Sensorimotor Therapy

Has anybody heard of Sensorimotor Therapy. . .or of any of the work of Peter Levine and/or Pat Ogden? My t keeps coming back to the point that she thinks i would benefit from this type of therapy (though she doesn't do it). All i know is that it's considered a form of mind/body work. Is anyone familiar with this therapy or how it is conducted? Also, I'm wondering if touch is involved.

I've read Peter Levine's book "Waking the Tiger", which is all about recovering from trauma.

The two things I remember most from the book that have helped me in my own recovery:

1. Trauma is stored in the body
When a bird hits a window, the bird is stunned for a moment and then will begin wildly flapping their wings. The wing flapping is to discharge the energy from being traumatized. If you pick up the bird before they can discharge this energy they will die. Humans are more resilient than birds, but the same biological functions happen when we are traumatized -- we need to physically release the energy of the trauma that is stored within our bodies.

2. Healing happens in waves. Dr. Levine calls it 'healing vortex's'. The general idea is that we can only deal with bits of our trauma, then then we jump back to something positive to make ourselves stronger. As we get stronger we can jump back to heal a little more trauma, then back to something positive again, etc.

I'm not sure whether sensorimotor therapy would include touch, but it might in a *very* safe way. It might even be you touching your own leg, and being aware of how that touch feels. In general, I am very impressed with this approach to healing trauma, but have never tried that particular therapy.

HTH

I tried to find something about it on-line, but so far everything I've found is a bit vague on what the therapy actually entails. I just keep finding general definitions and philosophical explanations. I'll keep looking.

Peaches, I wonder if this is the same as Somatic Experiencing Therapy? This is based on the work of Peter Levine. My T is trained in this form of therapy. We did some of it when I first began with him and we were doing trauma work. At my last session we were discussing it again, as we were rehashing a very memorable session from over a year ago, a very physical session, and T was explaining why he did some of what he did (techniques from his Somatic Experiencing training).

SE therapy does not involve touch. What little we did, I found non-threatening. In a way, my wish about this therapy is that T would have told me more what he was trying to do. It seemed kind of weird to me, and I wasn't sure what the point was. It would have made more sense with some accompanying explanation. He did ask me to read the Waking the Tiger book, but did not connect that book to what he was doing. I never picked up on the connection until much later!

Peaches, does your T do SE therapy (or Sensorimotor Therapy)?

If she thinks it would help, maybe give it a try? Even just one session? It really was not threatening at all. It is a way of releasing stuck trauma, including developmental trauma (abuse, abandonment, neglect during one's childhood).

Hi Spotted Owl,

Thanks for explaining about how trauma affects the body and can get stored in our tissues. I've been wondering why my t would recommend Sensorimotor therapy with me, and I'm guessing it's because I tend to be "stuck" when it comes to processing my traumas verbally. Either i feel emotionally numb or get totally overwhelmed and can't tolerate the pain. Also, i have a pretty significant amount of body tension and physical defense postures, along with being very uptight when trying to discuss my issues. I also can sense alot of stored up grief and pain inside that i can't access. So this would explain why my t thinks a more physiological approach to trauma processing might help me. Unfortunately, my t doesn't do this type of therapy, and i don't want to see somebody else. It would actually involve a commitment of several weeks during which i wouldn't see my current t. I am also not sure if my insurance would pay for a more physiological mind/body approach to healing, rather than standard psychotherapy. I am thinking about this though. . .

Sunrise,

YES! I think it is very similar to Somatic Experiencing therapy. That is the other term my t has used to describe it. So . . .your t used it with you for a little while? Would you say that it helped you? Could you give me some examples of what you did/what it was like??

Sadly, my t does not do Sensorimotor or Somatic Experiencing. I don't know what to do if i really need it. i can't bear the thought of not seeing my regular t for several weeks. Also, i have a fear that if i go "temporarily" to a Sensorimotor or SE t, somehow it will turn "permanent," like my current t will encourage me to stay in the other therapy or will decide to go ahead and retire (because it's on the horizon). That really scares me.

Maybe it would help me to read the Peter Levine book. . .

(((peaches)))

I'm glad my explanation helped. For me, just knowing that what my body was doing was NORMAL helped me a lot. It made me feel like I wasn't such a freak for feeling so jumpy. It is simply a biological protection mechanism, designed to keep us alive.

I would recommend checking out Dr. Levine's book even if you don't try the SE therapy. One word of warning -- just reading the book can be triggering. I would talk to T about it, and let her know you are reading it. Then you can discuss any questions you have with T as they come up.

I have incorporated this type of bodywork into my overall treatment plan. My T does not do this type of work. From what I've learned through my own research and experiences most T's don't do this type of work. I researched it myself and found a bodyworker (mine is a massage therapists with specialized training). My T and MT at this point don't directly collaborate but...my T knows what I am doing and has been very supportive of me seeking this type of work.

Somatic Experiencing seems to be a version of the technique that is based on Levine's book. Somatoemotional Release is a similar technique developed my John Upledger. People who are "certified" to do somatoemotional Release have typically gone through several of the Upledger courses which are very structured. If you visit the upledger website you will see where SER training fits into their curriculum. There are also many other versions of the mind-body techniques that are base on the same concepts that Levine presents about memories being held and access via the body. Some of these technique involve touch, some involve placing the hands near but not on the body, and still others use a series of body movement that are designed to activate the brain and nervous systems to alter mood, and SOME like Colorpuncture, apply colored lights to different points on the body to active different mental processes. The key is there are many ways to healing and LITTLE research to guide your approach. IMHO it is not the method it is who you have doing it that matters most. I've been able to keep my T and do some incredibly powerful bodywork. Basically the MT does the bodywork and my T helps me process what comes up. If you are willing to try it, I would highly recommend looking for a good bodyworker and taking the risk.

Yes, Somatic Experiencing is a therapy based on Peter Levine's work (and I think developed by Levine himself). It does not necessarily involve touch. (My T has some training in it but he does not use touch.) SE was developed as a treatment for trauma and has been used for single-event trauma (like a car crash) as well as developmental trauma (repeated neglect, abandonment, etc. as a child).

Here is the SE website, but I didn't find it that informative. It seems more geared to practitioners, rather than explaining what SE is:
http://www.traumahealing.com/

I actually find the Wikipedia article to be more informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_Experiencing

Here's an (edited) excerpt:

Yes, my T used it at the very beginning of psychotherapy sessions with him, perhaps as early as our second session. I had no idea what he was doing. I just thought it was "this is the way this guy does therapy" rather than a special technique. It involved feeling various tensions in my body (really paying attention to them) and trying to do things to release the trauma, then we would return to the felt sensations in the body and see if they had been released too. In some ways the felt sensations in the body were a barometer of the trauma. My T used this word "pendulate" (see post above) a couple of times and I did not know what he was talking about. I remember the first time he used this word, he said something like, "I want you to go home and pendulate between X and Y and then back again," as if this was some sort of homework. I was so intrigued by the word "Pendulate" that that was all I heard in the sentence, LOL, and I could not recall what he wanted me to pendulate between. What were X and Y? (I had a hard time holding onto sessions back then.) I think this therapy was not that effective with me because I was totally clueless (what are we doing here?) and also because I was in such a highly charged state. I was almost too traumatized to use it, too "frozen." I know there were some SE things T asked me to try that just completely fell flat on their face.

My T incorporated the SE techniques into his talk therapy for trauma and in particular, into EMDR. I think the combination of EMDR + SE is a powerful one and that is where it had its best use for me. In addition, in a later session where I had a very powerful physical experience, T was able to manage that because of his SE training. I did not understand that at the time, but that is what he told me last week.

I think for me, it was important that I be doing talk therapy with the therapist who was using the SE techniques. It would be strange to do SE divorced from talk. So if you do go do SE with another T, you might need to build a rapport with him/her, do some talk therapy, etc., before getting the full benefit of the SE.

It would be good to discuss this fear with her before making any decision.

I liked the first few chapters, where it talks about trauma in the animal kingdom and compares it to how humans process trauma. This I found useful, and it made sense. But later the book gets deep into speculative pseudoscience, so beware. There is a bunch of stuff on trauma vortexes, or something like that, complete with drawings of whirlpools and such. These may be interesting ideas, but it is good to keep in mind as one reads that these vortexes have no basis in fact.