Francie White, PhD, GCFP, SEP
Somatic Integration
What is trauma?
Trauma is an experience that leaves an indelible impression on the mind and body that the danger has not passed. Traumatic experiences leave us in a state of alert so that anything that reminds us of the experience sends us back in time with the same brain space that we had at the time.
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The nervous system doesn’t speak English.
It speaks the language of movement and sensation. Using somatic language, we can learn to listen and respond to the story the body has to tell in a gentle and loving way. We can tease out overwhelming experiences in small bite-sized pieces and drain the energy out of the complex, fostering a renewed sense of relief and optimism .
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The body is a storehouse for all our experiences.
We are born with only our emotional and sensori-motor centers. We have no ability to interpret our experience. We learn only by picking up patterns and building a vocabulary of movement, emotions and thinking patterns. We carry those patterns with us into adulthood.
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We are not stuck with these patterns.
Somatic methods allow us to bring these patterns up to our conscious awareness so we can decide whether to keep them. We reframe and renegotiate our old experiences so we can rewire the patterns that may not be useful anymore. This is all about brain plasticity. We don’t heal from trauma. We learn our way out of it.​
It’s an integrative experience.
All the channels of our experience, thinking, feeling, and sensing, are inextricably connected. How we feel affects how we think and act. How we perceive the world affects how we feel. Our belief systems affect how we perceive the world and respond to our experience.
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We use these somatic methods of touch, movement, breath and mindfulness interactively. We weave our cognitive and emotional narratives into our somatic narrative. And, we learn to experience ourselves in a more life-affirming way.
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Build your inner resources and resilience.
Trauma overwhelms our nervous system and our resources for self-empowerment. It overwhelms our ability to process and integrate our experience. We don’t have the internal or external resources to respond. A two-year-old getting lost in a crowd would be traumatized whereas a fifty-year-old would not.
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Somatic integration builds on your latent resources that you may not even be aware of. Trauma takes us back to the same brain space as the time of the experience. And, you can learn how to stay present with all of your faculties and renegotiate the experience so the nervous system can reset to a sense of safety and well being.
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My greatest asset in my practice is the integrative nature of my training and experience. Somatic methods showed me how to address my body's role in trauma and offered simple techniques for releasing the stored tension, regulating the nervous system and restoring the mind-body connection.
Hello, I'm Francie.
When I was only 43 years old, I had already developed arthritis in my lower back. By the time I was 52 years old, a debilitating pain took up residence in my neck. I had been a thinker my whole life, taking refuge in my head and ignoring, no, dismissing the needs of my physical self.
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I found out that I didn’t know how to be present for myself, to let myself feel and sense my needs and to learn how to meet those needs. I found out what it means for a movement to “feel delicious.” Now, not only are my arthritis and neck pain long gone, lookie what I learned how to do a few weeks before my 65th birthday.
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Check out my free videos from my Five-Minute Feldies to my free mini-course and blog. This is the center for learning how you can work daily on your own to improve your sense of well being and security. Also check out my YouTube channel.
Featured Awareness Through Movement® Lesson
Relaxing with Your Whole Self
In this lesson, we explore some basic connections between the hands, shoulders, head, spine and pelvis. It is great for all movement and builds resilience in the nervous system. It is gentle enough for a jacked up system and active enough for a crashed system.
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In three videos
✦ Learn to bring your attention back within yourself and listen. Your true self has a lot to say.
✦ Learn how to transform that critical inner voice into a source of information and support.​
✦ Increase your movement vocabulary so you can enjoy moving again.​
✦ Return to the healing space of the infant mind that is full of fun and possibilities.​
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