic Experiencing® together can help to relieve the symptoms of trauma and other stress disorders through a body-oriented approach. This modality seeks to re-set the nervous system and address traumatic shock, essential to recovering from previous trauma. Somatic Experiencing helps people restore their mind-body connection to deal with the problematic and often physical after-effects of trauma. Clients are urged to explore the physical sensations that accompany their emotions and uncover the habitual behaviours developed in response to these feelings. Somatic Experiencing holds that the negative event isn’t what caused the trauma, but rather the nervous system’s overwhelmed response to the perceived threat that is causing the distress and imbalance. Thus, Somatic Experiencing works to discharge the physical memory of the event in order to reset the nervous system.