What is a somatic approach?
The aim of Somatic coaching is to wake up to the untapped resources our bodies hold for living more joyful & authentic lives.
Coaching in this way aims to let the conscious mind take a step back so that we can connect with the whole self.
This isn’t to say we ignore the mind, but rather treat the body & mind as an integrated whole and create space for all of our parts to speak their wisdom.
Instead of asking ‘why’ something is the way it is, we are open to exploring our sensory perceptions and emotional responses and how they have contributed to patterns of behaviour.
Traditional coaching works with the content of the story, what you say and the meaning of it. Somatic coaching focuses on how the storyteller experiences the story and is process oriented. (journey not goal driven)
Somatic coaching focuses on how the storyteller experiences the story and is process-oriented (journey and not goal driven)
The aim of Somatic coaching is to wake up to the untapped resources our bodies hold for living more joyful & authentic lives.
Somatic coaching through an Organic Intelligence™ lens:
Somatic Organic Intelligence™ coaching is a positive reinforcement clinical model and theoretical framework that promotes human empowerment, resiliency, and compassion.
A descendant of somatic/body-based therapies, OI integrates psychobiological science, positive psychology and complex systems theory, with mindfulness, image work, and somatic awareness to restore the felt-sense experience of safety, wellness and wholeness.
Rather than focusing directly on pathology and trauma, coaching in this way will help you to connect to and build on your innate resilience and inner resource.
Somatic Organic Intelligence™ coaching supports healing and transformation from the nervous system up by interrupting harmful patterns related to stress/survival physiology and redirects attention and energy toward ease and vitality.
What do we do in a session?
My training helps me see and understand the patterns at play in the bodies and minds of my clients and to choose interventions that support deep lasting change, well beyond the surface level.
As an OI Coach, I might guide your attention, sometimes focusing outward and sometimes inward, to help promote harmony within your system, allowing all parts of the self to work together.
I pay close attention to non-verbal cues, like small movements, facial expressions, and changes in breathing. By noticing these signals, I can guide you to move away from feelings of overwhelm and towards states of greater ease and self-awareness.
In a session we:
Honour the authority of the body - follow what the body is doing & what it wants to do (for example, how it wants to move or express.)
Trust and listen to the body’s impulses, by engaging with them and bring them to the forefront.
Consider how you say things & your non verbal communication (this is the material we use during a session)
Work with the ‘felt sense’, a body based understanding or clue to describe what/how you feel.
As the coach, I'm here to:
Guide you to deepen your experience of what is present and track what’s going on in your body.
Give you space and time to arrive at your own awareness and insights & move towards new possibilities, outcomes & change.
Encourage the cycles & thresholds of your nervous system, helping you to notice the subtle signs of activations & work with your body in each and every phase.
How a session will & won’t look:
Somatic, Organic Intelligence coaching isn’t psychotherapeutic in nature (psychotherapy looks at present moment and into the past) Our session will be based on present moment and future based.
This isn't to say that past experiences will not come up into sessions or feel present for you within our time together, but my role isn't to actively seek them out.
I trust that what is drawing your attention in the emergent present is exactly where you need to be and we work from there. This is also the safest way to work with your body's responses.
Organic Intelligence works within a Post-Trauma Growth trajectory:
“OI’s Post-Trauma Growth is a reminder that the most natural thing is that we heal. We heal — personally and professionally — not by dredging up the past, not through “the window of tolerance,” nor pain. We heal in the here-and-now, through attuned relationship, support and kindness. When our biology enters the phase of auto-organization, symptoms are relieved, self-efficacy emerges, and one’s post-trauma growth journey takes wings. By learning this new language of biological re-organization, we catalyze the only sensible healing intelligence — that which arises from within our very nature, that which has always been there.”