What I learned from Yuri Zelez (specializing in intuitive touch) during his workshop on the use of touch and the basics of Somatic Experiencing in therapeutic work.
(Most discoveries cannot be verbalized. They simply have to be experienced in all their intensity. However, those discoveries that can be put into words can be found below).
- trauma therapy is primarily about giving our attention to what promotes our recovery. Trauma annexes our attention, so in therapy we expand it – to counterbalance – to what grounds us, regulates us, makes us more flexible;
- working with the body in therapy is actually a conversation with the body, which we constantly learn and improve (I was impressed by this two-way communication, not just “listening to the body”);
- the body answers the question of how a given person survived the trauma – whether by tightening/blocking or rather by fragmenting/dispersing;
- work at the first stage of trauma therapy is more directive work, without this directiveness the client may automatically be carried away by the vortex of trauma and lose attention to his resources;
- we cannot teach anyone a sense of security, we can only create appropriate conditions for it in therapy;
- fear only overwhelms us when it is blocked in one place (“when it can’t move”).
PS Beautiful workshop behind me. With an extraordinary teacher and a beautiful co-regulating group. I wish myself and ourselves such beautiful educational meetings.
PPS Note from the workshop held in November 2022 in Poznań, organized by the Polish Somatic Experiencing Association.
PPPS The photo accompanying the post is from a workshop on touch with Sonia Gomes, also a Somatic Experiencing teacher (I didn’t take any photos at Yuri’s workshop :)).
