Somatic Attachment Re-patterning
What is Perinatal Somatic Attachment Re-patterning?
Perinatal Somatic Attachment Re-patterning is the study of how earliest impressions shape our behavior for a lifetime, from conception to 18 months of life. It is the work of Annie Brook who took 30 years as a clinical somatic psychotherapist integrating her backgrounds in perinatal psychology, attachment psychology and developmental movement patterns from somatic school of Body Mind Centering.
Early childhood imprints and traumas live in the body. Under stress, they hijack us from our adult capacities and potentials. The good news is, it’s never too late to rewire and embody a new way of being so you can be your best self and live a life of vitality, deep meaning & joy. You can cultivate capacities like tracking your inner states within your body, self regulating emotionally and consciously choosing how you move through life.
Given the fractal nature of our psyche, difficulties we experience today may be tracked down to its earliest expressions and experiences in our lives. As I’ve already mentioned, it is possible to become aware of such imprints, identity limiting core beliefs and behaviors we might have adopted through our really young eyes of a defenseless baby that we were. It is, in turn possible to rewire and embody new beliefs and behavior patterns that can serve us better today, as the adults that we now are.
How is it done?
Your posture and the way you carry yourself while you sit or walk… the way you engage with your day to day challenges… the way you reach for your goals or the way you shy away from them… the way you can sustain meaningful relationships in your life or the way you give up on them… the ailments or chronic pains you live with… can all be traced back to the earliest impressions in your life and how you’ve been literally wired by them. Every challenge that didn’t find a way to be processed and released can be accessed through the body and is indeed waiting for your loving attention to hold space for it, so it can release.
Your present challenges and their direct felt-sense feelings serve as our point of entry to figure out what keeps your life force from flowing freely and generously to carry you through your everyday life. We work together to consciously or subconsciously access your earliest impressions of life.
On the conscious side of our work, we use a birthing survey to help you research and remember to the best you can your gestation, birth and first 18 months of life. On the subconscious side, we collect very relevant information pertaining to this period through Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy that we seamlessly integrate into your sessions.
Why does it work?
It works at least for few reasons that I can understand:
The first one is through increased understanding. When we understand what happened to us and why we act a certain way, we can integrate and move on. We are then finally free to choose from a new place of flow instead of still looping energetically around the same spot that couldn’t find expression, understanding and release.
It also works through allowing the body to rewire at a concrete (physical) level. Body Mind Centering allows us to use of developmental movement patterns which help us rewire our brains at a physical level in a way we never had the chance to as younger children. Some could be due to never physically having had a chance to complete movement patterns essential to healthy brain wiring… some of that can be due to emotional neglect because our parents were too busy fighting with each other to pay the kind of attention we needed as babies.
Somatic Attachment Repatterning integrates all the body systems and movement practices to re-pattern the nervous system, including modalities like Hakomi, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, or Bodywork trainings. Re-patterning, not just sensing, tracking, or releasing is an essential support for development. This direct experience in the body builds new neural pathways in the brain.
What is it good for?
True healing and embodiment!! This level of work is the difference between you looping around wanting to change and you finally becoming the actual change you are looking for.
I love PSYCH-K as most of you must know by now. What Psych-K does is the energetic rewiring and creation of new neural pathways. But embodiment is a whole other level of healing we can add to your journey to make it all that much more faster, easier and integrated.
This work is good for increasing subtle awareness of the body, which in short will allow you to live closer to your spirit, because you can use your body/mind as your instrument to stay connected to your own higher intelligence. It is through increased subtle awareness that we become masters of ourself, through capacities of tracking our internal dynamics, emotionally regulate and finally be able to consciously choose our next steps in life.
The other side of this equation is to keep on living the automatic limiting, or even damaging emotional and behavioral patterns over and over again, never having a chance to actually respond to the present appropriately because we are being run by old patterns. When we create the opportunities to live out of the present for ourselves, we actually have a chance to create new possibilities for us and for life around us.
“You can learn to digest and integrate early experiences that set up a primitive brain template for defensive or collapsed responses to stress. Unhelpful thought patterns related to past traumas can be released at the core of identity. Body structure is refined, emotional activation decreases, and alignment of Self with body/mind occurs.” -Annie Brook, PhD in Somatic Psychology