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Dr. Peter Levine on Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory, and Healing Trauma
2 Playsin 5 minutes
In this episode of Wired for Connection, Travis Goodman speaks with Dr Peter Levine, developer of Somatic Experiencing, to explore why trauma manifests as a wound in the body, not just a story in the mind. We talk about how trauma shows up in the nervous system, why the vagus nerve and interoception matter, and how bottom-up, body-based trauma work can complete unfinished fight, flight and freeze responses.
Peter explains the roots of Somatic Experiencing, how it converges with Polyvagal Theory, and why true trauma healing depends on felt safety, curiosity and relationship. We walk through practical somatic tools like the Voo sound, slow completion of defensive responses, working with numbness, and titrating between resource and pain so clients are not retraumatized.
We also touch on trauma and spirituality, the “wounded healer” archetype, technology and disembodiment, and why trauma resolution often leads to deeper embodiment and meaning. This conversation is for therapists, coaches and survivors who want a clear, embodied roadmap for healing trauma through the nervous system, not just through insight.
Peter A Levine, PhD, and Ergos Institute are the leaders in somatic workshops and education. Learn more about Peter’s work, Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) Trainings, Research, Free programs, Books, and more here: https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/
Dr. Levine’s books including his latest book, An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey is available at: Ergos Institute, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Amazon UK, Inner Traditions, Books A Million, and Bookshop.org
CONNECT WITH Polyvagal Institute:
WEB: www.polyvagalinstitute.org
Instagram: @polyvagalinstitute
LinkedIn: polyvagal-institute
Email: community@polyvagal.org
CONNECT WITH Travis Goodman:
Instagram: Travis.Goodman.LMFT
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Transcript
Introduction to Trauma and Somatic Experiencing
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't see trauma just as PTSD, but also from the Greek ah root of trauma, which is wound or injury. So most of us have experienced some wound or injury that gets stuck in our body.
00:00:16
Speaker
yeah Because it's in our body, that's where it has to be healed. That's where it has to be resolved. Welcome back to Wired for Connection, a polyvagal podcast where we explore how your nervous system shapes the way you feel, relate, and heal.
00:00:31
Speaker
Today, I am joined by Dr. Peter Levine, a pioneer in body-based trauma work and the developer of Somatic Experiencing, a neurobiological approach to healing trauma that is now taught around the world.
00:00:44
Speaker
His work has helped tens of thousands of clinicians understand that trauma is not only a story from the past, it is a living pattern in the body that can be completed and resolved.
00:00:57
Speaker
On the show, we talk a lot about polyvagal theory, the science of how your autonomic nervous system shifts between states of safety, mobilization, and shutdown.
Who is Dr. Peter Levine?
00:01:07
Speaker
Somatic experiencing gives us a practical way to work with those states in real time by tracking sensation, slowing down autonomic survival responses, and helping the body find its way back to regulation and connection.
00:01:22
Speaker
In our conversation today, we explore how SE grew out of Peter's early work with the nervous system, how polyvagal theory fits alongside his model, and why real healing depends on felt safety, curiosity, and relationship, not just insight.
00:01:41
Speaker
I am truly honored to share this space with him. I am your host. My name is Travis Goodman, and here is my conversation with Dr. Peter Levine. Peter, many people know your work, but many may not know your story. so i'm wondering if you could share with us a bit, how did you first find your way into trauma research and psychotherapy, and more specifically, like working with the body?
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, my story. You know, sometimes you ask me, um you know, how come I... study trauma. And i thought about that and I didn't have a quick answer, but then the answer came, no, I think i think that's the wrong question. I think trauma invented me to study it.
00:02:28
Speaker
The last book that i just that I completed about eight months ago is called An Autobiography of Trauma, The Healing Journey.
00:02:39
Speaker
And that is about my story. And one of the things that I deeply, deeply, deeply believe in is the archetype, the Greek mythological figure of Chiron.
00:02:53
Speaker
And Chiron to me really means the one wounded healer. And how as people, as we of course we have to have important tools and techniques and so forth.
00:03:05
Speaker
but we also have to have done our own work. And so in that sense, I don't have that trauma at a distance.
00:03:17
Speaker
yeah But its trauma is something that's very real, real to me. and And then from an academic standpoint, I began ah Let's see, when was that?
00:03:31
Speaker
It must have been in the mid-70s. I completed the doctoral dissertation in medical and biophysics. And it was on the autonomic nervous system. And it was about basically about bottom-up processing.
00:03:48
Speaker
And that was led to the development really of somatic experiencing, which is very much but a bottom-up process, sensorial process. It's important and also to include thoughts and inner images and so forth, but really need to also at least have a bottom-up approach. And in a way, that's what brought Stephen Porges and me together.
00:04:13
Speaker
ah We came across each other's work. And he was at the University of Illinois, but he was coming to ah UCLA for a, I think he was good at doing a sabbatical.
00:04:27
Speaker
Anyhow, I got in contact and we met there. Actually, picked me up at the airport ah in LA. There's a whole backstory there. And he's told it.
00:04:41
Speaker
um A few times, I i find it always a bit embarrassing. ah But anyhow, we we so literally spent the entire day and the next day walking around the UCLA campus and talking wow about our visions. and I told him about the work I was developing, and he was just starting to, at the very beginning,
00:05:04
Speaker
looking at emergent properties as well.
Understanding the Vagus Nerve and Polyvagal Theory
00:05:07
Speaker
So and that was, i I refer to Steve as a brother with another mother. My dissertation it had to do with basically what's now called resilience or allostasis of how the the organism, the nervous system, the organism is always looking to right itself to maybe how to say to move towards healing and wholeness.
00:05:36
Speaker
And i think as therapists, what we do is we, more than anything else, we help our clients support this healing.
00:05:47
Speaker
We don't heal them, but we support that in in them. And the other thing that became absolutely evident for me is that now when I started developing SE, this was in nineteen in the early nineteen sixty s a very pivotal event which occurred in 1969,
00:06:11
Speaker
And um I realized that um that trauma is not just something that happens in the brain. and if fact this was Remember, this was like 12, 13 years before the definition of trauma as PTSD.
00:06:27
Speaker
So I had the disadvantage, no, probably the advantage of not knowing that trauma was supposed to be a brain disorder, maybe even a brain disease that could at best be managed by um ah by, with medications and with helping people change negative thoughts.
00:06:47
Speaker
And I'm not saying that that that that has a place, don't have a place there, but it really misses the fundamental a quality of trauma, which is something that happens in the body.
00:07:00
Speaker
It's not, I mean, It happens in mind, body, body, mind. i mean, for example, you go outside and you see somebody's been injured. They've fallen off a bicycle or something like that.
00:07:14
Speaker
And so you run to check to see if they're okay, but you notice that your gut goes, ash because our brain is programmed to register injury.
00:07:26
Speaker
And that that goes down into the through the vagus nerve, into the viscera, into the guts, heart, and lungs. That was another thing that brought Stephen and i together. and um the thing i think And Stephen was one of the few people I think that also got this, that the vagus nerve, which is the largest nerve in the body, is at least 80% afferent. So it's actually 80% of that enormous nerve is coming from our guts, going back up to our brain, our brain stem.
Exercises for Trauma Resolution
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah. And so we see something like this, we recognize injury, we're programmed to recognize injury. By the way, when I worked with many vets and and military people, they almost always were more deeply traumatized by seeing somebody else injured than by them being injured themselves.
00:08:22
Speaker
So anyhow, we walk outside, we emit imagine seeing the person injured, are we get that yuck down into our guts. But because that ah that that nerve is 80% afferent, that yuck twisting goes back up to the brainstem where it's amplified.
00:08:45
Speaker
And so you get what I call a positive feedback loop, but with negative consequences. So then maybe that night, um You go to bed, you're laying in bed, all of a sudden you notice your guts are restless, they're twisting, and then boom, there's the image of that event that earlier that day.
00:09:05
Speaker
Now again, that's not something that's likely to traumatize us, although although it's i mean if we've if that brings up something else from our past, it certainly is possible. But again, the idea just to to understand how this thing happens in the body.
00:09:25
Speaker
And again, i don't see trauma just as PTSD, but also from the Greek ah root of trauma, which is wound or injury.
00:09:36
Speaker
So most of us have experienced some wound or injury that gets stuck in our body. yeah Because it's in our body, that's where it has to be healed. That's where it has to be resolved. So in this case, looking again at that vagus nerve,
00:09:53
Speaker
um Many people, you know if this becomes chronic, people start to develop other symptoms like gastrointestinal symptoms, ah gastric reflex, irritable bowel, and so forth.
00:10:08
Speaker
And these are, again, physical manifestations of trauma, but they're also the root of trauma in the body. So the key is to find new signals that coming from the gut back up to the brain that says, oh all clear.
00:10:28
Speaker
So in you know working with ah thousands or at least thousands of people, with people again, often who presented, and this was in the 60s and 70s, not with trauma as PTSD, but as physical complaints.
00:10:46
Speaker
So an exercise that I developed, and if anybody wants to join me, please be free. ah Usually it it leads to relaxation and warmth and pleasure, but it also can bring up
Body Sensations in Trauma Healing
00:11:00
Speaker
images or memories even memories from the past.
00:11:03
Speaker
But the idea is to take an easy full breath and on the exhalation to make the sound vu coming from the belly as though it's coming from the belly.
00:11:14
Speaker
And so you're literally is sending a new signal from the gut, remember 80% of the fibers, back up to the brain that says coast is clear.
00:11:25
Speaker
You can go back to the here and now, back to the present time. So if you all want to join me, I'll just demonstrate it. So take an easy full breath and on the exhalation to make the Voo sound as though it's coming from the belly.
00:11:45
Speaker
So easy full breath. Voo. When I let the sound and the and the breath go all the way out.
00:11:57
Speaker
When I wait for the new breath to come in, filling belly chest.
00:12:11
Speaker
and just noticing sensations, feelings, thoughts, images, and so forth. So again, these are things that are happening in the body, and they have to unhappen in the body.
00:12:25
Speaker
Give another example. Let's just say as children, we were hit by one of our parents or an older sibling, and so we we we we we brace against hitting getting hit again.
00:12:40
Speaker
and And usually if it and only happens once or twice, it doesn't have a lasting impact. ah We go back to where we were and the shoulders relax and so forth.
00:12:51
Speaker
But if it becomes habitual, it becomes chronic, and it's maybe even associated with shaming or humiliation, then that bracing gets stuck in the shoulder.
00:13:05
Speaker
So after some time, it starts to become painful because you've been em bracing so long. So often when people come and back in the 60s would come to see me with pain, I would look for what was the the tension that was underneath the pain.
00:13:22
Speaker
And then what would the tension maybe do if it increased? And most people will say, well, it would go up like that. And then I said, okay, but now do it very slowly.
00:13:34
Speaker
Just one millimeter at a time. And let it rise and then just let it go. and then just notice sensations, feelings, thoughts, images, letting things settle, letting the nervous system reset, and then again go back again, slowly, slowly increasing the tension, maybe a little bit more this time, holding it for a moment, and then releasing it and letting it go.
00:14:04
Speaker
So these are the kinds of things, they're simple exercises, but they also have the function of bringing together mind and body, mind, brain and body.
00:14:14
Speaker
And again, that was the thing I think that brought Stephen and I together is we were in both in different ways tracking out that mind-body unity.
00:14:25
Speaker
you know i loved i love I would have loved to have been like a fly on the wall with you and and ah Stephen walking around UCLA or that car ride, right? but um you know And then you guys were both on this trajectory of both integrating really mind and body and and kind of the vagus nerve. And obviously Stephen developed polyvagal theory and you have some experience and you know kind of this similar kind of foundation.
00:14:49
Speaker
and then how it looked and how it branched out and encompassed. But, you you know, you mentioned bottom up, but I know that's, you know, also polyvagal theory itself. And there's other bottom, bottom up approaches. And this is those listening to this is going people who are aware of what bottom up is and anyone who has no idea what bottom up is. But in your words,
00:15:08
Speaker
you know especially with somatic experiencing, which is what you developed, you're kind of how would you kind of bullet point that for what bottom-up means, really, yeah for those that are new to this? Basically, again, building on what I was just talking about, is that somatic experiencing works primarily with sensations.
00:15:28
Speaker
okay Yes, we are we we we reference thoughts and images, but it really is about sensations, bodily sensations.
00:15:39
Speaker
And these are now, they're more ah called interceptive awareness or interceptive sensations. But when we were developing a work that was, I mean, the term had been around probably for 100 years, but it was not a ah concept people talked about. If you talked about sensations, you were talking about vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch.
00:16:02
Speaker
um very different than these inner bodily sensations. So sensations having to do with muscle tension, with proprioception, with ah sensations of heart rate and blood flow.
00:16:19
Speaker
um and and visceral sensations. Again, these are all physical sensations. And in order to to resolve and to heal and transform trauma, we have to go back to those sensations and complete what might have been incomplete.
00:16:38
Speaker
So this, for example, the the example I just gave of the the child that was hit, the person that was hit as a child, This is ah a response a protective response, but it got stuck.
00:16:53
Speaker
It didn't get to, in SE terms, to complete. So by doing this little awareness exercise, working with those inner movements and sensations, that action could
Case Study: Overcoming Panic Attacks
00:17:06
Speaker
complete. I'll give you another example.
00:17:09
Speaker
In 1969,
00:17:12
Speaker
and I had been developing these mind-body approaches, and I was asked to see this woman, her name, I call her Nancy, and she was suffering from severe anxiety, panic attacks, and many physical symptoms as well.
00:17:27
Speaker
ah She was seeing a very good friend of mine, a colleague of mine, a medical doctor, a psychiatrist named Ed, and he tried using some different medications, but they were of minimal value.
00:17:43
Speaker
And so he thought that maybe some of these relaxation exercises that I was working on might be helpful. Well, they weren't. They actually were singly unhelpful.
00:17:57
Speaker
So I started to get her to relax. And when she came in, her eyes were wide like a deer in the headlights. Her heartbeat was beating at 120 beats a minute. i could see that from her carotid pulse.
00:18:11
Speaker
And she was just hanging on to her husband because she couldn't even leave the the house without her husband. And so I started to do this kind of relaxation exercise and her heart rate started to come down.
00:18:26
Speaker
and I was relieved, you know, at the beginning when you've discovered something and you really think, you know what you're doing, but you really don't. So I was in that stage. So anyhow,
00:18:37
Speaker
ah the her heart rate continued to go down to about a normal level to about 74 beats a minute. And then boom, in a moment, it shot up to about 130 beats, maybe even 140 beats a minute.
00:18:54
Speaker
And what would be um the very stupidest thing that I could say? Calm down, take a breath. That's it, calm down, take a breath, relax. You must relax. you think Something like that. And her heart rate started going down and down, down to 90, 80, 70, 60, 55.
00:19:13
Speaker
ninety eighty seventy sixty fifty five And she opened her eyes and grabbed onto my eyes with her. And she said, I'm dying. I'm dying. Doctor, don't let me die. Help me.
00:19:28
Speaker
Don't let me die. At that moment, I had a image came into my mind, my yeah and an outer image or an an um imaginary ah crouching tiger at the end of the consultation room.
00:19:48
Speaker
By the way, that's where the first book came from, that Waking the Tiger. oh right And I said, Nancy, there's a tiger crouching ready to spring forth. run, climb those rocks and escape.
00:20:03
Speaker
But I noticed it seemed like her body became more and more frozen. And so I said, Nancy, take my hand and visually, I mean, yeah have and ah just imagine holding my hand and let's go together.
00:20:19
Speaker
And so for several probably 30, 40 minutes, her body would shake gently. ah her The color of her fingers would go from cold to rose.
00:20:32
Speaker
Her face would be white and then go to a very nice ah ah beha pink color. And then she would have spontane easy spontaneous breaths. She wasn't trying to take a deep breath, but it would happen.
00:20:47
Speaker
And then after a while, She opened her eyes and instead of locking onto my eyes, she looked softly at my eyes and we connected that way.
00:21:00
Speaker
And she said, do you wanna know what happened? And I said, of course, yes. And she said, when you I could imagine the tiger When I tried to run, my legs were too heavy. They were like lead, like trying to run in quicksand or mud.
00:21:18
Speaker
But when you gave me that little bit of help, I could see the rocks, I climbed the rocks. And when I looked down, i i could feel that I was safe. I knew that I was safe.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I saw the image of the of the tiger, but something else happened. That image disappeared. And I saw myself twenty year when she was four years old.
00:21:43
Speaker
She had a tonsillectomy and she was being held down by the doctors and nurses while they eat the ether mask was forced on her face. So she was terrified, frozen and terrified.
00:21:56
Speaker
And her body stayed that way until it got to complete with the imaginary tiger. So again, the the high levels of act of activation of heart rate, the low levels, and then the social engagement, you know this was again what Stephen would eventually culled together in what I think one of the most important theories of the 20th century, this trivalient autonomic bottom-up function of the nervous system.
00:22:30
Speaker
so So again, when I talked to him about switching from a high level to a very low level, I think he said, he said, I don't believe that. I don't believe that that's possible.
00:22:43
Speaker
Well, even hearing that story, and I i guess now that know that, because I remember reading that book in in grad school, and now that, thanks for sharing that, like the, I read it, gosh, 15, 14 years ago, so.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah, it was 30 years ago. Yeah, go I read about 15, I think, in grad school, so I remember reading that book, and, um, hearing the origin, hearing it again, like, oh, wow, that's the origin story. That's, hearing this, this, I'm definitely hearing the interwovenness of the, you know, definitely that vagus nerve, which is very much rooted in your work and how polyvagal theory is kind of interlaced as kind of this foundational piece of really
Trauma and Spiritual Experiences
00:23:19
Speaker
is, is the nervous system state even going from that kind of heightened 130 beats, you know, kind of fight flight to that dorsal shutdown frozen to like, I'm stuck.
00:23:28
Speaker
And then guiding her through that not just a thinking differently, right? But experiencing differently with your your kind of rounded nervous system, right? That's more in that ventral energy of that co-regulation, allowing her to guide. But also completing what her body needed to do and so to escape from that. But she couldn't because she was paralyzed, held down. There was one other thing that happened in the session, which took me some time to recognize the significance of it.
00:24:02
Speaker
is that um when we were connecting at the end, we we were connecting with eye contact, Ventra Vagal. She said that if she felt like she was being held in warm, tingling waves.
00:24:18
Speaker
And again, i didn't realize at the time, but now it's really central to my understanding and thinking, that trauma transformed is intrinsically ah spiritual experience.
00:24:33
Speaker
I mean, warm, tingling waves, well, i can just you could just look at it as vasodilation, and in one way that is when it is, but it's something deeper than that. And that was one of the other things I discovered in working with trauma, is that it leads, when it's resolved, transformed, to some kind of non-ordinary positive experience Yeah. Could you speak more to that? I mean, that that just a little more on that, this non-ordinary positive experience that um this kind of other plane of of healing, if you will, that yeah that might go deeper than just the the know the physical sensation. um and I've even heard of it. It's rooted in sensation.
00:25:17
Speaker
but also that's rooted in sensation. Right. Rooted in sensation because she described it in a sensational word, but it sounds like to your point, there is something deeper. And and I've heard of others speaking just like Dr. Dan Siegel and others as well, where there's there's like another plane, if you will, of healing.
00:25:35
Speaker
How has that come out in your work with somatic experiencing and kind of how do you tend to address or kind of use that as a, as kind of a component of, of your work now? Sure. Well, um,
00:25:48
Speaker
Actually, I'm in the process right now of writing another book ah called ah Trauma and Spirituality, Resilience in the Human Spirit.
00:25:59
Speaker
And it's about this intrinsic and welded uniting And I think for many, many eight years, I was reticent to even mention that you know that there was a spiritual dimension to trauma transformed.
00:26:15
Speaker
But i'm I'm unabashed about that. And I think many people who have worked in the field for many, many, many many years probably would agree with that.
00:26:27
Speaker
you know and why Why do you think that is? There's a... There are many, many, many different ways to look at it. you know Like with Nancy, it was a very simple thing. It felt like she was being held together, felt safe and held together in these tingling waves.
00:26:45
Speaker
ah But, you know, these arousal states, like the high arousal state and the low, low arousal state, those also are, how to say, they tend they also have these specific dimensions on the between ecstasy and samadhi.
00:27:04
Speaker
Hmm. And there was an article that came out, it's probably around nineteen sixty around 1960, no, 1972 or so, ah by Roland Fisher. And I think it was called something, Cautography of the Ecstatic Experience.
00:27:24
Speaker
And if we look, for example, at a lot of the shamanistic practices, the shaman in order to help get the information he needs to heal his patient goes into a state of ecstasy.
00:27:37
Speaker
And there he's given information that is necessary. And I think in a way that some of the interest now in psychedelics is ah similar in this direction. Like, I mean, quite i mean for somebody who came of of age in the nineteen seventy s i I am not one that can say, well, I am one that can say, one has to be careful.
00:28:04
Speaker
There are promises, but there are also great pitfalls. And, ah but anyhow, these states ah will arise naturally, organically, like they did with Nancy when going through these these arousal states.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah. Arousal and shut that. Now, again, this was the thing that Stephen also came to on his own, that the dorsal vagal system itself by itself is not ah an adverse experience, not a negative experience.
00:28:33
Speaker
It's when it's coupled with fear. When it's not coupled with fear, it can be like I call it the internal now. It's like everything permeates in time and space.
00:28:48
Speaker
yeah and you know And again, I think Stephen, again, with the development of his, um the the soundscapes that he's been working with are also ways to help people enter into that dorsal vagal state in the absence of sheer. And again, that's again, I think again, where our our work came together.
00:29:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's the, you know, and that's, is the primacy of safety safety and kind of mind, body, and soul safety. Right. And yeah even environmental, I guess, as well. um again That,
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, dorsal and or even so even kind of that mobilized sympathetic in the absence of fear also is kind of play, right? It's like you're having fun, you're engaging because there's this grounded safety. You look at dorsal.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So they're not bad. No, and the key again is to help ah the client become comfortable right enough to be curious enough.
00:29:45
Speaker
Right, exactly. yeah Right, and that's that's the trick, right? Is that and in your work, is that you know where the wires can get crossed is like you know when we when there was fear involved, then we'd cross wires of like maybe what might've been something that's life giving now becomes kind of terror and stuckness and panic and gut issues and those other things because it was just survival that got kind of intertwined in a way that kind of had to, to survive, to predict this kind of chronic traumatic experiences or if mom yells at me all the time or she's drunk or her dad or whatnot. Or if i you know these are happening, I brace. And so we have to, in your words, and I do agree with this, that it's not necessarily logically thinking our way out of it, because there's plenty of times, and I've heard this many times in my practice, and I'm sure you have as well, is that, you know, logically, I know that this is not happening anymore.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah. know Logically, I know, but But what good does it do? What good does it do? lot I know this, but nothing's different. I still feel that. I'm still anxious. um Sometimes it may the person may feel worse because they think now that I understand it and maybe even have emotions about it,
00:30:58
Speaker
then i should be able to let it go. Right. And then whether there's that should, I should, that's always there. I should be able to, and I hear that all the time too. That's right. That's right.
00:31:08
Speaker
And, you know, I'll give you a an hand example from ah myself and the the autobiography of trauma, in the book that I just completed. uh, I was experiencing some really,
00:31:24
Speaker
troublesome sensations and and feelings and just momentary flashes. I couldn't even really hold the image. And I realized it was time for me to take a dose of my own medicine, Chiron.
00:31:38
Speaker
So I asked one of my students, a young woman, to be my guide, to sit with me and to be my guide.
Levine's Personal Healing Journey
00:31:47
Speaker
One of the keys in somatic experience is somanicallys experiencening is we don't take the person right into the trauma.
00:31:55
Speaker
That rarely is beneficial and it can be even harmful. So what came up was first was a memory when I was four years old And it was my birthday, and my parents must have come in the middle of the night or early in the morning and laid underneath my bed, a model railroad track, and then into the room and and then forming an oval and then coming back again underneath the bed. And so when I woke, I saw and heard the train just going round and round.
00:32:30
Speaker
I don't really have the words for it, but ecstasy would be close. I jumped out of bed, I ran over the transformer, I start to control the speed of the train, because I had seen that in a model hobby store, you know, yeah ah months before.
00:32:47
Speaker
then my guide my guide really had me anchor the bodily sensations that were associated. Because in that moment, even though there was tremendous violence later on, that was a sense when I felt safe, felt cared for, felt loved.
00:33:08
Speaker
m Again, i didn't have the words. So using that body sensation, embodied memory, from my birthday, I was able to begin to excavate some violent ah things that happened because my family, long story, but my father was made to testify against the mafia And the mafia told him that if he testified, he would find his family face down in the East River.
00:33:40
Speaker
But we lived under this tremendous threat. And to kind of keep might my parents silent, I was brutally attacked and raped. but it would And i was able to shift back and forth between those memories from my birthday and piece by piece by piece to complete what needed to get completed then.
00:34:06
Speaker
and to put it in the past where it belonged. So again, this was Chiron working with our wounds. And they'll show up in ways that are unexpected.
00:34:19
Speaker
And then that's time to get some guidance, to get some help. So hearing that, it's this, you know, you said this anchor point into a moment of safety where there's this care, even if, you know, shortly after it wasn't, like you said, following violence and other things. Yeah, it was many years after.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah, this train moment, though, was anchoring of like, oh, this there's something here that feels safe enough or anchoring for me to almost almost like jump from it. Sounds like that became a safe point and then jumped to that's right that these pain points.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, we're shifting back and forth. But again, the key... is in not just having that memory, that four-year-old memory, but i'm embodying it.
00:35:02
Speaker
How does every part of that feel? How does it feel in my body when I first open my eyes and I look and I see the train? yeah How does it feel when I jump out of bed yeah And each time enhancing that positive experience.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah. Before going into the pain. Before going into the pain. Exactly. And one of the keys in somatic experiencing it. I think Stephen would you know agree with that.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah. When that makes sense to me from I mean, just personally, anecdotally, I guess, from my understanding of even all my training in different other other trauma forms like attachment-focused EMDR and polyvagal theory, that it makes sense that we have some anchor into some type of safe, you know, calm place, peace of something that there's something we feel this connection to before we jump in and have some resiliency to, so to speak, or some anchor point of like our body knows what this senses and feels like. So when I go back, it's like, I have this kind of anchor point in that I'm not just untethered, so to speak, into all the trauma, yeah because that can be re trauma, like worse so much to speak. you know
00:36:09
Speaker
And we don't want that, obviously.
Embodiment and Technology's Impact
00:36:11
Speaker
And and we have to be really careful. about that, and I know um you you know there are many kind of therapies, and I think they're all of value, most of them are valued.
00:36:23
Speaker
But the one therapy that I i don't really talk into is the and the having the people who relive the traumas over and over and over, the kind of prolonged exposure.
00:36:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, It's a key that needs these experiences need to, the term I use, is titrate it a little bit at a time. And also shifting between the positive experience and the traumatic experience and not just plunging into one. i think And also really being able to read from the person's body, their movements, their inner movements, their posture, their breath, where they are in the polyvagal mapping.
00:37:15
Speaker
Two things pop up for me as you're talking with that, with this mapping and and titration and going back and forth. One, and and whichever order seems most relevant to you, but two things. One, with all your work with SE and just in general, and I've come across this, I'm sure you have two people that...
00:37:33
Speaker
say i don't know how i feel like i don't know what i feel in my body it's almost like yeah i say nothing right it's like nothing i feel nothing in my body that's one e that's common and then two the second question is you know what does that kind of look like in a simple kind of example what does that look like when you're working with someone who you're going from that positive to the traumatic back where you're kind of going back and forth what does that kind of look like in session ah briefly to give us up I should start with the person who says, I don't feel anything.
00:38:02
Speaker
Right. That's common. You know, when say 30% of the people would say that. the And so then I might ask, try to engage their curiosity.
00:38:14
Speaker
didn't Is that nothing, does it feel like a blank or does feel numb? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels numb.
00:38:26
Speaker
Okay, okay. That's a sensation. That's a feeling. So just noticing in your body where you feel the most numb and the least numb.
00:38:37
Speaker
and then to shuttle back and forth between the most and the least, similarly to what I was just describing. yeah right you know We do that. so So again, it's something we can guide the person nothing once they start to uncover some sensations. Again, at first, it's very likely that they just won't have it. They just say I don't know what you mean.
00:39:04
Speaker
But again, when you can give them some possibilities, then they'll catch on to it and say, okay. And then very often, when I work with a person who starts by saying, I don't feel anything, they're able to open up to a whole sea of sensations and feelings.
00:39:24
Speaker
and But they just sometimes just need the right language. yeah to start. Yeah, that's a common theme too. I know listening those listening, i'm I'm sure they've had, and we're going to have ah ah an array of listeners from practitioners to to people looking for work on in this area to get some healing. And I'm probably on 30% as well as too, whether it's numb, I've had blank, I've had I don't know. I think a big one is too, just a lack of language to describe.
00:39:52
Speaker
and practice of like almost like it's a it's a lack of skill in a way of like i've never practiced this so where to begin yeah it's a forgotten language yeah it really is um you know um yeah I mean it it kind of is about our fundamental mind body split so you know descars I think therefore I am Okay, so that's definitely top down.
00:40:19
Speaker
Yes. But ah Blaise Pascal, who lived around the same time, he wrote a letter to Descartes that said, Monsieur Descartes, you are just messing people up.
00:40:32
Speaker
He said, because the body has its reasons, which reason cannot reason. He was a philosopher and mathematician yeah around the same mid-1600. I think this really speaks to this disembodiment that we see everywhere. I mean, you know, it's pretty...
00:40:50
Speaker
bad But you just, every time you're going out or going anywhere, going to a restaurant or going to a movie or anything, you see young not only young people, but people on their devices and just not having any contact with each other.
00:41:07
Speaker
And so they to ask the question, what are you feeling in your body? It doesn't make any sense because they're not embodied. They're on their devices. It takes some reflection and some curiosity to explore what actually might be going on in our bodies and not just on our devices.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what happens with that as we continue in our cultural technology culture field. Yeah. yeah i mean, technology is great. i mean, it's really pretty cool.
00:41:44
Speaker
But again, when it takes over the person's entire life and robs them of their inner sensations and feelings, then we have a serious, problem we do have a serious problem.
00:41:56
Speaker
And like you indicated, we don't know where it's going to end. It's a experiment in progress. Yeah, and that's something with my kids I'm doing very mindfully, and intentionally to not have that and to or use it very sparingly with intention, very clear your guidelines and to have engagement, social engagement, financial contact.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I think in a way it's difficult for parents because parents sometimes have two or three jobs each and so that's the a and that's the babysitter yeah you know that and So again, it's unfortunate. and And what are some of our values?
00:42:43
Speaker
I just did a ah workshop up in LA for people who were actors and so forth, people in the public eye. And one of the members ah was a guy, he was actually an acting coach from ah Norway. So I i mean, I'm surprised he traveled so far you know for a three-day class. But when i got to talk to him, because he was just heartbroken with the way i see what the way he was seeing children
00:43:21
Speaker
not developing. And as an acting coach, he at least was helping them find some new way of being. But I think he just was was was heartbroken, i think would be the word.
00:43:38
Speaker
So how to become more embodied. And I think in a way, trauma transformed is a route towards it embodiment. Yeah. maybe it's say it's a salubrious side effect of embodiment.
00:43:53
Speaker
yeah Because in order to really resolve, to heal and transform trauma, because it is a bodily state, you have to come to the body. you have to learn how to connect with the body. And so, and again, it's a kind of a curious side effect of trauma transformed is embodiment.
00:44:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and when I think about that, that it it requires that. And and the more I've done this from, the ah more I continue to be reaffirmed in in this belief as well, that we really need the body. The more I've gone deeper into I'm like, yeah, we really need this because this is where it
Somatic Experiencing in Therapy
00:44:28
Speaker
lives. And even in my own healing work too. Sure.
00:44:31
Speaker
working on my stuff and yeah yeah needing that it's not just this intellectual you know which is part it's part of it it's not like we don't use our brain to make sense of it's it's both and it's it's not you know it's it's we need both um but i think more so typically we we are less embodied generally speaking than i found and so we got to spend our time there yeah you know um uh One of the Lifetime Achievement Awards I received was from the Psychotherapy Networker.
00:45:03
Speaker
And so the magazine, which comes out quarterly ah at this time when I was receiving the award, it um it had a picture in the front. You know those puzzles with hundreds of pieces.
00:45:17
Speaker
So there was a person with there hundreds of these pieces and there was one piece that was missing and the title the subtitle was The Missing Piece.
00:45:30
Speaker
a And the missing piece is the body. you know And at the time when I was developing this work, um you know it definitely was not accepted.
00:45:43
Speaker
I mean, the the body, to use the body to actually feel the body in itself that would be dangerous. But now I think more than anything, it's now accepted in so many, or realized in so many different therapeutic and other things healing modalities.
00:46:06
Speaker
and ah you know And again, i think my work and other people's work and Steve's work also again brought this into the these missing pieces.
00:46:18
Speaker
And I'm wondering with that idea of this missing piece, like if you as you look at the field of where it's come from and kind of how it's evolved and changed and out of maybe more of the realization within science, generally speaking, of the need of like we need to incorporate the body more than just the mind. and It's not just this. and So you've seen this evolution. Where do you think, you know, if if you had your way, if you could wave your wand, Peter, of...
00:46:46
Speaker
coming next, you know where do you think an area of focus should be or would like to be moving forward in this in this area? yeah you know One of my hopes would be that it would evolve to be less disembodied, that we would evolve to be less and disembodied.
00:47:06
Speaker
In terms of therapy, particularly in terms of trauma therapy, I think that it would be more about healing than understanding, more about feeling than about knowing.
00:47:22
Speaker
You know, there's an expression in Papua New Guinea. It says that knowledge, it doesn't exist unless it's in the muscles in the body. And I think kind of from an epistemological standpoint, I think this is about really rooting our knowledge in the body.
00:47:46
Speaker
You know, there's a Sufi saying, the body is the shore on the ocean of being. And so it really is part of our evolutionary development, I i believe.
00:47:58
Speaker
And I guess I would hope that that would continue to evolve. yeah Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that and where you would like to see in your and your wisdom from your life experience, not only working with the many clients and practitioners, but also your own your own work for what's next. And i I thank you for that. And my hope, too, is that, yeah, we are more embodied and it's not just about knowledge, but about this knowledge.
00:48:27
Speaker
something deeper beyond just the thought or what we believe, but a felt experiential connection. And then also relationally too, that it's relational. And to your point as well, that going back to Nancy, right?
00:48:42
Speaker
That, and even Dr. Porges' latest article, I think addressed this quite clearly is that, um you know, we don't heal in isolation, right? It's it's healing in safe enough relationships, co-regulation.
00:48:56
Speaker
Sure. us doing our own our own work yes absolutely as well, because our nervous system, our energy, our body is is in the room with this other being, this other body too. And so. Right, and but and our bodies are resonating with each other.
00:49:14
Speaker
Right. The somatic resonance. Yeah. And it's an important tool that therapists can use to reference that in themselves so they can know how better to guide their clients, their patients clients. Yeah.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah. And it makes me think of that the primacy of us doing our work is not like a a nicety. I think it's an imperative. And that's what I think even Dr. Porges' latest article shared, even probably your work too, if you're an autobiographer. No, to do it. You don't know, please send me that article. have to act the editor to send me the article.
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I read it for a a group I'm in and we kind of we talked about it as like, you know, going through it all. Like that was an area that was pretty clear. I was like, yeah, I'm glad someone pointed it out. Thank you. and um But, you know, for those, you know, I again, thank you for your time. But those first and foremost, I know that if people want to know more about somatic experiencing, if they wanted to check that out, where should they go?
00:50:11
Speaker
give you that. ah the You can go to somaticexperiencing, one word, somaticexperiencing.com, and goes to the website. And that also links with the trauma heal the is Somatic Experiencing International website, which ah is interested to to give trainings now in 55 countries.
Accessing Resources and Conclusion
00:50:35
Speaker
ah Apparently, I just found out that now 200,000 students ah therapist therapists have been trained in SE. And one of the things about SE, it's not really a therapy per se, but it's an approach that helps people do how they do what they do.
00:50:53
Speaker
So, for example, we've had a number of people who are cognitive behavior therapists, and it really supports their deepening in their work. Anyhow, you can go to that website. It lists also, um I think, all of my books and connects with the SEI International.
00:51:15
Speaker
um So, yeah, i would I would recommend that for sure. Yeah. And those that are listening and watching, that'll be um clickable in the description. Go down below and you'll find that to be able to take care. There's also some video, for example, of the short documentary of work I did with the Marine who was blown up by two of these IEDs in Afghanistan after his best friend died in his arms.
00:51:37
Speaker
he's It's called Ray's Somatic Experiencing, Ray's Session with Peter Lee, something like that. wow But anyhow, all of these and and different links are mentioned in that.
00:51:54
Speaker
mentioned in that yeah here on the website so you can you know check them out. Yeah, and I'll link to your book, your latest book too. I'll have that in description for those that are watching and listening. and um Dr. Levine, i I appreciate our conversation today on behalf of the Institute and just an honor to speak to you and all your work that you have done and will continue to do in our field and and my hope is that we continue to go down that path that you're seeing. So I'm very grateful for your time today. and and Love to my
00:52:25
Speaker
Brother with another mother. I think he'll love that. I'll clip this out and send it to him specifically. Hey, to check this out. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Wired for Connection, a Polyvagal podcast.
00:52:38
Speaker
This show is produced by the Polyvagal Institute, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a safer and more connected world. PVI provides education, resources, and community to those interested in learning more about polyvagal theory and applying polyvagal principles in personal and professional contexts.
00:53:00
Speaker
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00:53:11
Speaker
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00:53:24
Speaker
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