Navjyoti Dalal talks to Suraag Lambrou, who has mastered the art of somatic healing, which emphasises the role of the nervous system in mitigating pain or trauma

Ever felt like snapping out of your body/consciousness during an unbearable headache? Well, it’s not entirely impossible anymore. Suraag Lambrou, a somatic healer (trauma therapist), professional speaker and consultant based in Mumbai, teaches you how to ‘gain balance in the nervous system’. Hailing from South Africa, Suraag ‘developed’ the concept of somatic healing over a period of more than 12 years using various trauma therapies, meditation, and psychology. “Vipassana contributed a lot towards the development of somatic healing,” says the healer, who is also the founder of Somatic Healing and Trauma First Aid (TFA), India.

Somatic healing taps into the recesses of the mind/nervous system to take care of the stress and trauma that the body goes through, Suraag tells us. When cyclone Nargis hit Burma (Myanmar), leaving 1,40,000 dead and 2 million homeless, Suraag, along with volunteers, helped the villagers through this therapy. So, how does somatic healing work? Originating from the Greek word ‘somat’ (which means body), Somatic healing therapy uses a wide variety of techniques including sound, touch, mirroring, movement and breath. And how does one do that? Through ‘mindfulness’ (being aware), says Suraag, who dates it back to the  times of Gautam Buddha. 

Practising somatic healing for the past 9 years, Suraag uses a simple three step technique that helps one to gain resilience (to pain and trauma). “The nervous system governs all our organs and their functions including heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and so on. And when the nervous system is triggered, we end up with certain symptoms — of excitement or anxiety. By regaining the balance in the nervous system, many such symptoms can start to fall away,” says Suraag, stressing on the centrality of the nervous system in healing process.

After a painful experience, one may not be able to come out of the trauma. Suraag, who is inspired by the spiritual ideologies of Byron Katie, Leslie Temple-Thurston and Osho, gives his three-step technique to resolve the stress and trauma symptoms.

THREE STEPS TO WELLNESS

Step 1: Become aware of your state of being. Life is constantly in a state of flow, and we keep moving through different bodily states (states of being). Turn your awareness into what is happening in your body. Take a few minutes to scan your body noticing how it’s doing at this moment. For example: You notice that you are in a state of excitement, when you look into the body at the sensation level. You start noticing what happens in your body. Bring the mind to the present, for generally our minds oscillate between past and future and is rarely in the present.

Step 2: Look for how the body is regulating. If not, then encourage this to happen through movement and touch. Discharge, that is, release of energy throughout the body will happen. The brain pays attention usually to the difficulty in the body — when you have a headache then you remember you have a head, and your attention keeps going to the pain. Now when we pay attention to the healing sensations (discharge) of the body, usually the pain in the head we are experiencing becomes more tolerable. When our awareness is narrowly focussed on the pain, this can be too much for us to tolerate and we may become overwhelmed.

Step 3: Watch how the body changes for the better. Look for signs of improvement opening up. This is an important step in the process —often we are not aware of ourselves when we are doing well. It is beneficial to identify the state of the body, when we are in a state of wellbeing.

These steps support the natural mechanisms of our body’s regulation. Once you understand the process you can begin practising anytime anywhere.

(Suraag Lambrou stays in Mumbai and is currently writing a book on Somatic Healing. He can be reached at suraagl@gmail.com)