Somatic Psychedelic Integration Tools
Somatic therapy is a therapeutic genre that addresses our well-being in the context of our mind-body connection. It is particularly beneficial for various mental health conditions, such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Soma, meaning the body, facilitated as a therapeutic ally, seeks to support whole-person wellness in advocating for coherent relationships of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual selves. Somatics has a rich history, with pillars of the field rooted in psychology, movement, and bodywork. Its premise is embedded in our ability to experience ourselves from the inside. Our bodies are built with the capacity to self-regulate and heal. Tending to our inner landscape offers integration to the wholeness of our human experience.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a holistic approach that emphasizes the profound connection between the mind and body. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which primarily focuses on verbal communication, somatic therapy delves into the physical sensations and body awareness that accompany our mental and emotional states. This form of therapy operates on the principle that traumatic experiences are not just stored in our minds but also in our bodies. By accessing and releasing these stored traumas through physical sensations, somatic therapy aims to alleviate conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and chronic pain. Through techniques that enhance body awareness, individuals can uncover and process deep-seated emotional wounds, leading to a more integrated and holistic healing experience.
Principles of Somatic Therapy
Body-based psychotherapy is considered to be fathered by Wilhelm Reich in 1933. Reich stretched the concepts of trauma beyond the mind to include its influence on bodily inflammation, pain, and muscular tension. Somatic therapy techniques involve addressing the connection between the mind and body, focusing on physical sensations and emotions to create a holistic approach to therapy. Somatic therapy today is supported by neuroscientific research. Our felt sense (interoception) is an essential mechanism for rewiring neural pathways6) (neuroplasticity) associated with the effects of trauma on the body and brain. This effectively facilitates new, healthier responses to stressors and emotional challenges.
The Underlying Principles of Somatic Therapy Are:
**1.**Mindbody Connection
The mind-body is an interrelational and interdependent system. The health and vitality of one impact the other, as do afflictions. Somatic therapy aims to foster the coherence of our psychology and physiology.
**2.**Awareness of Bodily Sensations
In general, somatic therapy engages our sensorial experiences as a pathway to process emotions and trauma. However, our bodies have a variety of means of perceiving experience that may express itself through internal felt-sense, images, smell, emotions, movement, gestures, and posture, just to name a few. Somatic therapy increases our capacity for awareness of what is happening within our body and experience. It is particularly effective in helping individuals overcome various trauma symptoms, such as flashbacks and difficulty sleeping.
**3.**Discharge Stored Tension
Somatic therapy resources have the potential to relieve bound tension. You may hear this referenced as a “release,” yet not all somatic processes emit a discharge, such as shaking, trembling, tears, unconscious movement, and temperature fluctuations, among others. Bound tension or energy can move in a vast variety of ways, and slow, titrated access to increased capacities can profoundly shift physical or psycho-emotional distress. Similar to our entheogenic friends, chasing the purge or chasing a large somatic catharsis is not indicative of ‘bigger is better.’
4. Self-Regulation
Self-regulation is the ability to witness our experiences, thoughts, moods, emotions, sensations, and behaviors and support our responses to these experiences. It is not about dampening or bypassing our natural responses but about increasing our awareness and curiosity about what is occurring. Self-regulation is our ability to be present in what is happening, nurture our capacity to be with that occurrence, and discover what we need in ways that support ourselves best. That may look radically different from person-to-person, experience to experience.
5. Empowerment
Somatic therapy aims to empower individuals by helping them witness, relate, and understand their body’s natural processes. As we begin to learn more intimately, our sense of self, agency, autonomy, and trust are enhanced. It renegotiates our wholeness in an authentic, resilient, and resounding way.
Embodied Healing Through Somatic Psychedelic Integration
All journeys with our entheogenic friends are deserving of somatic care. As new illuminations of our psychedelic and plant experiences surface to our conscious mind, somatic therapies offer an embodied process for these insights to be fully integrated into grounded, sustainable healing. Through the invitation of our body's narrative, we bridge the mind-body connection toward greater coherence. This aligned synergy allows more resources to be freed towards experiencing safety, connection, and joy.
How Somatics Can Support the Healing and Integration:
1. Supporting regulation after altered state of consciousness (ASC)
2. Supporting embodied processing of the ASC experience
3. Expanding the ASC experiences as resources
4. Anchoring the new resources as glimmers or allies Therapeutic Somatic Practices for Psychedelic Integration
There is a vast amount of somatic practices that can be found easily at our fingertips these days. Discerning what we need is the best place to start and can be tricky to distinguish.
Therapeutic Somatic Practices for Psychedelic Integration
There is a vast amount of somatic practices that can be found easily at our fingertips these days. Discerning what we need is the best place to start and can be tricky to distinguish.
One Prompt We Can Begin With Is:
Do I need co-regulatory support?
Do I need self-regulatory support?
This distinction is helpful for several reasons. It prompts us to pause and sense what is happening in our experience, facilitating somatic principle #2—awareness of bodily sensations.
As we begin to listen to our body and experience, it invites curiosity as to what, how, and when we may need support, an essential step of skill-building principle #3 - self-regulation.
We all are perfectly unique in our needs. Befriending them and honoring them is how we cultivate self-regulation. Know that our needs can and likely will evolve over time as we continue to nurture them.
Some Examples of Somatic Practices
Earthing
Tapping
Visual Orienting
Breathing practices
Mindful movement
Eye-informed practices
Trauma-informed bodywork / touchwork
Some Professional Modalities of Somatic Therapies
NeuroAffective Touch®
NeuroAffective Relational ™ (NARM)
Somatic Experiencing® (SE)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Brainspotting
Focusing
Hakomi
EDMR
The above is just a small list of various approaches to support your bodies' awareness and capacity. Each offers a unique flavor, and you may find somatic practitioners who incorporate multiple modalities.
Preparing for Somatic Therapy Sessions
Preparing for somatic therapy sessions is a crucial step in ensuring a productive and healing experience. It begins with creating a safe and comfortable environment, which might involve finding a quiet, private space where you can focus without interruptions. Setting aside dedicated time for the session is equally important, as it allows you to be fully present and engaged. Establishing clear boundaries and consent with your somatic therapist is essential to foster a sense of safety and trust. It’s also vital to choose a licensed and experienced somatic therapist who is well-versed in somatic techniques and has a track record of working with clients facing similar issues. Before your first session, take some time to reflect on your emotional and physical goals. Consider what you hope to achieve through therapy, whether it’s alleviating chronic pain, managing PTSD symptoms, or enhancing overall body awareness. This preparation can help you and your therapist tailor the sessions to meet your specific needs and objectives.
Professional Therapeutic Support
A massive benefit of professionally guided support is being witnessed in your experience. Attuned resonance is a biological need, and to be met, seen, and heard is a co-regulatory support every human deserves. This is highly effective for challenging life or entheogenic experiences as professional somatic practitioners trained in psychedelic integration support your process and the presence of often novel nuances.
It may be the novelty or nuance of:
How psychedelics are communicating through our mind-body
Deciphering the language in which they communicate
Navigating new relationships of insights/experiences surfaced
Navigating new relationships with our body, psyche, and plant allies
There is much mindfulness around the depth that transpires when working with the sentient beings of the plant kingdom. Professional somatic psychedelic integrationists recognize these variables, attune to your whole-person experience, and help support you somatically toward regulation, resourcing, and embodiment.
Further below is more on what to look for when finding a somatic psychedelic integration practitioner.
Self-Guided Somatic Practices
As our skills of self-regulation enrich our ability to:
Identify our somatic responses & our baseline needs
Organize them intentionally toward whole-person coherence
Self-guided somatic practices can become quite affirming and empowering, fostering the agency we speak to above. For some, self-regulation may feel like a more familiar, safe place to start than co-regulation. It truly is unique to each human, and no approach is better than another. The important piece is our ability to recognize if / when we need to reach out for support; we have the resources to do so. Building our somatic toolkit to emphasize these resources or glimmers will assist this process. Often, the desire for co-regulation and connection reveals itself when we have greater access to our sense of safety.
A Self-Regulation Prompt
When it comes to self-regulation practices, there is no simple recipe that fits all. No singular technique is universally prescribed to a common experience, emotion, mood, behavior, etc. Somatic exercises are truly endless because they are about what works for us, our bodies, and us as individuals.
However, after a psychedelic experience, there is one curiosity that can be helpful in immediately cultivating a somatic practice. You can explore asking yourself whenever you feel something new, slightly challenging, or overwhelming:
“What am I experiencing, and do I need…?”
Soothing
Grounding
Energizing / Mobilizing
Soothing support may look like self-touch over your heart or any body part that calls. It might be a weighted blanket, gentle self-body hugs, or cuddling your furry pet friend. It could be a song that offers a lullaby for the soul or hearing a friend's voice that soothes your nerves. Ask your body, sensationally, what might bring me comfort at this time.
Grounding support might involve getting bare feet on the earth or going to a favorite nature spot. It might also involve palm taps down your legs, smelling a rich, earthy essential oil, or meeting up with a companion who makes you feel seen and heard. Ask your body what it might want for a sense of anchoring and support.
Energizing or mobilizing support might look like hand sweeps down your arms, torso, and legs, putting on a song that makes you want to move, or calling up a friend to go for a walk. If you are feeling stuck, it might be lying in bed, initiating gentle body rocks from your feet, or a gentle breathing exercise. Ask your body what action might give some movement to what I'm experiencing.
What to Look for in a Somatic Therapist for Psychedelic Integration
Anytime we seek support for our well-being, it is essential to connect with providers that offer care with integrity. While our individual needs may look different in terms of whom we resonate with, the below is a great foundation of what to look for in a provider:
Properly educated in the foundations of somatic psychology
Trauma-informed & follows trauma-informed principles
Non-judgemental & invested in harm reduction
Maintains an ethical code & healthy boundaries
Long-standing relationship with the plants & Indigenous carriers
Understand the effects of plant medicines on our physiology
Acts of reciprocity (Ayni) with plant medicine community & Indigenous peoples
All of the above is quite important. I also want to thank Atira Tan for pioneering this list. Finding a practitioner who has a long-standing relationship with the plants is vital in their ability to understand the ways plants communicate and increase the potential of harm reduction. Ideally, look for a practitioner who has a rich history, specifically with the entheogen you are working with, for an increased chance of resonance.Embodying the Wisdom of Plant Medicine: Integrating and Honoring Through Somatic Practices
Embodying the Wisdom of Plant Medicine: Integrating and Honoring Through Somatic Practices
Somatic processing of psychedelic experiences ideally is considered as vital as ceremonial work. It serves as a continuation to anchor our journeys as a well-rounded, holistic part of the process. It honors the work we've done, as an enriched participatory act of embodiment, as well as honors the plants, land and carriers as an act of full receipt and appreciation. It advances our relationship with the plants in the direction of interdependence, over colonialism.
Our bodies are designed to regulate and heal. When we give ourselves the space, time and guidance to return to what we (and the plants) inherently know, we can integrate and alchemize the pain and discomforts that draw us to the plant kingdom in the first place. Moving towards the re-membering of our wholeness, as a sustainable, embodied truth.
Do you want to learn more about your embodied truth and wisdom? Let’s connect. I’d be honored to guide you!
About the Author
Faegann Harlow bridges body-based therapies in their integrative role of mind-body reciprocity. Through curiosity and embodied practices, Faegann finds space in each being to anchor the insights received from our allies, increasing our capacity in receiving, healing, transmuting, creating.... being. Integration at a somatic level serves as an act of assimilation; honoring our role with our relations; nature, self and beyond. With 20+ years in the somatic field of touch, movement and psychology, and 10+ years in plant spaces, Faegann humbly holds Noya Rao, Mugwort and Thyme dietas, as trusted allies in her heart-centered and nurturing therapeutic approach. Trauma-informed through physiological and psychological lenses, Faegann invite science and spirit into a space. The symbiotic nature of our body, psyche and universe want to reveal the mysteries of our own personal magic & medicine. Faegann serves to support and encourage your innate self, whole and perfect.
