Somato-emotional release treatment – clinical practice.

Somato-emotional release treatment – clinical practice.

The somato-emotional release treatment is strongly linked with the concept of fascial dysfunction. The fascia is that structure in our body entitled to cover each muscle, blood vessel, bone or visceral organ, functioning as a link between them and being made up of cells within a fibro-elastic connective tissue called collagen.

Following the somato-emotional theory, it is within the fascia that all the tensions of our body express themselves, altering the way the underneath structures interact between each other and therefore resulting in pain.

Somato-emotional therapy aims to spot these tensions, following the inherent motion of the fascia, and help them to resolve via a gentle manual treatment of tissues listening.

For each physical tension there is an emotion attached to it and for each emotion there is a tension or physical reaction.

Sometimes this brings our body to generate or make us feel physical pain even if the cause is not physical at all but might be just a result of an emotional trauma that has not resolved.

The relation between the body tension and the emotion is not a 100% truth and it would be very difficult to scientifically prove it. However, what has been found in practice is that our body is able to get in touch with our emotions, reacting to them and recognising their significance. We just need to help it to free up this tension.

The somato-emotional treatment is therefore a process that blends together the principles of the fascial manual treatment with those ones of the psychological focussing on emotions by the patient.

Three emotions are recognised as being the most important of an individual: sadness, joy and anger.

Other feelings such as fear and guilt are not true emotions although they manifest themselves with evident physical tensions which are palpable. All of them are neither bad nor good but just the normal representation of our feelings. What creates sufferance is not the emotion itself but blocking the recognition and the expression of it.

The patient has to be assessed in its whole, beginning with a postural observation and ending up with the more specific analysis of the local tissues. The aim of the examination is to evaluate the state of tension of the fascia and spot possible areas that need to be treated.

The development of a diagnostic touch is necessary and it takes time and practice to develop the appropriate palpatory skills.

When positioning the hands on the patient’s body, the therapist will try to get in deep contact with the tissues, establishing a fulcrum with both hands. The key is trying not to force the palpation feelings and allow the tissue underneath your hands to function or dysfunction as they normally would, letting them communicating with you.

A strong attempt to find something wrong would only lead to a misunderstanding of the fascia’s status, possibly diagnosing tension conditions which are not effectively present. It is necessary to be able to listen to the intrinsic movements and power of the tissues, rather than apply an extrinsic force from the outside.

When identifying a tension there are some diagnostic criteria to follow which will help the therapist to incriminate a specific body structure as the “primary lesion”, the cause of the primary dysfunction and therefore of the pain.

If the “pull” or tension draws the hand of the therapist anteriorly (front of the patient), the cause could be of visceral origin. If it happens towards a posterior direction (back of the patient), the cause would be more likely to be vertebral or musculoskeletal. If the tension is felt like a traction, digging deep into the patient chest, the cause could be thoracic or mediastinal, whereas if pulling superior (towards the head of the patient) it might highlight a cranial or cervical spine dysfunction.

The word “dysfunction” doesn’t have to sound worrying to patients. The therapist will therefore have to explain that when talking about dysfunction we refer to an area of the body that at present is not at 100% of its natural function, being possibly held in restriction for some reason.

Not every tension has to be necessarily treated in a somato-emotional way. There are many manual therapies able to resolve a physical tension without getting in touch with a more psychological level. However if the patient presenting problem seems to be deeply associated with an emotional status, it is worth trying. The differential criteria will be given by the examination.

A superficial and “flat” tension is usually not linked with an unresolved emotion, whereas a deep and “volumetric” tension is more likely to be connected with a profound and not recognised emotional level.

In the first case the treatment will just follow the principles of the fascial listening, aiming to reach that point in which the fascia will feel immobile and the tension will disappear. This point is called “the still point” and will be followed by a more physiological and natural movement of the fascia itself. Practically speaking the hands of the therapist will just accompany the inherent movement of the fascia towards the direction it pulls through until it stops and settles down.

The work on the emotions themselves comes along when the tension is “volumetric”, therefore possibly linked with an unresolved emotion. In this case the therapist will address not only the fascial component mentioned above but will blend this work with a “focusing” exercise proposed to the patient while performing the “hands on” treatment on the local tissues.

The patient will be asked to feel and mentally imagine the tension, giving it a shape and a colour and paying attention to the possible changes of it. By the end of the treatment the therapist will ask the patient whether that tension recalls any emotions to the patient and if that is the case whether the patient is able to accept it as it is and move on.

The aim of the somato-emotional treatment is never to judge or give an interpretation of people’s feelings, for this purpose there are other professionals much more competent in the field. However a great benefit have been found by patients following accidents or traumatic physical events that had led to accumulate and not dissipate a musculoskeletal tension.