About
Learn more about what Somatic Transformation truly means, and get to know Dr. Sharon Stanley, PhD.
Somatic Transformation is a healing modality with a relational, body-centered focus for helping people who have experienced trauma.
Whether the trauma is a generational legacy, an experience of neglect or abuse from early development or the residue of unresolved, intense emotional experiences later in life, the suffering from these implicit memories can be transformed. Inspired by developmental neuroscience, traditional wisdom practices and contemporary somatic ways of knowing, Somatic Transformation has identified six therapeutic practices that enhance the therapeutic healing presence and bring precise skills to a relational field for deep neurological, emotional, social and spiritual change.
Embodiment
In order to help others, Somatic Transformation practitioners develop the art of of embodying their lived experience. When we are able to feel deeply into our present moment experiences of joy, wonder and gratitude, we can then open to embody the painful, disconnected aspects of life.
Somatic Awareness
The body is the primary source of information and energy for living with wellness, connection and interconnection. Somatic skills in perceiving and discerning sensations, feelings and images allows us to touch into natural healing elements of the human experience.
Somatic Empathy
Somatic empathy moves beyond understanding, seeing and hearing another and involves “feeling with” another. As an embodied witness, we can attune, resonate, align and synchronize with the innate vitality and wisdom in the person with trauma.
Somatic Inquiry
As a therapist brings a sense of caring, wonder and curiosity to the inner world of another, the defenses from trauma begin to soften, and the person with trauma is invited to join into an exploration of their inner world. Informed by phenomenological methodology, somatic inquiry slowly uncovers the center of the wound, encouraging the restoration of innate growth and development.
Somatic Interventions
Somatic interventions are exercises and meditations designed to interrupt the cycle of despair, dissociation, aggression, anxiety, withdrawal and fatigue from trauma and to re-organize inner patterns in restorative ways.
Somatic Reflection
Somatic reflection is a dialogical process between two or more people that seeks to integrate the innate wisdom from the body with the knowledge of the mind and intellect. It allows people to make sense out of their experience and find meaning in their lives.
About Sharon Stanley, Ph.D.
Over the past 17 years Sharon Stanley has developed and taught an emerging curriculum for healing trauma to thousands of mental health practitioners. The educational experience of ST actively engages psychotherapists in exploring emerging research and practices in their own professional and personal lives. Sharon then applies their findings to the ongoing development Somatic Transformation.
As an instructor for Somatic Transformation, Sharon has had the privilege of teaching psychotherapists from Canada, United States, Middle East and Europe. Her doctoral studies at the University of Victoria involved research into the development of empathy in caregivers working with traumatized children and identifies the transformative effects of ST as an amplification of empathic connection. Sharon has been engaged in a small study group with Dr. Allan Schore, a well-known neuroscientist, for 18 years. She lives and practices psychotherapy on Bainbridge Island, just outside of Seattle. Her book, Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma: Lifting the Burdens of the Past was published by Routledge in 2016 and is used by psychotherapists interested in a humanistic, developmental, body-centered, relational approach to healing trauma.