The Resonating Practitioner: Redefining Somatic Work Through Embodied Experience

I honestly didn't see myself as a somatic practitioner. I see the Instagram reels of moving your body in order to get a somatic release, I've heard of people bursting into tears when they receive body work, and I have participated in Somatic Experiencing sessions. None of these things have helped me shift the way Esogetic Medicine has. That said, I have seen pretty strong reactions in myself, my clients, and case studies, ones that have even scared the founder (and other practitioners) into never wanting to try certain things again.

The reason for this is partially explained in how Somatic Experiencing works: we need to create a safe container that the client can return to when they are scared. Esogetics, paired with AI, allows us to specifically ask: this client tends to react in this way, this client only has this much time to recover from a session, what can we do to respect their limits and boundaries? Doing it this way has allowed me to open things for clients that they couldn't open using any other evidence-based method, because they needed someone who could listen to their unique needs and provide support between sessions, which most practitioners cannot do.

Said another way: deep release isn't about getting someone to open a vault, it's about building a safe container, with all the exits (base of the skull and neck, behind the back molars, solar plexus, intestines, corpus callosum, limbic brain as it is laid out in the body etc.) opened, so that what we release doesn't get stuck in a way that is too hard for the client to work through.

Here are some diagrams from my Esogetic Training Manuals that show how connections are made and some of the exits that need to be open in order to allow old stored unprocessed trauma to drain.

A Kirlian photo before and after treatment (or a lot of experience on how things usually go for a particular client) can help us build a protocol with the right precaution and support.

In another, related article, I am going to speak about why bones and teeth can sometimes break (not in the session but) over the course of treatment. This is not something that I want, but it can be hard to avoid. Like a storm, a break can be how a pressure that has been building finds its release, and if we understand why these things happen to us from an Esogetic perspective, we can stop rebuilding that pressure and we can learn to let it go, grateful for what the experience was able to teach us and how it was able to realign our life.

In Esogetic Medicine we are trained to do a "test treatment" first, to see how a person responds to treatment. We are then told that any treatment can be a test treatment, and that it is foolish to devise an entire treatment plan without seeing how a person responds. This is 100% correct, but it can be hard to understand until you experience it in action. We are so used to saying "I want this outcome, how many sessions (how much time and money) will it take (cost) to get there?", we want some kind of guarantee so we don't feel like we are being tricked into something foolish. The thing is, I don't know.

For me, I could embark on a 10-session protocol for weight loss, and suddenly end up derailing my child's participation in school and extracurricular activities, end up with a chipped tooth, and then have a reaction to the solution the dentist put in place. I still don't know how much progress I have made on my goal, because I have only done 1 round of the 10 planned weight loss sessions. I had a plan to do two sessions per week: one for weight loss, and one alternating between two treatments to address the trauma behind why I carry excess weight. I haven't been able to cleanly repeat a round, but I have applied many other treatments, to help me get out of and moving through the upheaval caused by the first round of treatment.

My child is now in a much better place with her school and so am I. Things are not as they were, and I feel some sadness about the changes that needed to happen as we realized who is and who is not there for us, but this is typical of treatment. We see more clearly, and those we were attracting because we were sick or carrying chaos before fall away because we no longer play that role for them. In time, we attract what is right for us, as my kids have found the right friends and the right programs, as what is not a fit for them falls away, and people who are going to stay adjust themselves to be more supportive. All of this because I wanted to lose a bit of weight, because I could see in my Kirlian photo that the heaviness in my feet had been taxing my organs for too long.

One of the important things, which I will touch on in the bone break article, is understanding why. This is why I want clients to reach out to me between sessions, so that if they have a reaction, I can look into why and respond so they have something to hold onto until their next session, and so that we can tailor their next session to address how their healing journey has taken an important turn. None of us know for sure what lies beneath any person's problem. Even if two people have the same problem, the story behind it and how it needs to be released can be very different. This is why it is important to look into each person's unique response.

Attending yin yoga, fascia stretching, mobility, pilates, and barre classes every week helps me continue to connect with what I am holding in my body. Often old injuries explain why there is unevenness in how I hold my body. Unevenness also means that processing difficult experiences is harder, and it is easier to get stuck with an incomplete understanding of what has happened, which means living according to beliefs that might not be in our best interest.

For a long time, I blamed my mother for my childhood, but only recently have I started to consider that, sure, she did some things that weren't great, but what shaped me most may have started before I was born, in what her body was carrying while I grew. Esogetics is not about fault. It's about finding where something got stuck so we know how to release it. Esogetics draws on existing work about how early experience shapes us, and offers a way to release where the tension is still being held, preventing us from seeing things for what they are. Blaming my mom for what she did in my childhood, the part I can remember and put a story to, is actually worse than realizing that the biggest impact came from what happened before I was born. With Esogetic treatment, I can let all of that go, because holding on was hurting my health and my family.

My body used to react every time my mother came around. I would get sick or develop pain, and she has pain too, and I would attribute it to my conscious memories. But over time, the people who really bothered me don't anymore, so I think even this "pain body" (as Esogetics calls it) reaction can stop.

Like an arthritic joint that can predict when it is going to rain, this "pain body" has served me, because I can feel my clients' symptoms to a certain degree too, enough for me to get a jump on how to help them, by seeing what works to clear what I carry in my own body. Of course, my story might not be the same as theirs, but some experience is better than none.

I see myself as more of a technician than a somatic practitioner: listening to what the person has to say, finding the treatment that seems to fit, applying it and seeing what the body shows us, and proceeding session to session, trusting that where we are going will be good, even if the path to get there is a little bumpy.

My first teacher used to say to ask for a 10-session commitment at the start, so the client gives you enough time to figure out what they need. A protocol might say 10, but I have always been hesitant to ask for that commitment, because I want clients to decide, session to session: is this of value to me, do I want to keep going? So I leave the commitment open for people to decide.

I will admit that people who come for 1–2 sessions will often have a strong reaction and might not come back, because it scares them. They would rather stay where they are at than go where their body seems to need to go in order to get out of their current state. And that's ok.

Know this work is here when you are ready, to work collaboratively with (me and) your body.

I take breaks too, to enjoy my gains and my newly shifted life, and I only go back in when I am ready to commit. I am still surprised every time at how much upheaval treatment can cause in my life, in order to allow me to get to that better place, but for me, it's worth it.

Of course, the people who rely on us may be frustrated when going for treatment involves processing that treatment and all the upheaval it may cause. This is because we are generally not used to what true healing entails: most people engage only in suppression of the symptoms so they can keep doing what they are doing, which is often what is causing the illness or difficult life in the first place. Every person and family is different in terms of what it has room for and what it wants out of life.

If this feels right for you, book a free 15-minute consultation.