Many people suffer from trauma that makes them feel unsafe, trapped, suffer and living an unfulfilled life don’t receive the quality treatment they need to live a self-actualized life. Through an overemphasis on verbal processing and coping skill acquisition, patients can feel trapped in a vortex of symptom management – wondering if they’ll ever actually live a life.

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Somatic inquiry is a way to explore our conscious and unconscious beliefs about ourselves and others. In somatic inquiry, I facilitate and encourage my clients to pay attention and face their bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts connected to those bodily sensations.

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Here’s a simple example:

“What happens when you think of a time where important people let you down?”

Mind answer: “I don’t care”

Body answer: “My throat is tightening up, and I feel an aching in my stomach.”

“What does that energy says”

Body answer: “I’m angry with them”

“Can you express that anger”

Body answer: “No, I won’t be a good boy”

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The difference is that with a mind answer, we eventually reach a ceiling of insight where we can no longer add to the meaning that we’ve already made from an experience. When insight alone is no longer fruitful in changing our emotional or behavioral reactions, then that’s an indicator that our mind answer is in misalignment with our body answer. By listening to the body, we get deeper answers than what we can get from the mind alone.

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We realise that instead of feeling certain emotions, we developed repression programming that includes belief systems, thoughts, and identities as an intricate way to avoid accessing, feeling, and moving those repressed emotions in the body, hindering our authentic, free self-expression. This often happens during childhood as innocent strategies to stay safe, get approval, or get love.

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 The Kiloby Inquiries (KI) that I use is a system of tools and inquiry techniques that are designed to work somatically with body sensations, emotions and thoughts.  The process was developed by Scott Kiloby, Dan McLintock and the team of facilitators. 

KI tools differ from traditional mindfulness in that they are designed to go deeper, helping to uncover the root of the story or programming that keeps us suffering. With roots in eastern philosophies of Vedanta (non-duality) but applied in a modern context it becomes available to most.  KI use a foundation of "natural rest"  or presence/awareness and "inquiry" to explore and deconstruct deficiency stories, core beliefs and stored physical and emotional pain by unraveling the ‘velcro’ of thoughts (words and pictures) and body energies (sensations and emotions) that create identification and other limiting or unhealthy, inaccurate perceptions about ourselves, others and our lives often leading us to suffering.  

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My clients learn to not avoid or repress the thoughts, emotions and sensations that arise—but simply feel them through and not identify with them. 

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Scott Kiloby about KI on YouTube, 
What are the Kiloby Inquires  https://youtu.be/-qXJfUX12w4  
Access a series of video posts on KI  https://youtu.be/PePvlE0eF4s

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"Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness"

Peter Levine