My Somatic Healing Experience

On my journey to healing and helping others heal in the veterinary profession, I have decided to attend as many healing modalities as possible to experience each one first hand. What I know positively from my journey is that in order to move forward, we have to look backwards. It is undeniable that unresolved traumas block much of our growth and expansion. It is also undeniable that we get stuck in our behavior patterns that originated from our childhood experiences. My somatic healing guide did an exceptional job of explaining how we perceive certain data in our youth and this cements our behavioral responses that at the time were appropriate, however, that later in life are inappropriate or potentially harmful. Ever think that “this always happens to me” or meet someone that you see making the same choices again and again despite the less than satisfactory outcome? That is being stuck. So how do we get unstuck?

Historically much of our behavior and trauma work has been through talk therapy. While I think talk therapy is beautiful and profound ah-ha moments can occur, often talk therapy creates a space in which patients have to relive the traumas. It also can take quite a bit of time to get to a healing place of even just one trauma. In the late 1980s, Dr. Francine Shapiro discovered rapid eye movement and its ability to more quickly heal PTSD. Her first clinical trial for EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was in 1989. Dr. Shapiro’s discovery fueled the flames for looking outside of talk therapy to heal patients and in so doing, reignited modalities of healing from the past. 

One of those healing modalities is somatic healing. While it was practiced and first written about in the early 1900s, it did not gain popularity in the US until recently. Dr. Amanda Baker explains somatic therapy as “a treatment focusing on the body and how emotions appear within the body.” Harvard Health goes on to explain that because unsettling emotions often manifest in the body in disabling ways, somatic therapy seeks to neutralize their impact, alleviating pain and other stress-related symptoms like sleep disturbances or difficulty concentrating.

But I did not fully understand this before my session. I decided not to do any research on somatic healing and go in with no expectations or even basic knowledge of the modality. So before our session, my guide explained a bit about it. Somatic healing is a way of connecting to self while retaining the ability to stay connected to outside of self (whether that is a person or environment or both). I listened to his introduction about how our bodies hold certain experiences and that can dictate behaviors in life. I understood that somatic healing was about creating that mind-body connection and keeping it throughout the day, to consciously breathe, consciously walk or do whatever we are doing, but doing it consciously. If we stay in our body with presence, we are less likely to sleepwalk through life. We live our life and make decisions from a place of awareness. If you live a life with awareness, you are far less likely to live a life of reactivity. And lastly, living a life of awareness is the only way in which we can assess our behaviors and make changes for our health and wellbeing. 

I listened intently to what he was explaining and decided to let the knowledge go while I experienced the healing session. I tend to stay in my head analyzing and picking things apart, but that day, I set it aside and hopped up on the table. Somatic healing was very different from what I anticipated. Comparing it to massage therapy briefly, the masseuse is working only at the physical level of the body. Hands on working the muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc., there is no attempt to work on any other plane such as emotional or spiritual. During a massage it is quite ok to drift off or fall asleep. But in somatic healing, there is an interaction during the entire session. I was instructed how to breathe and what part of the body to breathe into. I was asked to compare the side that had been worked on to the side that had not. 

At the end of the session, he asked me how I felt. Not even thinking of the earlier conversation, I said to him, “I felt like I was floating away but then you would tell me to breathe and it brought me right back. You didn’t allow me to really float away. You kept me tethered.” And that was entirely the point –  connect to outside of self while remaining connected to self. I was expanding yet staying grounded. He placed pressure in certain areas of my body while I consciously exhaled to release. Maybe the release was on a physical plane so I released muscle tension, but maybe there was an emotional component that was stored. I could see that this work would help release it, help to get us unstuck. 

One of the things I was most struck by was how safe I felt in the environment. This is particularly critical when working with healing. So make sure as you begin your healing journey to trust your intuition. Work only with a healer that makes you feel safe and secure. 

There is so much chronic illness in the US that cannot be explained and justified with physical ailments and symptoms alone. There is undoubtedly a connection of the emotions with the physical body, a mind-body connection. We cannot rely on pharmaceuticals to heal our bodies if we are unable to heal our minds. We cannot expect any drug to miraculously cure our emotional health. And if our emotional health is ill, how can our physical body return to an optimal state? If pharmaceuticals truly worked at this level, we would have almost no chronic illness. Instead we see a crisis of chronic disease and a complete failure of modern medicine to cure it. 

So we are faced with two paths and one choice. We can stay on the path in which we do not grow or expand. We accept our behaviors as us and we continue to rely solely on pharmaceuticals for healing. Or we can choose the other path of healing. On this path with every step we feel the earth, smell the flowers, hear the birds and we see ahead. We meet ourselves and learn who we are and what experiences shaped us. We learn to forgive ourselves and we learn to embody grace. 

Of the two paths the latter is clearly the more difficult for we find comfort in the knowing. We know what to expect when we stay on our same path. We even know what fights we will have. We have a false sense of security in that knowing. Maybe you even choose to stay on that path because you feel it is right for your family. It is the best thing to do, the selfless thing. But once again this is your mind trying to keep you in that false sense of safety. 

It is when we make the transformative decision to choose the more difficult path that we must be prepared for the hard work ahead. We are looking back at our lives and assessing the foundation. We stop with our reactivity and move consciously. We let go of behaviors that do not serve us any further, possibly even addictions that hold us back. We are brave enough to ask for help and we are strong enough to let go of whatever we are holding onto that makes us feel stuck. In so doing, we create a joy and peace that is a must in the veterinary profession and we create many new and exciting pathways for life. 

Like what you hear? Follow me on Veterinary Compassion Project Spotify and Apple Podcast, my website veterinarycompassionproject.com, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram @veterinarycompassionproject. Let’s keep talking about what we face in the veterinary and animal care world and ways that we can help each other. We are thrilled to announce the first annual restorative retreat April 4th-6th, 2025 in Petaluma, California. You cannot afford to miss this. Leave your family at home and bring your coworkers. This is meant just for you. As always, I hope you find what you are looking for and share it with anyone who needs it.

With love and hope,

Dr. Erin Holder