The Soma and Dreams

Featuring Dr. Peter Levine

This post was written in San Diego at The Somatic Trauma Healing Immersion event. The last four days have been a deep dive into conversations, demos, and experiences on healing trauma through the soma, Greek for body.

So much of our disembodiment stems from colonization and capitalism cutting us off from our body-wisdom and intuition, and indigenous-wisdom and spirituality, which include dreamwork. Likewise, our disembodiment is also a form of our body-wisdom’s defense mechanism, protecting us from extreme distress, such as the perpetual impact of colonization and capitalism. Unfortunately, prolonged disembodiment results in unresolved trauma or incomplete stress cycles, which many of us carry without even knowing it because it has become such a normalized state of existence in our oppressive society and suppression held in our bodies. This is why this immersion event exists at all.

While body-wisdom and body-based healing has been an integral part of many, if not all, indigenous cultures, somatic healing is a burgeoning field in the Western and Global North, as many are beginning to recognize that the body stores unprocessed trauma. Hence, a body-oriented approach is essential for healing, which simply means processing the stuck stress or trauma and consciously integrating it.

Dr. Peter Levine, one of several leading Western somatic practitioners and teachers, presented yesterday about his newest book, An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey.

Others urged him to share his story with the world, and because it felt “vulnerable and naked,” he never intended to. Grappling with the decision to publish his story, he shared with the audience, “When I don’t know where I’m going, I’ll often turn to my dreams.”

He then described that in his dream, he came upon his desk with the pages of his story when suddenly a gust of wind scattered them throughout the meadow. He looks at us and says, “And you are the meadow.” Thus, the book is born.

Similarly, he founded “the Somatic Experiencing method…a body-oriented approach to healing trauma and other stress disorders,” inspired by a dream, which you can read about in the second paragraph of this page.

As I write this, I’m hyperaware that Dr. Peter Levine is a cis-heterosexual white male scientist who felt called to “[spread his] knowledge around the world,” much like René Descartes, who Stephanie writes about in a previous post. While I can’t speak to Descartes’ character, I can share that Dr. Levine is a man of humility who values the agency of the individuals he works with.

Again and again, Dr. Levine reminded us that the individual knows themselves the best, so we meet them where they’re at and let them guide the process. Our job is to anchor them in our supportive presence as we remain grounded in ours.

Dr. Levine’s reverence for relationships with people and dreams has a liberatory, expansive, and life-affirming quality.

The soma and dream are each sacred unto itself. Can you imagine what our world would be like if we all re-membered that the body and the dream give to and receive one another? What does sacred-to-sacred connection attended to with dignity and care create? What has it created in your life as you tend to your body and tend to your dreams?