Loving Living, Inc.
Psychotherapy, Supervision and Consultation
Organic Intelligence® (OI™) recognizes that the most important and organizing human impulse is to grow connection: within ourselves, with nature, and with each other, and the most natural thing is that we heal. We heal — personally and professionally — not by dredging up the past, not through self-control or going through old pain, but through attuned relationship, support and kindness in the here-and-now. Organic Intelligence uses a fundamentally accepting, mindful approach to attending to our holistic experience. This supports our innate integrative impulses, and helps us to find this impulse for integration for ourselves. When our biology can enter this phase of auto-organization, symptoms are relieved, self-efficacy emerges, and our post-trauma growth journey takes wings. Learning this new language of biological re-organization, we catalyze the only sensible healing intelligence — that which arises from within our very nature, that which has always been there
Somatic Experiencing ® is a powerful method for resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic stress. It is based upon the observation that wild prey animals, though threatened routinely, are rarely traumatized. Animals in the wild will naturally regulate and discharge the high levels of energy arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors. These natural mechanisms provide animals with a built-in
Somatic Experiencing
"immunity" to trauma that enables them to return to normal in the aftermath of highly charged, life-threatening experiences. Although we, too, have these innate mechanisms to help regulate arousal, we also have the capacity to override our instinctive responses. This is often a good thing - we don't automatically lash out or run away when we experience everyday stressors. But when we override our responses in this way, our bodies can sometimes get stuck in the survival stage of the stress response, leaving us feeling chronically overwhelmed, panicked or numb. The purpose of SE is to help our bodies move through this stage and to return to a state of ease. We do this, first, by learning to pay attention to physical sensation and then to use this awareness to guide our bodies through the stress response sequence back to a sense of ease, wholeness, flow and balance. In developing our capacity to track sensation, we can develop greater attunement to our whole life experience in the moment. SE is therefore an approach that supports us in developing greater capacity to live fully, mindfully, and with wisdom.