Somatic Therapy & Counselling in Surrey, BC & Online
PART 1 : Radical Possibility - Somatic Dreaming Guided Meditation
Try this free guided meditation: somatic dreaming is a beautiful guided meditation practice that incorporates elements of Somatic Experiencing for a deep sense of relief and rest. It's a radical possibility practice! This is Part 1 in a series on Somatic Dreaming.
Have you ever tried to walk yourself through a trigger, or tried remember how to calm yourself down in the middle of a panic attack?
It’s tough…
The more we learn about somatic work, the more we can support ourselves through our triggers and moments of freeze.
It's almost always easier to process things in the presence of someone who can guide and hold space. This is partially because of nervous system coregulation (we’re social beings and our bodies like to resonate with each other...)
But it's also because we have a hard time both directing our attention and feeling our feelings at the same time. It’s like you have to separate your mind into two parts: the guide and the client. That's why its so profound to work with a therapist.
Enter Somatic Dreaming.
Somatic Dreaming is a beautiful solo guided meditation practice that incorporates elements of Somatic Experiencing.
This practice offers potent nervous-system regulating benefits and possibility portals. From the comfort of your own home. Think part somatic session - part dreamy sleep meditation.
You receive guidance on how to direct your attention and energy for the benefit of nervous system regulation, processing activation living in the body and eliciting positive feelings of comfort, support and peace.
This is a radical possibility practice. And you get to do it in bed.
Over the last several years I have been doing a deep-dive study into the concept and experience of relief. After a few years of intense anxiety and insomnia, I knew something needed to change in my life.
I had needed to give up a job…no, a calling… that I had loved but was seriously harming me, a toxic relationship that infiltrated both my every waking moment and my dreams, and the combination of life stressors in pandemic-times left me in a mental health crisis.
I needed relief from the constant sense that something was wrong.
Being a big-feeler and someone who senses layers and patterns of energy, throughout my life I have spent a fair amount of time in discomfort, numbness and pain as I learn to process the activation and emotions moving through my body.
Of all the goals of somatic therapy, I really believe that a felt sense of relief is one of the most profound and life-changing. Relief from anxiety, relief from frustration, relief from the pressure inside of us.
In my Clinical Somatic Educator program, we were trained in a new modality created by my instructor and Somatic Experiencing practitioner Malorie Buoy. Of all of the modalities I’ve worked with, somatic dreaming provides one of the most profound experiences of relief that I’ve ever experienced.
Somatic dreaming is a type of guided meditation that you do laying down in a super comfy position (I like to do it in bed.) All you need to do is relax and listen, and you’re guided into a deep state of rest and possibility.
It’s different than a regular guided meditation or a yoga nidra in the sense that it includes the nervous system and the felt experience of activation and comfort in the body.
Sometimes it can be hard to meditate because we think that we need to be calm and relaxed in order to meditate.
When you’re in crisis-mode, it’s challenging to clear your mind, and definitely challenging to relax your body… its just not a realistic expectation.
Luckily, Somatic Dreaming was birthed from crisis - it’s meant to give us direct contact with what’s true for us right now. The agitation, the tightness, the comfort, the beauty, the possibility.
Paradoxically, we welcome the sense of agitation and we work with it - just like in a somatic therapy session.
This profound difference is something I love about somatic therapy in general - that there’s no trying to do anything. All parts of you are welcome - the mind that is still thinking, the joints that ache, the sense of restlessness.
We’re not trying to get rid of anything whatsoever, we’re acknowledging and including all parts of us. And counterintuitively, giving these charged feelings and sensations a chance to speak can be the most relaxing and regulating thing we can offer ourselves.
This meditation introduces elements of nervous system work into the guided meditation process.
So instead of just trying to relax and be calm, and overriding what's really going on, we acknowledge and bring our body into the conversation. This supports our system to downregulate and fall into a deep state of rest, so much more than if we had used effort to try to relax.
Somatic dreaming feels like a deep release and clearing - when I wake up from a somatic dreaming meditation, I feel open, grounded, calm and centered. It is a profound acknowledgement of our current experience and a felt-sense exploration into possibility.
Check out part two in this series on somatic dreaming for a deeper dive into somatic dreaming, how you can use it to create more of what you desire in your life, and what to expect from a practice.
Free Somatic Dreaming Meditation: Return to Rhythm
My offering to you: A guided somatic dreaming meditation, complete with gorgeous sound healing frequencies by @matehyalove