Somatic Touch/Somatic Co-Regulation Touch work is an advanced form of Somatic Experiencing. It is a body-oriented touch therapy.

We are in a new era. This new time requires new ways of addressing and treating what ails the psyche as it continues to expresses itself somatically.

Somatic Touch/Somatic Co-Regulation uses gentle touch to create new neuropathways in our brain and nervous system. This is the work developed and researched by Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell, with whom I have completed all advanced trainings and certifications.  This work focuses on the synthesizing and understanding of  the following theories: Attachment, Polyvagal, Neuroscience, Child Development Theory, Trauma, and Somatics.

Somatic Touch work is the natural evolution of the pioneering trauma research of Dr. Stephen Porges, Bessel Van Der Kolk, and Dr. Peter Levine. Its purpose is to reset, reorganize, and reimagine a sense of safety and well-being within our bodies. This work is the “science of connection.”

Touch is our very first language.

No words can make feelings as palpable as gentle touch. Touch brings us into the current moment-just right here and right now. Touch released the hormone oxytocin, which Western biology has called the “safety and bonding hormone.”

For people who suffer from Complex PTSD, it can be very challenging to heal in talk therapy if our first language of touch was not met and these unmet needs actually preceded the development of actual speech. If our caregivers were chronically stressed, overwhelmed, traumatized, violent, addicted, mentally ill or otherwise preoccupied, we do not develop an internal sense of safety. Infants do not have an already-developed nervous system. The nervous system is developed through an actual physical imprinting, or encoding, that is based upon our care-givers own sense of calm, relaxation, and well-being.

One example of co-regulation is how calm we can feel when we are holding or sitting close to our pet. Animals, in general, essentially have well-regulated nervous systems. In essence, we co-regulate when we are near their calm and relaxed bodies. Somatic Touch is essentially the same idea. Another way to think about this is to remember times of incredible fear and stress when just the physical contact of another human being (grandmother, nurse, friend, lover, spouse) helped provide an immediate state of safety and feeling of “I will be ok.”

The Somatic Touch Process includes very gentle touch to the arms, back, shoulder, head, neck, spine, joints, feet, and the body’s viscera. Viscera are the internal organs, such as the organs within the abdomen, the heart, adrenal glands, kidneys and liver. It is well documented that our organs hold the stress and memories of our traumas. In other words, our stress isn’t “all in our heads.”

Touch work reduces the stress hormones, such as cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, while increasing oxytocin, the positive hormone of well-being, safety, connection, and love.

It is scientifically proven that the neurochemistry of early trauma maintains highly elevated levels of stress hormones. Essentially, without a calm caregiver, these hormones continue to be produced within the body throughout one’s lifetime, even when there may not be an immediate threat.

For those who may or may not have early trauma, gentle touch work contributes to the ability to feel safe in a world that continues to feel unsafe.

As social animals, we register safety in our herd. Our nervous systems literally “ping” off of each other as information. The more that we can assist our body in cultivating its ability to relax, the more we can actually allow those around us to feel safe as well. When we feel safe and relaxed, we are also able to think better and make wise choices that are not based upon fight, flight or freezing.