What is Somatic Kundalini?

YogaSpace Yorkshire introduces Somatic kundalini – a therapeutic method releasing trauma. We will offer this Kundalini yoga at some of our retreats guest taught by SatGuru Kaur Khalsa a leading Somatic therapist and Kundalini yoga teacher trainer for over 20 years.

SatGuru Kaur has written a guest blog for our first Somatic retreat weekend to be held on 20-21st November, and the experience she will bring to this occasion.
I invite you to read her lovely words about this incredibly powerful tool to bring healing for the ‘whole self.’

Satguru Kaur writes

“Somatic Experiencing is a tool used to heal deep-seated trauma, healing layer by layer, whether it’s physical, emotional, psychological, mental or spiritual. Somatic Kundalini is open to anyone who suffers from anxiety, nervous system dis-functions, depression, PTSD symptoms, anyone who feels something is trapped within them and want to be freed of “stuck” energy in their mind-body connection. Once we free up the trauma frozen energy in the nervous system, the client finds they have more quality Prana (life force energy) and vitality hence increasing their quality of life.

How does Somatic work?
Somatic therapy is a form of body-centered therapy that looks at the connection of mind and body and uses both psychotherapy and physical therapies for holistic healing. In addition to talk therapy, somatic therapy practitioners use mind-body exercises and other physical techniques to help release the pent-up tension that is negatively affecting your physical and emotional wellbeing. I especially love to teach rebirthing Kundalini Kriyas with powerful breath to move any stagnation/frozenness out of the body rewiring new neural and physiological pathways.
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Peter Levine founded Somatic.
Levine developed this approach after observing that prey animals, whose lives are routinely threatened in the wild, are able to recover readily by physically releasing the energy they accumulate during stressful events. Humans, on the other hand, often override these natural ways of regulating the nervous system with feelings of shame and pervasive thoughts, judgments, and fears. Somatic Experiencing aims to help people move past the place where they might be “stuck” in processing a traumatic event.
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Somatic therapy can help people who suffer
from stress, anxiety, depression, grief, addiction, problems with relationships, and sexual function, as well as issues related to trauma and abuse. Those for whom traditional remedies have not been helpful for chronic physical pain, digestive disorders and other medical issues may also benefit from somatic therapy. Somatic therapy techniques can be used in both individual and group therapy settings.
Somatic changes the patterns of negativity or self sabotage by rewiring new energetic pathways through changing the Physiology in the body through subtle touch work, grounding, resonance, therapeutically talk (minimum so as to allow more contact with the silent language of the body rather than be over dominated by the intellect), slight movements to rebuild nervous system, titration – going slow and deep into the processes to allow deep seated emotions and any of the SIBAM elements to come up to be held for healing to take place.
SIBAM is an acronym for: Sensation (Internal- Interoceptive), Image, Behavior (both voluntary and involuntary), Affect (feelings and emotions) and Meaning (including old/traumatic beliefs and new perceptions). These five elements are the channels of experience that occur during a session.

What to expect in a Somatic Session?
A complete Somatic Experiencing Session will engage a client to talk of a specific problem they have in their current day life, possibly a mild challenge they are facing, which later on could reveal a bigger depth of trauma, but we work first from the outside (peripheral) to the inner core. Essentially a Somatic Session will bring someone more calmness, mental clarity, heightened awareness, quality of presence, through therapeutic talk, specific questions, micro movements to integrate and strengthen the nervous system, imagery, possible renegotiation of the past, pendulation, (entering in and out of contractive and expansive experiences), energy wells, breath and meditative trance technique to fully become present to what is, and walk with the client, as the therapist to the threshold of important change and rewiring of their nervous system and consequently thought processes.
We work with titration (going slowly) to make sure we don’t miss any details of the person’s body language, thought processes, belief systems, self connection, etc, building a container to hold the patient and the patient’s core wounds and deepest traumas, with softness, love and awareness, safety and trust so that the magic can unfold and core wounds healed, even in one session.
It is very different to a normal talk therapy session, as we are very much into holding and reading the silent language of the body and facial expressions and the slight subtle shifts in the nervous system which reveal where the client is really at, and not always correlates to what the mind is saying. We say this is a therapy from the bottom top, rather than top bottom, and that the newest most advanced therapies are connecting more to the silent language of the body, addressing many complex and unexplainable symptoms through connection with repressed emotions and stuck energy in the body, which when released, creates a space for re-wiring of the nervous system and of the mind”

Thank you Satguru – we look forward to welcoming you here for these special retreat weekends.
Private sessions will also be available for retreat guests during the weekend.
Please enquire/book with Emma – details are on the website.