MINDFUL SOMATIC TRAUMA THERAPY
Mindfulness as a Foundation of Somatic Trauma Therapy
Mindfulness is having the ability to cultivate awareness of your thoughts, your bodily sensations, and the external surroundings, in the present moment, with specific positive attitudes such as compassion, curiosity, gratitude, and acceptance.
Mindfulness practice can teach you to step back from stressful moments and thoughts, and select pause before reacting to situations. You can learn to switch on the being mode (awareness/mindfulness) versus doing mode (automatic pilot).
Neuroscience research has illustrated that simply having awareness with these specific mindful attitudes towards yourself and others, can have a very profound effect on the brain physiology, and therefore how we process our thoughts and how we feel. Mindfulness can then aim to assist you in managing your mindset, thoughts, decisions and challenges that may arise within your life day to day. This in turn can improve stress management, emotional resilience and intelligence, communication, and relationships with others. It can increase your focus, creativity, which results in higher levels of productivity, and an overall enhanced sense of wellbeing. Meditation can have a huge impact on your life and can be profoundly healing. Research is now proving how this practice can have an affect on our organ function, and our cellular health.
There are 3 Key Elements to Mindfulness:
1) INTENTION - Having a purpose.
2) ATTITUDE - Bringing a positive attitude - kindliness, acceptance, friendliness, curiosity.
3) ATTENTION - Having present moment awareness.
These three elements combined allow mindfulness to take place and be in the present moment.
‘Mindfulness is living your life as if it really mattered’ - Jon Kabat-Zinn.
‘’If you can focus on the breath you can cultivate mindfulness” - Jon Kabat-Zinn.
What happens next?
After having worked on resourcing (gaining tools and mind/body awareness techniques) in the first sessions together with my Mindfulness Therapy, we then will start to slowly delve deeper into your relevant previous trauma experiences.
Somatic trauma therapy goes beyond talk therapy, it is body-centered therapy.
The nervous system is the root of our existence and the gateway to all healing - mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Talk therapy also known as CBT only utilises the Neo Cortex (thinking/conscious brain), while Somatic Therapy uses both the brain and body (nervous system) to heal. Somatic Therapy allows the client to connect to the very roots of the core belief/experience; it allows the nervous system to ‘feel’ shift and complete what wasn’t able to be completed at the time.
When the nervous system is able to complete its full cycle it allows the individual to connect and make better sense of themselves and the world around them.
After sufficient resourcing with you, we can then start to work on processing. This will incorporate careful mindful-somatic immersion therefore accessing the core beliefs and meeting needs. Here I use a combination of techniques to peel back the layers, and weave together meaning and experience including:
• Talk and Mindfulness Therapy
• Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy
• Somatic and Sensorimotor Experiencing
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) / Parts-Work
Finally we focus on integration using bespoke and individualised self connection resources. This integration period can take some time as my focus is on supporting you towards developing strategies and supporting your needs.
WHAT ARE THE PRICINPLES OF HAKOMI SOMATIC TRAUMA THERAPY?
This short video will give you more insight into what the Hakomi Priniciple is when it comes to Somatic Trauma Therapy.
WHAT IS HAKOMI?
https://www.hakomieducation.net/about
Hakomi is a method that was created and developed by the late Ron Kurtz. He originally called it Body-centered Psychotherapy. Hakomi was originally referred to as “body-centered” because the information about someone’s present experience and how someone is organizing experience is more available from nonverbal expression than from what the person says in words.
As the method developed and expanded beyond the psychotherapy setting, he began to call it “mindfulness-based assisted self-study and self-discovery”.
Ron Kurtz began leading workshops and trainings in the mid-1970’s and led the first training in the Hakomi Method in 1977. In 1981, he and his colleagues founded the Hakomi Institute.
In 2008, Ron received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The US Association of Body Psychotherapy and an honorary doctorate from the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute for his work in developing the Hakomi Method.
Ron collaborated on several published books on Hakomi. The first book, The Body Reveals, written with Hector Prestera, M.D. (1976), was about reading the body for psychological information. His second book, Body-Centered Psychotherapy (1991), described the Hakomi Method. The third book, Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of Tao-te Ching (2011), was co-authored with Greg Johanson. After his death, his final thoughts on the Hakomi Method were published under the title The Hakomi Way: Consciousness and Healing (2021). The Practice of Loving Presence: A Mindful Guide to Open-Hearted Relating (2019) was co-authored with Donna Martin.
In the last decades of his life, he began to describe his work as mindfulness-based assisted self-discovery. This version of the Hakomi method is taught by trainers and teachers of the Hakomi Education Network whose trainings are available worldwide.
"It is a natural part of the universal human endeavor to understand ourselves, to free ourselves of the inevitable suffering that follows from ignorance of who we are and 'how the world hangs together'. It is the path taken by all who work to go beyond the half- remembered hurts and failed beliefs that linger unexamined in the mind and body, hurts that act through barely conscious habits and reactions. Hakomi is a part of that heroic labor, a cousin to sitting meditation, to singing bowls and chanting monks." - Ron
"It is possible to set up a specific pattern of interaction between two or more people which enhances the probability of healing. When healing is possible, it is a spontaneous unfolding from within the person who heals. A significant influence on any healing process is the context in which it happens. When one person sets the context for another person’s healing, the most significant aspect of that context is the state of mind of the person creating it." - Ron Kurtz
Emma Streak
PHYSIOTHERAPY & MINDFULNESS COURSE
"Following an injury, I was unable to come to terms with not being as active as I had been. Through Renee’s support, Physiotherapy treatment, rehabilitation programmes, and her tailored Mindfulness course, not only did I learn to manage my pain but she changed my life for the better. Mindfulness opened my mind to not just overcoming my pain but to other areas of my life which I see so positively now. I am even grateful for my injury as I would not have met Renee and gone down this path to a better place. I am now pain free and in the happiest place I have ever been. I will always be eternally grateful for what you did for me."
CONTACT HAVEN
If you would like to know more about any of our corporate health & wellness services, please contact us for a free discovery call now.
*Individual physiotherapy and therapy services are currently on hold with Renée while she is on maternity leave.*
Takapuna, Auckland
+64211708972
