Akashic Body Healing

Watsu is a passive form of aquatic bodywork/therapy that supports and gently moves a person through warm water in graceful, fluid movements. Watsu promotes a deep state of relaxation with dramatic changes in the autonomic nervous system. Through quieting the sympathetic and enhancing the parasympathetic nervous systems, Watsu has profound effects on the neuromuscular system.
Craniosacral Therapy

Traumatization to the craniosacral system occurs when shock and trauma is recapitulated over the life span. Trauma injures one's natural ability to cope or be resourced and the ability to orient to reality is greatly diminished.

Trauma heightens our survival resources ore primal defensive strategies such as dissociation, contraction or immobilization. These survival mechanisms are found deep in the limbic system of the brain or in the tissues and fluids of the embryo before there was a nervous system. As a principle, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy looks for the health and meaning within the survival resource without challenging it, which can lead to retraumatization of the client.

Biodynamic craniosacral therapy helps the client reassociate to sensations around and underneath the survival resources in the body. This transforms the survival resource into a healing resource.

Somatic Therapies

Somatic Experiencing®

Like other somatic psychology approaches, Somatic Experiencing® professes a body first approach to dealing with the problematic (and, oftentimes, physical) symptoms of trauma. This means that therapy isn’t about reclaiming memories or changing our thoughts and beliefs about how we feel, but we look at the sensations that lie underneath our feelings, and uncover our habitual behavior patterns to these feelings.
Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self

It is believed that whenever we suffer an emotional or physical trauma a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. The definition of soul that I am using is soul is our essence, life force, the part of our vitality that keeps us alive and thriving.

Although soul loss is a survival mechanism the problem from a shamanic point of view is that the soul part that left usually does not come back on its own. The soul might be lost, or stolen by another person, or doesn’t know the trauma has passed and it is safe to return. It has always been the role of the shaman to go into an altered state of consciousness and track down where the soul fled to in the alternate realities and return it to the body of the client.

Somatic Therapy Books

In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

The premise of this book is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy. By synthesizing bottom-up and top down interventions, the authors combine the best of both worlds to help chronically traumatized clients find resolution and meaning in their lives and develop a new, somatically integrated sense of self.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

The body’s intelligence is largely an untapped resource in psychotherapy, yet the story told by the “somatic narrative”-- gesture, posture, prosody, facial expressions, eye gaze, and movement -- is arguably more significant than the story told by the words. The language of the body communicates implicit meanings and reveals the legacy of trauma and of early or forgotten dynamics with attachment figures. To omit the body as a target of therapeutic action is an unfortunate oversight that deprives clients of a vital avenue of self-knowledge and change.

Written for therapists and clients to explore together in therapy, this book is a practical guide to the language of the body. It begins with a section that orients therapists and clients to the volume and how to use it, followed by an overview of the role of the brain and the use of mindfulness.
Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain's Capacity for Healing

This ability to be both experiencing and holding the experience is the key to maintaining inner calm in the face of life’s challenges. If we learn to honor that each and every inner voice, no matter how distressing, has the desire to help us, we open to the possibility that each part of us has value. This help creates a gentle, accepting and warm resonance with ourselves that can remain stable and present, even when parts of us feel upset.

In simple language and easy-to-follow exercises, Your Resonant Self synthesizes the latest discoveries in brain science, trauma treatment, and the power of empathy into an effective healing method that literally rewires our brain and restores our capacity for self-love and well-being. Each chapter weaves the core concepts of neurobiology with guided meditations and beautiful illustrations by emily chaffee, painting an inspiring picture of the human brain’s inherent yearning toward healing and wholeness.