Somatic Experiencing
For Artists &
Arts Organisations
You are here because your body is a sensitive tool in the creation of your work and you want to explore how it can support your creative process more deeply and healthily.
The romantic idea of the poverty-stricken artist who frequently dives into the depth of their tortured soul in order to deliver outstandingly authentic and powerful work, is an outdated and unhelpful one.
No matter whether you are a performer, writer or installation artist, your productivity is reliant on a nervous system that feels safe enough to allow your creative process to flow and expand. Yet this fundamental need often is at odds with the highly pressured and unstable environment you work in.
Furthermore your work may frequently ask you to explore or confront challenging personal aspects of yourself, such as traumatic memories or deep rooted fears and insecurities. As a performer particularly you may find yourself physically engaging with personal feelings and ideas that would be handled with extreme care and support, were you in a therapeutic setting.
Somatic Experiencing helps you to intuitively reinstall a sense of safety, capacity and resilience, so that you regain access to your creative, expanded and authentic self. It further allows you to enhance and enrich your work by safely engaging with challenging material and exploring deeply subtle nuances of your self sense and emotions.
Does the pressure of delivering work and making a living stifle your creative process?
Would you like to engage deeply with challenging personal material without re-traumatising yourself in the process?
Are you seeking to explore emotions, sensations and instinctive expression more deeply to enhance your artistic performance?
How SE Can Help Artistic Process:
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Trauma-informed Safe-Guarding
SE was originally developed to gently and safely resolve trauma without re-traumatising the individual. Its thorough understanding of how our nervous system works, and how to engage with intense emotion and memory, is extremely helpful to artists who are required to explore challenging material. It allows the artist to deeply and authentically explore intense and challenging content in a way that keeps them safe from emotional overwhelm and re-traumatisation.
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Nervous System Regulation To Prevent Writers Block And Creative Shut Down
The pressure of having to make a living or delivering work on time can cause our nervous system to go into a survival state that literally changes our physiology in order to prioritise protection and survival. We get disconnected from the internal qualities and resources that allow us to deliver great work. SE offers tools and simple practices that speak directly to our nervous system, allowing it to feel safe and shift back into a more regulated state where we can be present and embodiment with access to right brain activity and our expanded authentic self.
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In-Depth Embodied Exploration Of Human Experience
Peter Levine, the founder of SE has established the SIBAM model to allow us to deeply explore human experience. In his model human experience is made up of 5 elements: Sensations, Imagery, Behaviour, Affect and Meaning.
This model can be a great tool to help artists who work with human experience, such as writers and performers. It allows us to physically explore for example: "What physical impulses come with sadness?", "What is my, or a character's, felt sense of anger?", "That sensations is this a memory evoking?" and "What behaviour may this set of sensations result in, how does it make me feel emotionally and what is the meaning that arises?" Rather than imagining or guessing the answers to these questions they can be explored physically, experientially and in great depth, resulting in an embodied, multidimensional and individual performance or insight.
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Nuanced Explorations of Embodied Experience
Due to its focus on subtle sensations and shifts in the body, SE allows the performing artist to explore a role or situation in great embodied depth. For example it may not be enough to feel anger. What kind of anger is it? What other emotions are in the mix or hidden underneath? What does this particular anger cocktail feel like in the body? What are the sensations? What subtle impulses do they cause in the body and what postural changes, subtle expression, tonality and gestures do they result in?
Ready To Embark
On A
Transformative Journey?
Prices:
50 min. private session - £70.
Group sessions or project support - please inquire.
Concessions for those in financial difficulty may be available. Please inquire.
(please note that coaching is predominatly taking place online. However in-person sessions are available in Leigh on Sea, Southend subject to availability.)
REQUEST A
COMPLIMENTARY
INITIAL ZOOM CALL
