Dear Global Somatic Experiencing Community,
I spend a lot of time thinking about what Somatic Experiencing is, not only as a healing modality, but as a way to help inform how to live our lives. What about SE helps us navigate the world in which we live outside of our SE sessions? This process has been front and center for me the past few days. I am writing this letter from Setúbal, Portugal, outside of Lisboa. I am here as a guest at the European Association of Somatic Experiencing (EASE) General Assembly. This experience has helped me to understand better what it means to find moments of safety within new experiences and also to think about how discomfort and curiosity relate in our felt senses.
I think this is the first time since finishing my SE training and being on the SEI board that I have been in a country where I do not speak the language. (It is a little scary to me it has been that long, but Covid stopped all travel for 18 months.) In some ways I am grateful for the fact I do not speak Portuguese, and it is different enough from French and Spanish that I still feel very lost here. I have always believed there is something profoundly life changing about being in a place where you do not speak the language. We must find other ways to communicate, trust in our shared humanity when words fail us and figure out a way to communicate despite the discomfort, and if that is not a metaphor for Somatic Experiencing, I don’t know what would be one.
What I have noticed since I have been here, however, are the moments where there is a sense of understanding and connection. As soon as I walked out of the baggage claim area of the airport, I saw a Relay store. If you have not been to Europe, Relay is a shop that is in many train stations and airports, selling magazines, snacks, basic electronics, and other items. It was the first part of Portugal I saw that I recognized, and although I am a little ashamed to admit this, I teared up. I don’t have any particular love for Relay; it’s nothing exciting. But it felt familiar. Even though I was in a place I have never been, in a country where I do not speak the language, here was something familiar.
I am also here in Europe to learn – to understand how EASE and SEI can work together. As with conversations about any relationship, there are points of familiarity, points of stickiness, and most importantly, points of curiosity. The points of familiarity are just like when I saw Relay. It can be about anything, even something as ridiculous as a store that you recognize, but these bring us back into that felt sense of safety, of connection. That is something we all know. That is the core of SE. What I have been thinking about more on this trip, in part because of the newness of so much of it, is how stickiness and curiosity relate.
We know that the felt sense of being excited and being nervous are very similar, if not identical, for many people. What if we shift the meaning of the discomfort and stickiness we feel in new situations to one of curiosity? What if we could navigate those similarly to how we navigate being excited and nervous? Is it possible to ask our bodies to open toward that sensation of discomfort with a curiosity about something new we might learn? As we listen to each other and each other’s life experiences, can we be open not only to the possibility of learning about someone else’s experiences but to the possibility that such learning can change how we view the world? How we interpret our own experiences?
SE is such a wonderful tool to experience multiple emotions and sensations at one time. The question we often ask is, “How do we hold and feel all of it at once?” As SEI grows and connects to our global partners more, and to more people around the world, there will likely be discomfort that arises through cultural differences, language differences, and the diversity of the human experience. We are on the eve of our first international virtual conference where people will be speaking about a variety of experiences and how SE relates to them all. We may all hear information that makes us slightly uncomfortable. How can we hold that discomfort with an openness and curiosity to how we may broaden our world?
What are the little pieces of connection we can find that bring us closer together, that give us enough of that felt sense of safety and connection? Where can we use that space of safety and connection to turn toward the areas of discomfort or stickiness with a sense of curiosity? Where do we connect through our shared humanity, and where do we look to our uniqueness as an opportunity for growth? All these questions arise in new spaces, with new languages and new experiences. I am personally very grateful for the lessons, both somatic and cognitive, that SE has given me to navigate these spaces. My hope for this conference, for our ongoing growth as an organization, and our application of SE as a modality is that we use these tools to notice how and when our discomfort can be shifted toward curiosity, where our fear that our differences can divide us are used instead as opportunities to feel and know that our differences are what can truly bring us together and help us grow together.
I hope you will join us at the conference. I hope we will all continue to reach out and connect to each other across the globe. As always, if you have thoughts or questions, feel free to email listening@traumahealing.org or me directly at rmstahl@traumahealing.org.
Warmly,
Rebecca