Our Practices

Somatic Experiencing® — letting the body finish what it started

Trauma is not only a memory. It is a physiological state the body is still holding. Somatic Experiencing® works directly with that state — gently, gradually, and without requiring anyone to retell their story.

What it is

Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a body-first approach to resolving trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine over more than five decades of study in physiology, psychology, and the way animals in the wild recover from life-threatening events. Its central insight is simple: when something overwhelming happens, the body mobilizes an enormous survival response — fight, flight, or freeze. When that response cannot complete, the charge of it stays in the nervous system, and the body goes on behaving as if the danger never ended.

That unfinished charge is what many people are living with when they describe being anxious, exhausted, numb, on edge, or unable to rest no matter how safe their life looks on paper. SE™ does not treat those experiences as character flaws or thinking errors. It treats them as physiology — and physiology can settle.

What a session actually looks like

SE™ work is quiet and unhurried. A facilitator helps a participant notice small, present-moment body sensations — warmth, tightness, tingling, breath — and move attention slowly between what feels difficult and what feels steady. In SE™ language this is called titration and pendulation: touching the edge of activation in tiny, manageable doses, then returning to safety, so the nervous system can discharge what it has been holding without becoming overwhelmed again.

No one is asked to relive anything. No one is asked to share their history. The work happens at the pace the body sets, and the body is always allowed to say no.

Who this serves

In our programs, SE™-informed work supports women rebuilding after violence, displacement, addiction, or loss — and the frontline staff and caregivers who carry other people's trauma every day. It is especially suited to people for whom talk-based approaches have not been enough, because it begins below the level of the story.

Our training and standards

SE™-informed sessions at Crystal Bridge Foundation are facilitated by our founder, Meghan Sickner, currently completing professional training through the Somatic Experiencing® program (SE™ Student), supported by thirty years of licensed bodywork practice. We hold this work within clear trauma-informed boundaries: everything is invitational, nothing is forced, and referrals are made when a participant needs clinical care beyond our scope.

Where you will find it

Somatic Experiencing®-informed practice is woven through The Women's Crossing, our group program for women, and informs the regulation tools we teach partner organizations through Community Light Work. You can explore the other practices behind our programs: Somatic Breath Integration, The Values Factor, and Integrative Healing Practices.