How Psychedelics Help Somatic Therapy
It took Krystine “Kiki” Grace a while to find her body. And herself.
She was depressed for most of her life. She struggled with addiction. Then she found an ayahuasca community in 2016. And she was able to identify the root of her suffering. To realize the pain of depression went beyond her mind.
“I really dove into [ayahausca] because I knew there was still a deeper part of me that was always unsettled and had this anxiety,” says Grace, a psychedelic facilitator and integration coach.
Psychedelics often provoke profound reactions in the body. Many practitioners believe this is a big part of their healing power.
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“Basically all [psychedelics] have their own way of creating different releases in the body. Especially with ayahuasca, psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT, there is shaking, yawning, burping, purging—not necessarily of actual physical substance, but of energy that’s stuck in the body.”
“It looked like peeling back the layers of an onion, peeling back veils. It dissected different aspects of my own being all the way to showing me the deepest trauma I had when I was a kid,” says Grace. “[Psychedelics] showed me that I’d been sexually abused as a kid, which is what started the depression and everything that transpired after.”
“It was actually the way my body responded to the truth being touched on and spoken when I actually said, okay, I believe this happened.”
In the years following, Grace has continued to strip back the layers of her trauma and heal it through a combination of somatic practices, psychedelics, and plant diets. “Through that process, that underlying anxiety that I’d lived with my entire life, was gone. Just gone.”
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Moving from Talk Therapy to Somatic Therapy–with psychedelics
Our understanding of mental health conditions—where they originate, how they manifest, and how they are healed—is undergoing an overhaul. The idea that psychological trauma is created and resolved through mind-based practices is being dismantled by pioneers and practitioners of somatic therapy.
Research shows that body-based practices such as Somatic Experiencing are effective at helping individuals heal trauma and overcome diagnoses such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction.
And now, psychedelic medicines such as MDMA, ketamine, cannabis, and others, are proving to catalyze the somatic healing process in mental health patients.
We may be entering a golden age of psychedelic somatic therapy. MDMA is on the verge of being approved by the FDA. (Perhaps at the end of 2023.) People with post-traumatic stress disorder will be able to use the drug–also called ecstasy or molly–with the help of a therapist. Approval of psilocybin-assisted therapy may not be far behind. Ketamine is already legal and being used for somatic therapies. Cannabis is legal in most of the United States.
When used in conjunction with somatic therapies, psychedelics have the power to help people more easily connect with the nervous system states required for trauma release.
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What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is founded on the idea that trauma is not limited to the mind alone. In fact, it is stored in the body. This trauma can take the form of a singular event, such as an instance of sexual abuse or an accident. It can also be a complex trauma, which is made up of multiple events that occur over a period of time. Complex trauma can encompass neglect and emotional abuse that occurs during childhood and adolescence.
“Trauma impacts much more than just our prefrontal cortex or our behavioral activation system. It impacts our whole being—and it must be treated from a whole being perspective. Importantly, any legitimate trauma treatment must consider all of our being—the entirety of our body-mind—not just our thoughts and behaviors, alone,” writes Albert Wong Ph. D., in his article Why You Can’t Think Your Way Out of Trauma.
Peter Levine is the creator of Somatic Experiencing, a type of therapy that is growing in popularity. Levine argues that many mammals intuitively discharge trauma through their bodies by shaking after experiencing a stressful situation. Humans need to do the same to avoid dysregulation and dissociation down the line.
When there is no discharge of lodged energy through the nervous system, the trauma stays in the patient’s body. The trouble can manifest itself as symptoms of different mental health diagnoses, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
Practitioners of these therapies recognize the essential nature of the mind-body connection and guide patients and clients back into their bodies so that they can connect with the nervous system states necessary for them to process and release their trauma.
Why Talk Therapy Often Doesn’t Work
Because trauma states get lodged in the body, traditional talk therapy is often ineffective at helping people process and release it. Simply understanding where a certain trauma response originates does not inherently allow the person to heal it.
“I had several years of conventional talk therapy, and although one could argue that it helped me to understand some things, it didn’t help me to heal. For example, my chronic insomnia, something that I suffered through for 17 years, remained because I was stuck in a state of hyperarousal without realising it,” writes Liam Farquhar, a psychedelic guide and practitioner of Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems, in his essay, Trauma Needs a Rebrand.
“It was only once I started to understand trauma and work somatically that my unwanted symptoms, including my insomnia, went away. I can’t begin to tell you how life-changing this has been for me.”
This notion is supported by Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: “No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality,” he writes.
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The research backs up the efficacy of somatic therapies, in particular for PTSD. One study found that somatic experiencing was effective in reducing the severity of PTSD and depression in participants. Another study showed that somatic experiencing had positive effects on PTSD-related symptoms, and “initial evidence suggests that somatic experiencing has a positive impact on affective and somatic symptoms and measures of well-being in both traumatized and non-traumatized samples.”
Primary and Secondary Consciousness
Saj Razvi, LPC is the Founder and Director of Education of the Psychedelic Somatic Institute, a psychedelic therapy training program that puts emphasis on somatic processes as part of healing with psychedelics.
In conversation with Razvi, he emphasized the importance of primary consciousness–which is in our body–instead of focusing solely on secondary consciousness–which is in our minds. “What Western psychology is doing is trying to stabilize people by strengthening their secondary consciousness—their objective grasp of reality.”
“Primary consciousness is more visceral and embodied, not cognitive, not meaning-making,” he said.
This theory of varying states of consciousness was developed by neuroscientist Robin Carharrt-Harris and others, in a 2014 paper.
“A Visceral, Palpable Reality”
Razvi explains how psychedelics help us connect with the state of primary consciousness, what he describes as “a visceral, palpable reality of what’s happening in the system.” The therapeutic modality used in PSI, Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP), has been designed to support processing in primary consciousness. PSIP focuses on the autonomic nervous system (ANS). “The language of the ANS is not insight or meaning-making, the language of the ANS is direct experience,” explains Razvi.
“I think there is a fair amount of the population who are turning to psychedelics because they’re kind of sick of traditional talk therapy. They could be in therapy for 20 years and understanding why something happens doesn’t necessarily change the symptoms on the ground.”
Razvi explains that when we take a psychedelic, the secondary consciousness is degraded, and we’re taken toward a more embodied, non-rational type of cognition.
“There are traumas that I see with people, for example, attachment trauma, which we cannot touch with secondary conscious therapies. We cannot touch it with talk therapy.”
“I think the somatic therapies can start to get at it a little bit but if you don’t have the support of a psychedelic on board, I don’t see anybody opening up to the true exquisite pain of what that traumatic wound is about. But we go there pretty reliably with the aid of psychedelics” he explains.
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Somatic Therapy: Nervous System Trauma Responses
Razvi explains that the severity of the trauma experienced by a person will determine the kind of nervous system state that their body enters into, and this is paramount to understanding how they can later heal that trauma.
“The predictive responses that we have to trauma range from mild stress responses to high-stress responses. Mild stress would be hypervigilance, mild anxiety, mild muscle contraction, and insomnia. Everything’s amped up a little.”
“And then there are high-stress events, which is to say that the threat is active, meaning that this is flight or fight territory. This is where people get assaulted, or they’re being shot at in a war, or in a car accident. Things like that,” he says. “Symptoms of high stress are panic attacks, fast breathing, lots of muscle contraction, intense reactivity. Your system amps up to a high adrenaline state.”
Dissociation is Left Out of the Conversation
Razvi explains, however, that the state that often gets left out of the conversation around trauma healing is dissociation. This is when the trauma is so overwhelming, that the system begins to numb.
“There’s an endogenous opioid release in the brain when this happens. In this final stage, people experience nothing. They have no emotions. If you ask them about their body sensations, they’ll say they feel fine. And if you probe a little bit further and ask them, what does fine actually feel like? The response will be ‘nothing.’ They’re not referencing any direct experience when they’re in this deep state of trauma,” he says.
Razvi explains that as a result, this state of dissociation is what leads to depressive symptoms—people who experience this level of trauma are often not able to engage in and feel the world. “The solution is non-existence,” he says.
Working with psychedelics with a focus on the body allows people to shift backward from one nervous system state to another, eventually and hopefully reaching a neutral state, says Razvi. This is done through re-association with their traumatic memory, which is ultimately able to help them heal, due to the secure relationship with the therapist or guide.
When people are processing high-stress trauma that caused a lot of fear and anxiety, they often shake or tremble, which is seen by many somatic practitioners as the trauma “leaving the body.” Razvi emphasizes that this is not the entire picture with regard to somatic trauma processing, as it leaves out the dissociation that is caused by extreme trauma.
For those who have dissociation, the person is able to process their trauma, with the help of psychedelics, by “re-experiencing how far gone they are, how they don’t have a body.” In this state, patients are processing emptiness and blankness, he says.
Of the medicines Razvi has witnessed, he’s found cannabis to be the most effective at resolving dissociation. PSI also provides ketamine during somatic psychedelic therapy sessions.
MDMA For Trauma Release
Liam Farquhar, the psychedelic guide and SE and IFS practitioner, argues that MDMA is also an effective tool to release trauma. “MDMA has also been said to unlock deep abdominal breathing, a profound healing tool in itself (we’re pretty bad breathers on the whole). With the volume of the rational mind turned down, bodily awareness can increase, enabling the participant to remain present with the unfolding somatic experience in the here and now,” he writes in his essay.
However, somatic trauma healing isn’t guaranteed, simply by virtue of taking a psychedelic.
“My hunch is that this might be one of the reasons behind why some research shows depression returning within a few weeks to months in the psilocybin for depression trials, if it goes at all,” says Farquhar.
“Although participants may adopt a new story about themselves and existence, because the trauma hasn’t been physiologically discharged and the participant’s parts haven’t been worked with directly, eventually the new story will unravel enough so that participants return to their unwanted symptoms.”
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Finding a Somatic TherapyPractitioner
If you’re looking for someone to guide you through a somatic psychedelic therapy session, you may want to look for someone who has experience not only in providing psychedelic medicines but also in somatic modalities. They might be someone who has studied SE or graduated from PSI or another body-focused modality training.
Razvi recommends choosing “someone who understands the dynamics of attachment, has taken some sort of human development training, and is well-informed about how trauma works.”
“I would say the sitter model is not good for this. We’re talking about human relational wounding. And I think you need human relationship to also do the healing for that side. I think a passive, space-holding container is not enough for people who are really looking to address mental health concerns,” he says.
Grace, the psychedelic facilitator and integration coach, says it’s important to find someone who is able to “pull you in and out” and “titrate” the trauma vortex that often opens up when doing somatic work. “We’ve been so disconnected from our bodies, that trying to go into your body can actually be traumatizing in its own way.”
Psychedelics clearly hold huge promise for the mental health population, and when combined with somatic therapies, can produce life-changing results for many who struggle with unresolved trauma symptoms. While until now, much of the focus around psychological healing has focused solely on the brain, both patients and practitioners alike are realizing the intrinsic need for a more body-based approach.
“Our minds are powerful. We need them. They’re creative,” says Grace. “But if you actually want to know something, you have to go into the body.”
