Tracing somatic therapies

Abstract

When a body-oriented therapist guided my attention to my stomach, I was skeptical. Like many people in their 20s, I honestly thought that I wasn't afraid of anything. I certainly wouldn't have anticipated finding fear in my stomach, after having worked hard to maintain a wall of muscle there. It would have seemed far-fetched that this physical structure would have anything to do with another wall—a finely tuned ability to shut down any disconcerting emotions—largely because the shutdown was so effective I had no idea it was happening. But curiosity and a friend's recommendation had led me here, so I went along with the instructions. A chaotic sense of emotions and memories seemed to come up when I focused on my stomach, and, bizarrely, being guided to sense those things without retreating behind the physical hardness and emotional numbness of the wall brought an unfamiliar sense of ease within myself. I was intrigued. A decade later, it seems many other people are too.