This essay explores why somatic interventions help facilitate a holistic and intersectional approach to identity formation and the establishment of a sense of belonging and connection for those within minority and marginalised communities.
I will explain why somatic practices prove highly effective for those experiencing identity confusion as a result of the complexity of navigating life at cultural intersections. The topic of identity formation holds universal relevance and importance, but for the purpose of this essay, it has been explored through case studies in relation to the experiences of South Asian women residing in the UK.
I believe somatic work paves the way for more empathic communication, deep and meaningful connection across cultures and greater personal and collective wellbeing. This research is deeply important as it strives to promote a sense of social unity and togetherness which not only acknowledges, but utilises the incredible diversity that defines our world, on both an individual and community level.
Defining the terms: What does somatic mean
As a new trendy term that is used across therapeutic practices and the wellness industry at large, what does somatic actually mean? It is often used as an umbrella term which describes ancient practices such as mindfulness, meditation and yoga as well as more recent and formalised therapeutic interventions, such as somatic experiencing, TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). Many high-profile medical professionals such as Dr Peter Levine, Bessel Van der Kolk and Gabor Mate have advocated for the adoption of a somatic approach within therapeutic interventions.
Somatic practitioners believe the mind and body are intimately related; thoughts, sensations and emotions are interconnected and influence one another. In somatic work, a person’s body is invited into the space and is considered as important as their thoughts or cognitive understanding of themselves and their lived experience.
Somatic practitioners may make use of mind-body exercises and other physical techniques to support a client’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Individuals can deepen their self-awareness by learning to track signals, experiences and feedback from their body, which may offer insights about their internal state and needs. Feedback from the body can come in the form of noticing patterns and changes in gestures, posture, facial expressions, gaze, breathing and emotions.
Somatic work can sometimes help transcend the limitations and obstacles of talk therapies, and many individuals have actually turned to somatic work upon feeling ‘stuck’ with other interventions. They may have an intuitive sense that their body holds a type of intelligence and wisdom they want to better understand and utilise. For many people, furthering their cognitive or conceptual understanding of historical experiences and challenges may help them to make sense or meaning of the past, but they find it does not actually help them to feel better right now. Developing awareness and the capacity to self-regulate or self-soothe when triggered is a process that requires us to be connected to our bodies. Somatic work honours this - it helps us to integrate our experiences and emotions on the level of the body as well as the mind.
Defining the terms: what does it mean to have a clear sense of self?
Identity formation relates to the process by which human beings establish a unique view of the self. This may be defined by one’s personal values, principles, purpose, personality traits or a moral code that they believe defines them. It is characterised by an inner unity and continuity, even if our self-concept evolves over time as we grow or change, in other words, we believe we fundamentally know who we are.
Without this sense of self, we can feel untethered, lost, indecisive and perhaps even anxious or depressed. We may lack a framework or any guiding principles on how to make decisions or balance our competing interests throughout life. We can experience inconsistencies in how we perceive ourselves and may lack any congruence or unity with parts or aspects of ourselves.
What implications can cultural clash have on identity formation and our sense of self?
I have delved into this topic through a case study which explores the experiences of second-generation British Asian women as they navigate life at the intersection of two cultures. This is a research project I have been undertaking since 2016 and since then I have interviewed hundreds of British Asian women to map and document how living between cultures may impact one’s sense of self and identity formation.
I will summarise some of the key findings but you can read the previous blog post ‘The secret lives of British Asian women and the trauma of duplicity’ for a deeper overview of this work. Duplicity refers to the state of being double; of having more than one apparent truth. Duplicitous codes refer to the need for individuals to live differently and behave differently in different contexts. Of course, to a degree, this is a necessity for a functioning society, there are rules governing how we dress, interact and communicate with one another in professional or social settings. All individuals may alter their behaviour to adhere to these standards regarding etiquette or mannerisms. This kind of duplicity does not threaten the essential nature of our being, we are being asked to temporarily alter or regulate some aspect of our habitual behaviour, thus, it is easy to accept this kind of expectation as a part of life we all deal with.
However, duplicity that is born at the intersection of two cultures may lead the individual to not simply adjust behaviour temporarily, but to live two opposing and conflicting lives in order to be accepted and respected in both communities simultaneously. In this scenario, the conflict between two sets of ideals, beliefs and expectations, is not resolved externally through communication or compromise, but internally by navigating life through deceit, lies and loss of authenticity.
The findings from this project show that growing up as British Asian exposed these women to two contrasting and often contradictory belief systems, which not only governed matters such as how they dressed or what they ate, they also contained fundamentally different ideals regarding career, marriage, sexuality and family relationships. These contradictions often left the individual to navigate the impossible task of fitting into both communities simultaneously - which proved impossible due to the cultural conflicts.
For most women, one of the hardest times to navigate the different aspects of their world was during high school; puberty is a time when the formation of individual identity and social relationships are extremely important for well-being and development. For many British Asian women, this was near impossible since connection and belonging in one area often necessitated some form of personal loss in another. Satisfying familial and cultural expectations did not satisfy the expectations of friends or individual desires. This kind of conflict therefore places the individual in an agonising position of feeling incapable of fully fitting in anywhere, their views are not as comfortably British as their peers, and nor are they as “Asian” as their parents. Many feel they missed the opportunity to learn through exploration and experimentation and this hindered their awareness of their own sexual preferences, boundaries, values and even interests.
Essentially, the child’s ability to develop a sense of self and be happy depends on a multitude of factors, and unfortunately the cultural conflicts they are facing have made these different aspects mutually exclusive.
The difficulty of living authentically lies in the fact that it necessitates loss; loss of family acceptance and approval or a loss of social relationships because they do not understand the culture you are from. The individual faces an ongoing conflict between self-expression and social belonging/acceptance, both of which are essential for healthy self-esteem and happiness. Deceit is clearly an easier option than confrontation, especially when you consider that many of these women were still exceptionally young when they became aware of the conflict between their own desires and those of their families or wider societies. Thus many of these women were still financially dependent on families as well as emotionally dependent on parental love as they were still children or young teens.
All of the women interviewed explain that deceit and lies were eventually normalised. They acknowledge that without deceit they would have lost their ability to belong in one community or another. Many individuals live in this state for multiple years or decades, or sometimes even indefinitely. Many contributors also vividly describe that deceit led to an ongoing struggle of distinguishing between their own values and those imposed on them in order to be accepted. Numerous studies have found a link between a lack of authenticity and a decline in psychological wellbeing. If individuals are conditioned into believing some aspects of their identity must be kept hidden, they are trained into a lack of self-acceptance and are trained into placing the needs of others above themselves. This can lead to devastating consequences in personal relationships later on in their lives. The amalgamation of a series of decisions which undermine one’s true nature seriously damages any sense of self; they often also face an eroding away of self-worth and confidence because of their perpetual denial of their true values, desires and needs. In addition to the emotional turmoil this lack of acceptance generates, the practicality of lying, of leading a secret life and living in fear of exposure leads to great levels of chronic hyper-vigilance, anxiety and fear. A number of the women interviewed spoke about how these emotional states continued to define their life experiences in the present day.
Overall, for many of these women, they recognise that the process of identity formation that happens in the teens for most people had either happened a lot later for them or had simply never happened, they continued to use deceit and lies as a tool to deal with the difficulty of fitting into two vastly different cultures.
The most devastating finding from the study was that every single woman was able to talk in ample detail about the correlation between this cultural clash and mental health problems, primarily depression and anxiety, but in some cases they also mentioned suicidal ideation, self-harm and eating disorders. Another finding was that the majority of women reported feelings of isolation, loneliness and an inability to develop a sense of true belonging in any area of their life, because in every relationship some aspects of their identity were always concealed. The interviews revealed that all women experienced a great deal of grief, because either they would mourn the loss of their individual identity that was being suppressed, or when they began to live authentically, they mourned the loss of relationships that had depended on deceit to survive.
There are several common themes in the hundreds of interviews I have conducted, and these map a pathway, a typical experience for those whose identity formation has been distorted or interfered with due to cultural conflicts. Their identity formation is impacted because essentially their need for belonging, in other words survival, (because humans need to be part of a community), depended in part on deceit and a deviation away from their authentic self.
At worst, these women had little to no sense of their own needs, desires or values, and at best, their sense of self was fractured or ruptured, without any continuity in who they fundamentally were in different areas of their lives. They had been habituated to forgoing elements of themselves in order to maintain connections, and this sacrifice of authenticity for belonging often became a pattern which repeated in adulthood.
Their lives continued to be shaped by a sense of profound displacement and isolation and feeling like ‘outsiders’ to even themselves. These women had internalised the belief that an authentic life in accordance with their own values would threaten their survival. This loss of their intrinsic identity, this distance from their true nature, which often carried through into adulthood, shaped major life decisions and their choices for decades to come.
Of course as I’m talking about this case study, you can see how this lack of belonging and acceptance is not exclusive to this community - its hugely applicable to all people living at cultural intersections. The themes may also resonate with people who are neurodivergent and had to adopt behaviours to feel more socially accepted and of course the LGBTQ community too.
How does duplicity distort identity formation and what does this mean for the individual’s life experience as a child and as an adult?
Navigating an upbringing which straddles two cultures clearly impacts the process of identity formation. In the same way that we recognise trauma can disrupt or interfere with the developmental process, a continual need to shape shift to fit in and be accepted can delay or entirely halt the identity formation process. Deceit and inauthenticity can become normalised which leads to a gradual eroding away of our self-worth, self-esteem and connection to our values and interests. This can end up defining our emotional and physical wellbeing as well as shaping our behaviours - our personalities can seem like they are nothing more than a collection of adaptive responses which helped us to cope with the challenge of living between cultures.
The continual suppression of these women’s needs led to a disconnection from their bodies and sometimes even from reality. This often masked a deep desire to escape, and a longing for a space where the world could make sense of and accommodate all aspects of their identity. Of course, the need to continually adapt to their surroundings to fit in also led to chronic anxiety, hyper-vigilance, depression, stress and fatigue. The continual denial or undermining of their values, interest and personal choice often led to learned behaviours that proved harmful, such as poor or absent boundaries, co-dependency and imposter syndrome. The table below summarises some of the findings and outlines four key unmet needs for identity formation in this community.
What were the experiences of people who tried to tackle this through talking therapies?
A handful of women hugely complimented therapy for providing a sense of relief but stated it was, overall, quite transitory. . Narratives were always framed by their context; the information, insight and self-awareness an individual had at that time, so as that naturally evolved over the course of a lifetime, the whole narrative shifted and their understanding of the world with it. In this regard, developing a clearer sense of themselves and their identity through narrative was not a long-term solution, it lacked continuity and they felt the work was ‘never done.’ It also became apparent that the talking therapy only fed into existing coping mechanisms. As highlighted above, many of these women were highly analytical and described themselves as ‘overthinkers’ and problem solvers - clearly traits which they needed to navigate double lives for so long. For many of them, talking therapies simply exacerbated this tendency of trying to find relief through overthinking and making sense of everything.
For the most part, it emerged that the women found it quite impossible to describe and explain the extreme difficulty of navigating two mutually exclusive lives for years or even decades. Sharing their complex lived experiences verbally only served to exacerbate the sense that what they had experienced couldn’t be explained. It can be near impossible to adopt a truly intersectional lens on a topic so nuanced and so embedded into every area and dimension of the individual’s life. The women often described spending months in therapy providing background information before their therapists even began to comprehend the experiences they’d endured. Having to play such an active role in ‘educating’, or ‘informing’ the therapist proved exhausting and many say they quit therapy because of this. They were unable to find nourishment or healing in spaces which required them to adopt a leading role in developing the therapist’s cultural understanding. The therapy session became a microcosm of their life experience to date; another space where they were not fully understood. Many mentioned that they were given overly simple, and one-dimensional suggestions regarding ‘telling the truth’ to their parents or they felt challenged on their statements, such as ‘What makes you believe your parents would actually disown you for marrying for love?” The CBT approach, which is widely used across the NHS, was criticised particularly heavily.
Talking therapy is mostly retrospective and a very top down approach, which might be ineffective when dealing with identity distortions. The talking therapy provided some clarity and insight but did not help establish a sense of safety or confidence. Some described this as a sort of ‘stalemate’ scenario - the therapy heightened their awareness of why their current existence was unsustainable but provided no tools on how to actually create change, because they still felt the same guilt, the same fear, the same terror of being ostracised by society or disowned by their families if they integrated the different aspects of their identities. Simply heightening the awareness of the issue was not sufficient in developing the ability to actually live more authentically. The habitual tendencies were deeply embedded and they found that they couldn’t simply outthink them, no matter how long they tried.
If identities are enmeshed within the family unit or social structures, then there is a huge inner resistance to unpacking this. It can feel threatening to the whole organism, the whole system, to give up behaviours that helped you survive - the inauthenticity was an adaptive response that was essential and important.
Talking therapy essentially asked these women to step out of this enmeshment - but this was impossible as there was nothing else to step into - no alternative sense of self that they had experienced yet. You cannot ask people to leave behind the only version of themselves they know - it feels like falling into a black hole, or a bottomless pit. The best analogy to describe this is if you have chronic muscular tension - usually your muscles are tensing up because there is some weakness or instability the muscles are trying to protect. If you release the muscular tension without addressing the weakness, you are more vulnerable, more exposed to injury. In many regards, these women felt talking therapy, was targeting and challenging behaviours which they couldn’t yet release as no alternative coping mechanism had been established yet. They had no sense of self or their identity outside of this duplicitous existence.
The table below summaries why talking therapies often failed to meet the four key needs for Identity formation, which were identified from the earlier research.
The Somatic Pathway: How somatic techniques establish a sense of self in the aftermath of a duplicitous life
I will now explain why somatic work is so well suited to meeting the unmet needs of people who have experienced some form of identity distortion. I have created a Somatic pathway; this is a three-step process which can guide this work for coaches and therapists. The pathway falls broadly into three categories: Relate, Reconnect and Release and Rebuild
Step 1: Relate: Establish a ‘third space’
This third space can be defined as a safe and nourishing environment co-curated by coach and client. With a great deal of the client’s trauma being the result of cultural conflicts which demand inauthenticity, it is extra important that the relationship between coach and client is defined by authenticity, connection and trust. This means the space must invite the WHOLE of the client to be present, and this necessitates the inclusion of their bodily sensation and experiences too.
This has two key components:
Experiencing relational safety and understanding
Establishing the body as a safe space
Somatic interventions work precisely because they help overcome the limitations or barriers posed by cultural differences and the constraints of language. Language itself is defined by cultural norms - ones that may not be shared by coach and client. If your therapist or coach is from a vastly different culture or background than you, a body-oriented approach shifts the focus away from understanding or making meaning - and hence language becomes less important. Working on a body-based level also helps clients to realise that though lived experiences may be wildly different, how we experience them in our bodies, may well be the same. Communicating in the language of the body can bring a realisation of our sort of common and shared humanity. Non-verbal communication and embodiment exercises appeal to the fundamental qualities of being human. This knowledge affirms that we can have shared body experiences that others relate to and understand, even if the path to that experience was different.
This sense of someone understanding your struggle, somatically if not conceptually, cultivates a sense of belonging and connectedness the client may never have experienced before and helps overcome some of the limitations of talking therapies which were mentioned earlier.
As the client and coach simply witness and hold what emerges in the space - in mind and body, the coaching session is defined by what the client has never experienced. For many of these women, who are disconnected or disassociated from their bodies, they may not have experienced any work which proactively invites their bodily experience into the space as valid and important. All of the nuance and complexity of the client’s experience is allowed to exist and invited in - this sets the stage for relational healing and the experience of complete social acceptance. These are particularly important when individuals may have lived a life defined by the need to be inauthentic and disconnected from their own needs.
Somatic work also focuses on deepening our awareness of and connection with our own bodies - again, deeply important work for people whose lives have been defined by inauthenticity and therefore a disconnection from their own body. For individuals who have chronically experienced a feeling of belonging nowhere - their body will be the first and in some cases, the only space, where all aspects of their identity can co-exist and integrate. We must think of the body as a physical space in which this person resides and thus far it has been the ONLY space to have witnessed the full truth, complexity of this person’s life. In other words, building up awareness of their true self and their authentic nature, will in many regards be a private process - and their body will be the first witness.
This increasing awareness of their own bodies can feel like a type of safety net from their day to day experience. It can feel that there is now a place they can access or return to, where they can be their authentic selves. Establishing this third space facilitates their meeting of a new inner, true self. It is essential to have a sense of their authentic self before we begin asking clients to release existing parts of their identity which no longer serve them. We are building a new home so to speak, so they can leave the one they currently live in. This is an essential but often missed first step in the process of identity formation in adulthood.
Somatic work is well positioned to help gradually extend the parameters of this ‘third space.’ For instance, their body may be their first safe space, and then through exercises such as orientation, they may gradually extend the borders of this safe space to include the natural world. They may begin to perceive safety in spaces outside of themselves. Connecting to nature, art, animals, creative activities are all useful in this process. Talking therapies may miss the vital importance of these as they may be seemingly unrelated, but a holistic body-led approach expands our definition of what is relevant and useful in a way that can truly serve these women. Gradually, the client may themselves begin to lead this process, identifying how and where their safe space can extend to. But to do this, they must first experience safety - not just conceptualise or comprehend what it might feel like. Having experienced it within the coaching sessions and their own body, they may be able to recognise it in micro moments in the outside world. Once given this awareness, they often play a proactive role in finding more safe spaces. They will often organically move towards more willingness to participate in life, with their bodies, as opposed to disassociated from their bodies.
Step 2: Reconnect: Embarking on the identity formation process as a body-led experience, namely
1. Developing somatic awareness
2. Establishing body-led boundaries
The second step involves honouring identity formation as primarily a body-led experience. This isn’t to state that our thoughts, ideas or ideals have no role to play, but it acknowledges that establishing a sense of autonomy and confidence in our authentic values, requires a degree of connection to our own bodies. As explained above, often these women are hyper intelligent and have learnt to see a lot of complexity and nuance in all situations. They also have the tendency to disassociate and disconnect from their own bodies- this concoction can manifest as permanent states of low mood, anxiety, depression, freeze states and decision fatigue. Without connection to our bodies we can be driven by ideologies we adopt and then rigidly attach our identities to e.g. an ideology that we never disappoint anyone or make them angry can become a defining characteristic of our personality, because we may not be attuned enough to our own bodies to recognise that this behaviour is no longer required for survival and it is now simply habitual.
When our identities become too attached to these external ideologies, we lose flexibility and adaptability, we stop being able to grow with life experience and new insights. This is why so many of these women, now in their 40s or even 50s, still felt fixated on fulfilling the expectations of their parents or couldn’t help but work to the point of burnout or exhaustion. They had defined their identities by affixing themselves to set behaviours, well beyond the point of those behaviours having any functional value. On some level they knew they didn’t serve them and yet they couldn’t really release them.
The absence of body attunement in many of these women’s upbringings meant they didn’t learn certain truths about their own deep needs. We cannot really know if the life we are living is authentic and aligned if we don’t know how we are experiencing life in this body - because this is our vessel.
For many of these women, the sense of self was established more through external parameters and validation. Their sense of who they are is often dictated by what they do and how others perceive it - e.g. being dutiful to family or hard working at work - and without enough somatic awareness to notice how their bodies feel in playing out these roles, they aren’t capable of receiving or integrating the feedback that is continually available to them.
Somatic awareness as opposed to conceptual self-awareness is key to addressing this, precisely because it's often the missing component and is underdeveloped in those who have habitually neglected their authentic self in order to be accepted. Somatic awareness can be described as the ability to track sensation in our bodies. Our bodies continuously provide useful feedback and information, which are invaluable in deepening our sense of what we do or don’t like and which environments may or may not please us.
This noticing begins to form the basis of understanding and recognising patterns that may have been normalised to the client e.g. feeling sick every time they go home. The normalisation of their duplicity is thrown into question only by tracking their body’s reaction to it, because their mind - the framework on which their understanding of the world has been established, incorporates the duplicity as a necessary component. Cognitively removing it is not an option - because it's a foundational piece in their identity formation, thus far. Questioning the validity of certain behaviours which are adaptive responses is a process which has to begin in the body. The mind will create barriers and obstacles to prevent you from seeing realities which threaten its current understanding of the world. A somatic approach penetrates this barrier.
The focus on the body and this means we can open up our awareness to a whole host of data and evidence we never considered. At this stage, many women begin to notice the correlation between inauthenticity and physical and emotional symptoms. They begin to draw connections between things they previously assumed were unrelated. The development of somatic awareness also allows these women to access their intuition in real time and apply it to their lives, their process becomes self-led and more naturally embedded into their day to day experience. It isn’t simply retrospective and done in partnership with coach or therapist, the skills of self-noticing, self-tracking and self-soothing organically begin to infiltrate their daily lives.
By allowing these women to experience the body as a safe space and to even enjoy pleasurable or neutral sensation, they have the opportunity to experience life through a new framework. It’s possible that they never fully comprehended this as a possibility as their current life experience of inauthenticity was so normalised. When stepping into the truth of their body’s experience - which cannot be questioned or undermined so easily by others around them, they are less subject to gaslighting or manipulation. Sensory input is powerful and demanding once you begin to attune to it and to listen. These insights pave the way for the second stage in the identity formation process; once these women understand themselves better, it really helps instigate a body-led approach to setting and maintaining difficult boundaries.
Somatic work has a focus on the present moment, this allows the individual to access fundamental truths about their needs in real time. This simplicity can help establish the groundwork for change. Sensation is evidentially true in the moment - we know we are experiencing it right now. Once these women experience their bodies’ reaction to certain environments or to inauthenticity in general, it is hard to unsee it. The women may begin to notice patterns, for instance being around family makes them anxious or they find themselves fatigued or exhausted after being in the company of their partner. Access to these insights can be like an anchor - it's very grounding and clarifying because it’s simple.
When you have a duplicitous existence - you are always holding multiple truths and realities at once. Advantages in one area may necessitate loss in another because you have needs which are mutually exclusive e.g. being loved by your family and living an authentic life. You cannot conceptually overcome the confusion, because you live in all these dimensions and exist in all these lives at once - in other words, truth becomes relative. In contrast, the simplicity and fundamental truth of sensory experience can provide a sense of clarity which helps these women to finally navigate extremely complex decision making and establish body-led boundaries for themselves.
The body-led approach to boundary setting provides a simple framework for navigating relationships and future decision making - really helping to overcome the decision fatigue and freeze response. The simplicity of somatic wisdom and intuition provides a most welcome alternative to the complexity of making decisions in a lose-lose scenario. Many of the women begin to describe themselves as feeling more ‘clear,’ the decisions feeling more ‘obvious’ or lighter. Many women had previously described decision making as too complex, nuanced, impossible and multifaceted. The change does not indicate that the experiences of guilt or shame aren’t there - just that the attunement to their embodied wisdom gives them the permission and confidence to follow their body’s guidance and take action, even if it is difficult.
Step 3: Rebuild and Release: Utilising Play to reparent yourself:
Develop self-trust through experiential and joyful learning
Build capacity and resilience through controlled challenges
The third and final stage of the somatic pathway is Rebuild and Release. We utilise play to offer these women a second opportunity at the missed stages of identity formation. The process of rebuilding their identities, in line with their authentic selves, is coupled with releasing parts of their identities that no longer serve them. Play offers us the permission to simply experience new ways of being, without the pressure or expectation that this is a conscious, permanent shift. This gentle invitation, this freedom to observe ourselves through a different lens and to notice how it feels different can induce more change than years of preparing to take the leap. Working in a context that promotes these changes as light-touch and experiential, establishes a degree of safety which may enable an individual to be more open to new experiences and ways of being.
A focus on exploration may be by definition, the opposite of what these women have experienced throughout their lives. Spontaneous, creative and lighthearted - the coaching space becomes an opportunity to engage in mindsets and behaviours that may have felt threatening or dangerous when navigating cultural conflicts growing up. Driven by an inner curiosity and a sensitivity to one’s own interests, it provides the missed opportunity to establish a sense of self through play as opposed to logic, necessity or fear. This can be considered a reparenting process. Play is utilised as a means of learning and identity formation, as one would hopefully experience in a healthy childhood. The individual may develop self-trust and greater clarity around their personal boundaries and interests. During this stage, people learn to value their natural impulses to access playful spaces as part of their healing journey.
In particular, these women, having felt that their experiences were invisible to so many people - often found that the act of PHYSICALLY occupying space was invigorating, enlivening, affirming and healing. Allowing their body to show up in spaces, being heard and being witnessed was integral to their journey. Many of these women adopted new hobbies ranging from improvisation, street dance, singing, kickboxing and creative writing. There was a natural impulse to be seen and to be vulnerable. They gravitated towards activities which allowed access to community spaces. In these spaces, many of these women experienced non-verbal connection and a sense of belonging that had been absent for most of their lives. Team sports and community spaces held their physical bodies and allowed them to belong to something. This often developed enough of a sense of safety in the external environment that these women developed the confidence to show more and more of themselves. This stage very organically led clients to rebuild their identities - they often began to question things which they always held as fixed - career goals, prospective partners, sexual and gender identity and friendships based on trauma bonding.
Establishing self-trust through play is the part of the healing journey that these women felt most supported in by somatic work. So many of them described that they didn’t know they could have fun or be considered fun or funny - they needed new experiences in order to learn how to be carefree and in the present moment. This is an entirely different skillset to coping with stress and trauma. The focus on developing their capacity to experience what was present in their body allowed them to better recognise and connect with their joy.
Play also introduces some risk and uncertainty. It can be challenging to face environments you can’t control and where your role is not clearly defined. Team sports were particularly daunting because of the fear of being socially criticised or excluded. Utilising play to overcome this deeply embedded fear very gradually and holistically helped women to develop the tolerance or capacity to face challenges that would arise from living their authentic lives. They grew in their confidence to navigate the difficulties as they had already experienced it in controlled playful settings.
This explains why once a new framework has been adopted through steps 1-3 above, the individual may feel safe enough to begin to release parts of their identity that no longer serve them or are not authentic to them. The women began to challenge habitual behaviours and self-perceptions. They questioned if they had to be quiet, agreeable or people-pleasing, because they now had proof of living otherwise. Having carved out a new role for themselves in social spaces, this confidence and self-assuredness naturally began to extend to their personal lives.
The immense grief of lost years and opportunities is something which needs honouring and transmutation often. For many of these women, new life experiences, such as the death of a parent or motherhood, evoked the same wound again and again. Play provided the tools for these women to take ownership of transmuting their emotions. Finding creative outlets to express their experiences meant they became less consuming. The emotions were allowed to be there and they had a means of processing them. In other words, play developed their capacity or their tolerance for managing the intense and overwhelming feelings that often arose through new life experiences. Therefore an approach which incorporates play also makes this work, which can span years or even decades, or will always need to be done, sustainable. New experiences can invite new ways of being, embedding change on a body level and making the process of transition one which incorporates joyfulness too. This makes ‘doing the work’ to heal more sustainable and effective.
Who else might The Somatic Pathway benefit?
This somatic approach also likely to deeply support those with parallel life experiences of feeling a sense of duplicity in their lives in one way or another - either because of their sexual or gender orientation, their neurodiversity, for immigrants or for those experiencing huge intergenerational differences and conflict with their families. Somatic work clearly cultivates a sense of belonging through its relational focus, recognising the body as a safe space and guidance tool and holistically transmuting experience through play and new physical experiences. Life and age enable us to see more complexity and nuance, and the somatic pathway provides the tools to help us navigate a perpetually expanding understanding of ourselves.
Conclusion
Embedding somatic interventions into coaching or therapy has great potential for revolutionising the way in which we navigate identity distortions caused by cultural conflicts. It enables coach and client or therapist and patient to overcome limitations caused by a lack of cultural awareness or shared language in relation to certain lived experiences. Essentially, inviting an individuals’ body into the space broadens or widens the realms within which the coach and client can connect, change and grow. It seems to have been the missing link, enabling a shift from simply understanding what has shaped our identity to actually having the resource to redefine ourselves and establish a sense of self in accordance with our deep values. Speaking more broadly, it can pave the way for more cultural awareness, cohesion and unity - leading to societies which are more empathic and open to experiences they don’t share.