Somatic Integration
Sara Vatore is Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and Guide, Somatic Educator, and MELT Method instructor. Embodiment Specialist working with women to build capacity and resiliency in their nervous systems for navigating the fullness of work and life.
“Without learning to know ourselves as intimately as we possibly can, we limit our choice. Life is not very sweet without freedom of choice. Change is very difficult with no alternatives in sight.”
somatic integration:
the somasynthesis approach
for
HEALING, GROWTH and EXPANSION
In order to process and digest past and current experiences, trauma, and the fullness of life, we need to be able to integrate what is happening within our physical system. The process of Somatic Integration is a way to provide SPACE for you to understand and explore how your body/organism is communicating to you and learn how to follow your body’s natural process of healing and expansion. By working with your body sense, sensation, vibration, emotions, imagination and intuition, Somatic Integration allows you to tune into your body’s natural cycles, needs, emotions, connection with the mind and sense of internal safety in order to process and integrate across all planes of existence.
This orientation is a hands-on or virtually supported experience for you to tap into the potential and possibility of your body and energy to process, digest, integrate, embody, release and heal in all realms.
PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, MENTAL, SPIRITUAL, ENERGETIC and GENETIC
the body wants to integrate experiences
the body wants to come into organization
So, why does our body hold on?
“Safety and security are the underpinnings of resilience and are key in supporting the capacity for self-regulation.”
Our bodies are intelligent and beautiful living organisms, and how we each move with them in the world is shaped by our unique life styles, experiences, and genetics. Our bodies are universally and fundamentally designed to make sure we are protected, balanced, breathing and connected to others. When our system senses a threat, whether it is actual danger, perception of danger, memory of danger or overall general fear (of making a mistake, of not being good enough, of being seen, etc.), we have automatic protective programs in our physiology that click on and take over (fight/flight/freeze/fawn/fit in)
As mammals, we're also designed to ‘complete’ these protective programs and fully experience an emotion or carry out a protective response. But when we shut off our emotions, ignore or stuff down something that’s coming up, the program can’t be completed – and the emotions remain in our body and tissues. Once things get stuck and layered, our body compensates to keep us going. This can then play out as pain, discomfort, repetitive patterns of behavior and thought, anxiety, depression, experiencing different big emotions/moods, trouble saying no and setting boundaries, etc.
These stuck patterns and emotions are often from this lifetime; our childhood, an accident, surgery, trauma, upsetting experiences, relational wounding AND/OR they can also show up in the foundational blueprint of our DNA/wiring from the ancestral patterning we hold from our parents and lineage. At first it can be difficult to help our system find safety from within and come back to equilibrium, especially if your body has been stuck in a particular survival pattern, and has been working to keep you safe. The body gets confused and thinks that the urgency and the activation in the physiology is our safe baseline state! Our body can actually be addicted to the stress as well!
you have the innate capacity to come back into balance
“Your nervous system is the greatest pharmacist in the world.”
When given the space and the gentle orientation towards finding a new baseline for your body and experiencing safety in new ways, your organism will work to bring itself back into organization and create new patterns of ease and coherence in your body.
We all carry a “blueprint” of health and wellbeing within us. It’s our original pattern of pure health, wholeness and deep inner knowing. This organic intelligence and original state of our organism is a unifying field we can return to. When the whole body feels supported and held, it is able to sense and access the deep current of health within our system. We can learn how to plug into this flow, and allow healing to emerge throughout our whole body/being.
Yet we live in a culture that has a very limited view on healing. We're taught that the body is a fixed thing, when our organism is actually a living process! We are conditioned to distrust our instincts and inner wisdom. And we are conditioned to believe that only an outside authority (the medical community, our culture of origin, family of origin, religion of origin, government, etc) and outside paradigms of health hold all the answers. Go to the doctors, they are the experts, pop this pill, and feel better. Don’t feel better? Oh, lose some weight or let’s try this other pill! Still don’t feel better? Oh, sorry. You are going to have to manage with that.
It’s time to shift this paradigm and spiral inwards for more answers and to tap into our own healing power. If we want to heal as a species and a planet, we need to be able to tune inside and understand and experience our own potentials.
“To know life is to have a direct impulse and expression- a felt sense experience within each and every pore. No thinking is required as direct perception is a broader field of experience to be felt through our bio-rich sensory system.”
What Is SOMATIC INTEGRATION Work With Sara?
My work is rooted in the foundation the biological organism (the body) that we occupy is highly intelligent and self organizing. Somatic Integration work is an opportunity to sense into your system and begin to experience safety, comfort and relief in the whole body, creating space for you to connect with freedom, gratitude, joy and pleasure within. And it allows for a deeper connection with the whole of who you are, underneath the conditioning, patterns and pain we carry, giving us agency and sovereignty over the choices in our lives.
When we can understand and experience how our body and energy communicate with us, how we co-regulate with the Earth around us, and the logistics of our unique design, then we can fully move into our own healing, growth, and expansion in a deeply connected and embodied way.
Synthesizing what I have learned from my teachers and mentors, my work in Somatic Experiencing, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Psychosynthesis, energy medicine, Infinity Healing (now known as the LaChirara Method), the quantum field, and my own deep healing experiences with my body and my self, I hold the space and time for you to truly experience your body coming into organization and healing, so that you can activate your innate healing potentials when needed and strengthen your own body’s capacity as you move forward on your journey.
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”
How does SOMATIC INTEGRATION work?
Taking place either on a table in my office, outside on the land or in a virtual healing room, Somatic Integration work is a one-on-one experience to help you develop your ability to sense your self, release and integrate old patterns and stuckness and find more comfort, safety and space in your body/organism.
As we live, our experiences, energies (our own and others’!), emotions, stack up and stay stuck in our physical systems undigested, unless we are providing the space and time for embodied and energetic processing. This can play out as pain, discomfort, repetitive patterns of behavior and thought, anxiety, depression, experiencing different big emotions/moods, trouble saying no and setting boundaries, feeling stuck/trapped, etc.
In order to live fully embodied and connected, these experiences, energies and emotions need the time and sacred space to fully integrate and process in our physical body.
Somatic Integration session work is your opportunity to create that space.
“The body doesn’t know the difference between an experience and a thought. You can literally change your biology, neuro-circuitry, chemistry, hormones and genes, simply by having an inner event.”
you have the innate capacity to heal
Is Somatic Integration Work The Right Fit For You?
My clients are:
CURIOUS about how to (re)connect more deeply with their authentic essence
Craving a more embodied relationship with the self
Interested in understanding how their unique system is communicating to them
Feeling like there is still a disconnect in their bodies even after doing much self exploration and personal work
Feeling stuck in habituated patterns of thoughts, behavior and movement
Longing to feel settled and sense into more safety in their bodies, particularly as they are in their fullest expression of self
Interested in learning how their system is a self organizing healer
Aware of past trauma, injuries, accidents, surgeries or other upsetting experiences and desire a supportive container for somatic integration and healing
Ready to go deep to integrate their emotions, experiences and stuck patterns
Looking for support to clear out ancestral patterning and create space for their own light
Looking for how to help their systems increase the capacity to hold their expansion
“Health is synonymous with having options. The more options, the more possibilities exist. ”
How Do I Get Started?
Contact me for a Connection Call to discuss how working together might be a good fit for you! I currently have a few 1-1 offers to support your somatic and energetic healing, integration and expansion.
A Little Bit About Sara:
Sara Vatore (she, her, hers), M.Ed., BCC, SEP is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, Multidimensional Guide and Healer and Level 2 MELT Method® Instructor. Sara’s Somatic Integration Work is rooted in the foundation that the organism that we occupy is highly intelligent and when we can understand how it communicates to us and operates, the logistics of its’ unique design, then we can fully move into our own healing, growth, and expansion in a deeply connected and embodied way. Sara strongly believes that everyone has the right to any and all information about how their organism is wired so that we can live with EASE, JOY and PLEASURE. As a species if we want to change and shift our patterns and behavior, we have to be able to help ourselves integrate our experiences at the physical and energetic levels. Sara holds space for others to learn about their unique organism, so they can understand how to help their bodies digest, process and integrate experiences on their own as they step boldly out into the world with more ease and presence. Sara's understanding of the nervous system and the body, along with the wisdom she has learned on her own journey of awakening and living with chronic illness, provide a framework for her work with clients and students. She is passionate about creating environments for folks to come into an embodied relationship with what is organically trying to emerge within and guiding them to follow the pull towards wholeness. She is a white woman with ancestral connections to her Ashkenazi Jewish lineage on both family sides, most recently from Lithuania and Russia. She is currently living on Pocumtuc and Nipmuc lands (Belchertown MA) in Western Massachusetts with her husband Jeff and is a proud mamma to two boys, ages 18 and 10.