27-year-old Ellie* has been suffering along with her mental health for around six years. A store manager from Bracknell, she tells Dazed she fell right into a bout of depression after a “traumatising flatmate experience” but she struggled to seek out effective coping mechanisms for her symptoms. “I attempted CBT [Cognitive Behavioural Therapy] on the NHS, however it didn’t help entirely.”

This 12 months, five years after she first attempted to get help, she tried somatic therapy. “I got here across somatic therapy on TikTok and commenced with just the somatic exercises – doing them alone at home,” she explains. “It made an enormous difference almost immediately, so then I made a decision to seek out an actual somatic therapist as well.”

Interest in somatic therapy has blown up recently, with The Recent York Times reporting a huge influx in requests to therapists offering the service. And as 2023 drew to a detailed, this was mirrored here within the UK. In keeping with search traffic analysing tool Semrush, ‘somatic therapy’ was searched 90 per cent more in 2023 compared with the previous 12 months in Britain. On TikTok, ‘somatic therapy’ has 160 million views, with comment sections stuffed with hopeful people in need of a recent avenue for his or her mental health treatment. 

For the unfamiliar, somatic therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on the connection between the mind and body. Though a number of us don’t realize it, our mind and bodies work together, and, in a way, break together. After we’re mentally well, our body works because it should (ailments and illnesses aside). After we’re struggling psychologically, this may translate into problems with the body. Within the best-selling book The Body Keeps the Rating: Brain, Mind, and Body within the Healing of Trauma, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk explains it like this: “Traumatised people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the shape of gnawing interior discomfort. Being frightened means that you just live in a body that’s at all times on guard. Indignant people live in offended bodies.”

Somatic therapy is about reprogramming the mind through those bodily responses, slightly than targeting the brain by talking, or through medication. Eldin Hasa, a neuroscientist and human behaviour expert tells Dazed that “during somatic therapy, individuals discover bodily sensations and emotions which were stored because of this of past trauma”. This could possibly be pain in your joints or strains in your neck and shoulders. It’s the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hole. Those varieties of responses are identified essentially by triggering them through talk therapy, then supporting the patient to retrain their mind through physical approaches (massage, meditation, movement, you name it).

It’s easy to see the appeal of somatic therapy. The UK is within the midst of an ongoing mental health crisis: one in four people within the UK experience mental health problems annually, yet the average waiting time for mental health assistance on the National Health Service is 178 days and leaves people in a “postcode lottery”, meaning their access to adequate, prompt services will rely on where they live. 

Body and self-acceptance coach Kitty Underhill works with somatic therapy approaches. She believes the extreme interest around it’s right down to the best way society has separated our minds and bodies. “There’s societal encouragement for us to be disconnected from our bodies. If we take a look at weight loss program culture, hustle culture, all these items tell us that we must always be specializing in the whole lot else outside of ourselves,” she explains. For her, doing somatic work is like “coming home to the body” and is an act of real self-love and anti-capitalism. “As an alternative of specializing in the capitalist rat race or weight loss program culture… we’re listening to our bodies and its cues like we’re presupposed to.”

That is something 35-year-old payroll manager Alix*, from Shropshire, can relate to. After suffering trauma for five years, she tried CBT but found it “only really scratched the surface”, so she saved up for somatic sessions. She says they make her feel like she’s “getting somewhere with recovery for the primary time”.

“I knew there was something happening to my body due to the trauma. I used to be continuously aching, my bones even hurting, and I used to be at all times unwell. It was like my body was screaming because I used to be ignoring my brain,” Alix says. Having her body and mind working together again has been necessary for trauma recovery. “I don’t think we’re generally encouraged to ascertain in with our bodies the best way [somatic therapy gets you to] and it’s an actual shame. I even have to wonder how much earlier I could have began recovering if I’d known about all of this.”

It’s an ideal thing that we’re becoming more knowledgeable in regards to the body’s role in mental health as Hasa says our thoughts, emotions and experiences have a profound impact on our body’s functioning. “When our mental health is compromised, it will possibly manifest in various physical symptoms and enduring trauma can leave imprints on our body, potentially resulting in long-term health consequences.” In truth, a whopping 37 per cent of people with severe symptoms of mental health problems even have long-term physical conditions because of this.

While Hasa acknowledges social media’s role within the “unprecedented surge in interest” in somatic therapy (which he’s seen at his own practice), he thinks the appeal goes much deeper than that. Hasa believes somatic therapy appeals particularly to young women due to its holistic nature, the onus the practice puts on encouraging self-regulation and compassion, and that girls usually tend to experience trauma. Despite stereotypes attached to PTSD, women are literally two to three times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

Since starting somatic therapy, Ellie’s mental health is starting to enhance. “I’ve realised that I even have a lot tension physically sitting in my body and making me have all these reactions because I got used to walking on eggshells living with my old flatmate,” she explains. “With the exercises, meditation and talk therapy we’re doing, I feel hopeful that I’m headed towards recovery.”

 But Underhill worries that the social media obsession around somatic therapy could also cause harm. “Unfortunately somatic therapy is already being co-opted by weight loss program culture which fits against the [core principles] of it. Influencers are sharing ways to drop some pounds with somatic therapy exercises and that’s not what it’s for.” She adds that there are also untrained professionals sharing advice and inspiring somatic make money working from home. This is usually a problem, Hasa explains, because somatic therapy has an enormous physical involvement and involves bringing up traumatic memories and feelings in a single go, so it’s something you’d want an expert involved in.

Alix says she has began to match the physical symptoms she’s been experiencing to underlying emotions and it’s been raw. “It’s so interesting, horrifying, relieving and overwhelming all of sudden, just the act of realising physical feelings you’ve been storing are literally some experience from years ago you didn’t work through,” she says. 

Somatic therapy could possibly be the saviour a number of young people need as we navigate trauma in a self-improvement-obsessed world. It’s just necessary to take into accout that any form of therapy trending online doesn’t routinely mean it’s best for you, nor does it mean the content you’re watching is correct or trustworthy. Unfortunately, the vast majority of wellness routes will inevitably be repurposed in unhelpful ways. Step one of self-care is cutting through the noise and ensuring we’re finding health support in the suitable places.