“Somatic therapy explores how the body expresses deeply painful experiences, applying mind-body healing to aid with trauma recovery.” -Maureen Solomon, Harvard Health Publishing. This can be as simple as releasing the energy trapped in the body from the force of a trip and fall as a child to releasing grief from a loved one’s passing and so on. 

SomatoEmotional Release® taught by the internationally recognized institute, Upledger Institute, as a manual therapy process developed by Dr. Upledger that adds an extra layer on the core principles of CranioSacral Therapy to help rid the body of the residual effects of past trauma and negative emotional experiences. By utilizing a deeper understanding of the self-healing paradigm, Valerie is here to support your body to do what it knows how to do best: heal itself.

Utilizing Gestalt Psychology concepts, SomatoEmotional Release introduces an unbiased communication method based on curiosity, openness, and imagery visualization techniques. As your therapist, Valerie’s goal is to become a neutral, non-judgmental facilitator for your healing process. She is here to support you to become more mindful about your own body-mind and start to access deep, self-healing resources.

What to Expect

Though SomatoEmotional Response can be a spontaneous release, this work is more of a journey than a destination. Your process may only incorporate only a piece of the following process or the whole process. Addressing your concerns may take one or several visits before finding an end point. Valerie recommends two hours for your first session into SomatoEmotional work.

Valerie will begin with an assessment. Then you may move into CranioSacral work that will prepare your body for the next step of Intraoral Mouthwork to “open your avenue of expression”. After the Intraoral Mouthwork, the session may move into addressing your concerns and any other “discoveries” uncovered previously during the session(s). Through imagery visualization work and possibly dialoguing with your “Inner Wisdom” (which could be your gut, Angels, Faeries, Spiritual Guide, Animal, Higher Being, Internal self, etc…) Valerie aims to facilitate your journey to self help. This may include releasing of energy cysts, suppressed memories, suppressed emotion or just a better awareness to a problem in your life and how you may reach a resolution.

What SomatoEmotional Release Is NOT

SomatoEmotional Release is not a substitution for Professional Mental Health Therapy. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, extreme PTSD, medical diagnoses that are not managed or are currently experiencing a mental health crisis, Valerie asks that you seek professional mental health help before moving into this level of CranioSacral Therapy. For the national mental health hotline, dial 988.

Resources

“What is Somatic Therapy”, Maureen Salomon, Harvard Health Publishing, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-somatic-therapy-202307072951