JUNE 29 • 2023 | 39
HEALTH
A
new form of mental health
therapy is making waves in
Michigan.
While somatic experiencing is
common in states like Illinois and
Arizona, it’s just now expanding in
Metro Detroit. Oak Park-based mental
health therapist Sarah Rollins, 33,
owner of Embodied Wellness, PLLC,
believes this unique therapy is poised to
grow.
She’s also one of the few somatic
experiencing practitioners in Michigan.
“Somatic experiencing is a modality
that integrates the body into healing,”
Rollins says. “It isn’t traditional talk
therapy. It adds sensations of the body
into the experience.”
By using guided imagery,
understanding how the nervous system
plays a role in life experiences and how
physical symptoms of stress and anxiety
are connected to the brain, somatic
experiencing aims to heal the body both
inside and outside.
“We’re working with the body’s
natural self-protection responses,”
Rollins explains. These include fight
and flight, which many people have
heard of, but a lesser-known response
that somatic experiencing addresses is
freeze, or a physical immobility.
Somatic experiencing uses techniques
to help self-protection responses get
“less stuck in the body,” Rollins says,
and to break free of symptoms like chest
tightness and other often-unwanted
physical sensations that go along with
anxiety, depression and trauma.
BEING AWARE OF THE BODY
One of the main benefits of this
practice, Rollins explains, is that it
allows people to integrate what they
know cognitively, or in the brain, and
what they know in their bodies.
“People tend to move through the
world in a more present and aware way
after they’ve engaged in somatic work,”
she says. “They’re less dissociated. They
can engage more with people, so they
feel more connected to others and to
themselves.”
It also helps people better prepare and
cope with life stressors. “Life is hard
sometimes,” Rollins admits. “We can
navigate and surf those waves better
[with somatic experiencing] than in just
cognitive work because we’re integrating
the body and not just the mind.”
Somatic experiencing can be used for
a variety of mental health needs, such
as healing trauma, alleviating symptoms
of depression and anxiety or to combat
insomnia. Rollins says this therapy is
best for anyone interested in going a
little deeper into their healing.
It’s for “anyone who wants to
understand what’s going on in their
body,” she adds.
Rollins explains that when people
experience trauma, it’s experienced both
internally and externally. “If we’re only
doing therapy that focuses on the mind,
we’re ignoring a huge aspect of healing,”
she says, adding, “A lot of trauma
happens specifically to the body.”
A GROWING NEED
Rollins, who went to Temple Beth
El and was one of the Jewish News
36 Under 36, first saw the need for
a therapy like somatic experiencing
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a University of Michigan graduate
and clinical social worker in practice
for about 10 years, Rollins bore witness
to the drastic need for increased mental
health care as the pandemic caused
unprecedented levels of stress and
anxiety.
She also noticed a gap in healing as
people addressed internal symptoms,
like racing thoughts, but didn’t address
external symptoms such as persistent
aches and pains, fast breathing and even
stomach churning that can stem from
anxiety and depression.
When a friend clued her in to somatic
experiencing, Rollins began to do
research and picked up a book written
by psychotherapist Peter Levine, the
founder of the therapy.
“Everything that he was saying
resonated with what I was already
thinking,” she recalls. “I just didn’t have
the words to put to the experience.”
Now, she anticipates somatic
experiencing will continue to grow in
popularity, thanks to its many benefits
and its ability to heal the body as a
whole, rather than in parts.
Instead of using it as a last-resort
therapy after trying traditional talk
therapy and still feeling the physical
symptoms, Rollins hopes people can
turn to somatic experiencing as a first-
line approach — to view their bodies as
something to attend to right away.
“We’re not just floating heads,” she
says. “Our bodies go with us throughout
the world.”
Somatic experiencing is a new form of mental health therapy.
Healing Both Brain and Body
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Sarah
Rollins