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Somatic Therapy & Bodywork with Lakshmi
Embark on a Journey Within: Discover Healing and Empowerment Through Somatic Therapy: a Specialized combination of Trauma-informed Somatic Bodywork, Somatic Experiencing, DARe, Safe and Sound Protocol, Rest and Restore Protocol, Somatic Movement Therapy, HeartMath, Neuroscience, Somatic, and Developmental Trauma Coaching, and Trauma-informed Yoga Therapy through the lens of The PolyVagal Theory and Pre and Perinatal Psychology.
Somatic Experiencing Services
A.
Understanding Somatic Experiencing:
Somatic Experiencing, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, is a transformative body-based practice aimed at cultivating a harmonious relationship between clients and their bodies. This process effectively deactivates trauma, addressing fight, flight, and freeze states held within the body. Clients benefit from a gradual unfolding of their bodily experiences, fostering trust in their innate wisdom and personal histories.
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Benefits of Somatic Experiencing:
This therapeutic approach yields a spectrum of benefits, including decreased pain, deeper self-connection, reduced anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms, improved digestion and sleep, alleviated tension and headaches, and an overall increased sense of comfort and peace. The pace of a Somatic Experiencing session is deliberately slow, allowing clients to communicate their sensations, preferences for areas of focus, and emerging feelings.
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Tailored Sessions and Professional Certification:
Somatic Experiencing sessions, whether conducted sitting in a chair, on a massage table with touch, or in supported yoga poses, offer a personalized and client-centered approach. Lakshmi, is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and brings expertise and dedication to each session. She offers 60-minute sessions for $140 and 90-minute sessions for $170, available in-person or over Zoom.
DARe & Somatic Experiencing
A.
Understanding DARe:
DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning Experience) is a therapeutic approach
developed by trauma therapist Diane Poole Heller that focuses on healing attachment wounds and developmental trauma through tracking sensations in the body. Rooted in attachment theory and trauma healing modalities, DARe helps individuals resolve early childhood trauma and attachment disruptions held in the body, fostering healthier relationships and emotional well-being.
DARe, Somatic Bodywork, and Somatic Experiencing work seamlessly together as DARe focuses on repair of early relational/attachment trauma held in the body and SE focuses on how to release stored trauma from the body and restore healthy protective responses, both essential in healing early trauma wounds. Trauma-informed touch reaches our most deeply held developmental experiences and is a powerful path towards healing our earliest experiences.
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What is DARe:
What is DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning Experience)?
DARe is a therapeutic approach designed to address the impacts of early attachment disruptions, which often result from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), neglect, or trauma in relationships with primary caregivers. According to attachment theory, secure attachment in early childhood lays the foundation for healthy emotional regulation, interpersonal relationships, and resilience. However, when attachment is disrupted due to trauma or inconsistent caregiving, individuals may develop insecure attachment styles that affect their ability to form healthy bonds and feel emotionally safe in relationships.
Lakshmi uses DARe in her sessions to uncover what missing experiences clients have in their nervous systems and uses touch, guided imagery and meditation, movement, and sensation tracking to support the client in filling in the missing experiences their bodies have. Touch is extremely powerful at healing early attachment wounds.
Re-patterning the Nervous System
Much like other trauma therapies, the techniques within somatic therapy focus on healing the nervous system, which becomes dysregulated due to early trauma. Early experiences of abandonment, neglect, or inconsistent caregiving can cause the nervous system to remain stuck in states of hyperarousal (anxiety, panic) or hypoarousal (numbness, dissociation). somatic techniques help regulate the nervous system and bring it back into balance. By guiding individuals to focus on bodily sensations in a safe, therapeutic setting, somatic therapy helps the body discharge stored trauma and re-pattern its responses. This process allows individuals to move out of defensive behaviors and into more secure, emotionally grounded ways of relating to themselves and others.
Experiential and Relational Exercises
Somatic therapy includes experiential exercises that help individuals practice new ways of connecting with themselves and others in real-time. These exercises often involve role-playing, body awareness, and guided imagery, which help individuals experience what secure and safety feel like in their body. For example, if a client has a history of feeling abandoned, invalidated or unseen, Lakshmi may guide them into feeling the support of the chair or massage table under their bodies. She may invite them to see if any part of their body can melt into that support. She may then add supportive touch, perhaps holding their feet. The goal is to help the nervous system learn new patterns of connection, trust, and safety, ultimately leading to clients feeling more secure and safe within themselves and their lives.
Healing Developmental Trauma
Developmental trauma refers to trauma experienced in early childhood during critical periods of emotional and psychological development. This can include neglect, abuse, or inconsistent caregiving, which disrupts the natural process of attachment and emotional regulation. Somatic therapy directly addresses developmental trauma by working to heal the early nervous system and physical patterns that shape a person’s view and experience of themselves and the world. As long as clients have had bodies, they can have somatic or implicit memories that contribute to their everyday lives. Our bodies carry our histories, even before we could speak or remember.
Take a Closer Look
How Does Somatic Therapy Help Heal Early Trauma Held in the Body?
Somatic therapy is particularly effective for individuals who experienced traumatic or stressful events in early childhood. By focusing on both the body and the internal experience, somatic therapy helps individuals resolve deeply rooted patterns of emotional pain and insecurity. Here’s how somatic therapy helps heal early trauma held in the body:
01.
Resolves Earliest Wounds
Somatic Therapy helps individuals identify and heal their oldest wounds from early childhood. Whether a person experienced inconsistent caregiving, surgery, emotional neglect, or abandonment, somatic therapy provides a safe space to process these experiences and release the emotional pain in the body associated with them through touch, movement, meditation or visualization. This can lead to healthier, more security, safety, and a greater capacity for trust themselves and the world.
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Regulates the Nervous System
Trauma affects the nervous system, often leaving individuals in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze. Somatic therapy uses body-based techniques to help regulate the nervous system and bring it back into a state of balance. This is particularly important for individuals who experience anxiety, hypervigilance, or emotional numbness due to early trauma. By calming the nervous system, somatic therapy supports long-term healing and emotional resilience.
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Shifts Focus from Insecure to Secure Patterns
When we don’t get what we need or too much of what we don’t need early in life, we can become overly focused or hypervigilant to the negative or insecure parts of ourselves and our bodies. By creating new experiences of safety, connection, and trust in a therapeutic setting, individuals can re-pattern their focus and begin to build trust in themselves and their bodies.
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Supports Emotional Healing
Early trauma often leaves individuals feeling emotionally disconnected, unworthy of love, or afraid of intimacy. Somatic therapy helps individuals reconnect with their emotions through their body’s sensations in a safe, supportive environment, allowing them to heal from the inside out. This process leads to greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, and the ability to experience deeper connection and vulnerability.
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Promotes Lasting Change
By re-patterning the nervous system and creating new internal nourishing experiences, somatic therapy helps individuals break free from the patterns of insecurity, fear, and physical/emotional pain that may have shaped their lives for years. This leads to greater emotional resilience, healthier relationships, and a deeper sense of self-worth.
Who Can Benefit from Somatic Therapy?
DARe therapy is particularly beneficial for individuals who have experienced:
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Early childhood trauma
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Attachment disruptions or attachment trauma
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Neglect or emotional unavailability from caregivers
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Abuse (physical, emotional, or sexual)
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Insecure attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, disorganized)
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Chronic physical issues
DARe can also be helpful for individuals who feel disconnected from their emotions or struggle with patterns of self-sabotage, anxiety, or depression related to early attachment wounds that they experience as sensation in the body.
Safe And Sound Services
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Polyvagal Theory Unveiled:
Developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, a UNC Chapel Hill psychiatry professor, The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) aligns with his Polyvagal Theory. This theory posits three autonomic nervous system states—social and connected, fight or flight, freeze and faint—impacting daily functions like digestion, muscle tension, cognitive processing, and sleep. The SSP, involving 5 hours of computer-altered music, enhances polyvagal system functioning, providing profound benefits for those with PTSD, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and more.
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Holistic Listening Sessions:
The SSP program comprises five 30-minute listening sessions, complemented by hour-long meetings focusing on self-regulation exercises, sensory awareness practices, breathing, and movement. Clients gain practical exercises for self-regulation, grounding, and self-care, fostering a deeper awareness of their internal state. Sessions, conducted in person or via Zoom, offer tools to pull stress, trauma, and tension from the nervous system, promoting lasting transformation.
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Program Details and Considerations:
Sessions, priced at $140 each, can be conducted in person or remotely, generally scheduled at a rate of 1-2 sessions per week. Clients may choose to repeat the program for further progress. A free preliminary consultation is recommended before starting the program, allowing individuals to explore the suitability of SSP. The protocol is explained in a video, and precautions and contraindications, including considerations for those with seizures, taking antipsychotic drugs, and certain diagnoses, are outlined for individualized client care.
Somatic Bodywork Services
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Unlocking Mind-Body Connections:
Somatic Bodywork, conducted on a massage table, delves into the intricate relationship between the body and mind, intertwining trauma history, current concerns, and the journey towards awareness and transformation. This hands-on approach combines Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Myofascial Release, Visceral Manipulation, Integrative Reflexology, and more. Guided reflection and awareness tools are seamlessly integrated to release and resolve past trauma stored in the body.
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Sessions for All Ages:
Beneficial for clients of all ages, including babies, children, and adults, Somatic Bodywork listens to the body’s messages—sensations, imagery, memory, emotion, or behavior. Rather than imposing change, these sessions support the natural wisdom and healing power of the body through informed touch. Somatic Bodywork becomes a powerful ally for those who grasp the interconnectedness of body, mind, and emotions, seeking to collaborate with their histories for the release of stored stress and trauma.
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Addressing Chronic Issues Through Holistic Healing:
Ideal for clients understanding the intricate connection between body, mind, and emotions, Somatic Bodywork targets chronic issues such as pain, tension, compression, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, headaches, joint problems, fears, and phobias. By acknowledging the origin of these issues in past trauma and stress stored in the body, this therapeutic approach ensures a comprehensive resolution. Sessions are available for 60 minutes at $140 and 90 minutes at $170.
Schedule Your
Consultation
Unlock the door to your transformative healing journey by scheduling a 30 minute online consultation for $80 with The Flourish Center for Somatic Healing — a personalized opportunity to discuss your unique goals and explore how our specialized services can support your path to holistic well-being.
Please be sure to choose the consultation with the specific practitioner with whom you would like to work. Here is a link to our About page for you to meet our practitioners. Note that you might be able to get in sooner with some practitioners than others. We look forward to meeting you!
Our location
Opening Hours
Mon: 230p - 7p
Wed: 9a - 5p
Fri-Sun: 9a - 6p
Contact
Phone: +1 919 - 228 - 8856
Email: info@flourish....com
