Somatic Experiencing in Los Angeles
Felicia Samata Mihich, S.E.P, C.M.T. is a Los Angeles based Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.
Somatic Experiencing is a unique mind/body therapy that can help relieve anxiety and pain, and restores your sense of presence, relaxed alertness, and curiosity for life. It supports your natural ability to connect to your Self, which results in a feeling of emotional stability and grounded embodiment.
Somatic Experiencing honors the dynamic interrelation between all the parts that make up a whole person. It encourages awareness, which brings about healing and clearing on multiple interconnected levels including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Somatic Experiencing therapy is effective in supporting us in overcoming the effects of accumulated stress from everyday life, shock traumas, or the after effects of emotional, relational, and developmental trauma. Supporting the nervous system’s functioning through Somatic Experiencing addresses the underlying stress patterning at the root, which provides tangible and lasting results.
Anxiety, depression, fear, pain, dissociation, loss of a sense of self, loss of connection to your body, can all be symptoms of accumulated stress or trauma.
Healing through S.E.
Somatic Experiencing treatment can lead to a resolution of trauma-related symptoms by:
- Healing trauma and injury held in the body
- Re-establishing a sense of safety by repairing breached boundaries
- Developing somatic mindfulness and present moment awareness
- Creating conditions of safety so the nervous system may return to a regulated state
- Attuning a person to their own organic intelligence and innate capacity to heal
- Addressing issues in relationships as they connect to coping strategies that developed in childhood
How I Work
Somatic Experiencing can be likened to psychotherapy, but its different in that it also includes the practice of noticing the body’s sensations as they connect with ones narrative and emotional experience. Sessions also can include an exploration of memories and images, body movements or hand gestures that may show up during session. Imagination is also used as a fundamental tool for healing.
The goal of this experiential process is a renegotiation of traumatic experiences from the past that have been stored in the body on a neuro biological level. As one moves toward dis-inhibition of previously depressed or held back life energy, finds completion of self protective responses, and pops the bubble on false distortions of self, a whole new reality becomes available.
In addition to being a Somatic Experiencing Therapy provider, I am also a assistant for the national S.E. training programs held in Los Angeles and have hosted and coordinated Somatic Experiencing trainings and workshops for the past decade.
Please Contact me to set up an appointment.
Sessions are conducted over video on a HIPAA compliant platform, Zoom.
How Somatic Experiencing Was Developed
Felicia Samata Mihich with Dr. Peter Levine
Wild animals are consistently able to return to normal after traumatic experiences and rarely develop adverse side effects like humans.
Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing developed this modality by looking to the wisdom inherent in nature by observing the behaviors of animals in the wild. He wanted to understand how animals so easily recovered after their traumas and why humans store traumatic experience.
Somatic Experiencing, with over 40 years of research and development, is an effective alternative health care modality practiced throughout the world and has paved a way for those who suffer from trauma to find relief and a return to wholeness.
A Comparison with Other Techniques
Psychotherapy: Somatic Experiencing is a great adjunct to Psychotherapy, as it invites clients to include the experience inside their body as it relates to the story. This encourages a sense of embodiment and steers clients away from re-traumatizing themselves through the retelling of their story over and over again.
Health Care: Our modern western medical system is unfortunately not fully equipped with the sensitivity and tools needed to heal trauma. Often the well-intended and life-saving techniques of the Western medical model inflict additional trauma that later has to be resolved. Somatic Experiencing therapy during or after medical treatment can provide more comprehensive healing.
Conditions Treated through Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing Therapy Video Sessions are used to help individuals overcome both somatic injuries and emotional trauma including:
- Anxiety
- Accidents
- Auto-immune disease
- Boundary ruptures
- Car accidents
- Corona Virus PTSD
- Covid-19 Stress Response
- Chronic, difficult to treat pain related symptoms
- Chronic Diseases
- Depression
- Developmental Trauma
- Domestic abuse
- Endocrine System imbalances
- Holistic Aftercare
- Falls
- Grief
- Injuries
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Loss
- Pain management
- Paralysis
- Pandemic related Stress disorders
- Pre and post surgery
- PTSD
- Rape
- Relationship issues
- Reproductive issues
- Sexual abuse
- Shock trauma
- Stress
- Whiplash