“If you want to improve the world, start by making people feel safer.”
— Stephen Porges
We might paraphrase this powerful quote by Dr Porges to read: If you want to improve people’s relationships, start by making them feel safer. Why? When babies are born into this world they don’t yet have the ability to self-regulate and have to ‘borrow’ the nervous system of their primary caregivers. If the caregivers are responsive and attuned to the little person, the baby develops an embodied sense of safety. However, if that early attunement isn’t available for whatever reason, the baby’s sense of safety is compromised and attachment wounds might occur. Those early relationships are strong predictors on how we bond throughout our lives - with ourselves (through embodiment and how we experience ourselves), other people, and the environment.
Why the somatic approach to attachment?
Attachment work is nervous system work. Before we could speak or even move, our primary language was sensation. Somatic practices help us come back and pay attention to that present moment lived experience, getting ‘around the guards’ of our verbal processes. Somatic attachment practice helps a person develop an intimate and trusting relationship with themselves first in a way that feels supportive and secure and once that’s established, the capacity for extending it towards other people grows as well. The interpersonal space between the practitioner and the client becomes a space of exploration, befriending the felt sense of safety and healthy boundaries, and a model of secure attachment.
Curious to know more?