Something very natural occurs when we can feel our emotions through the touch of someone else’s hands. Experiences and feelings that were difficult to deal with at the time they happened, arise for us to deal with in a safe and protected way.

Over the last 20 years I have spent my life working out why we feel emotional and physical pain and most of all how we treat pain. Yet throughout most of this time and even with some of the best qualifications and training in mind and body therapies, I was avoiding the very thing that would resolve my deep seated emotional issues. I was refusing to accept the “personal story” of my own life and it’s stored emotions in my body which was shaping how I created and reacted to my relationships, opportunities and sense of self worth as an adult.

Somewhere and somehow even with the best of intentions and training I was still refusing to acknowledge "My story".

Having gone through an exceptionally challenging life experience in my early 40’s, I can now see that what I was avoiding was actually the answer to my problems. Sensorium therapy therefore is the accumulation of “my story” and the “hundreds of peoples stories” that I have worked with in a therapeutic manner over the last 20 years. It has developed a story all of its own as it now helps even more people discover and navigate their way through their “own inner journey” so that you too can experience a new way to discover and connect with the “truth of who you really are” and “what you are capable of achieving”.

With sensorium therapy you connect to parts of yourself that have been stored away in the recesses of your body – so that you can develop an intimate, grounded relationship with all you have been and all you want to achieve.

What is Sensorium Therapy?

Sensorium therapy is a hands on mind-body therapy that has been developed from my 20 years of training in and working with the human body and mind. It works with the scientific and spiritual premise that our body is a container for all our experiences, and uses a special kind of touch, rhythm, pace and movement as well as verbal expression of our experiences to release our body’s truths so that healing can occur on all levels of our physical, spiritual and emotional wellbeing.

And while sensorium therapy may be one of the most relaxing, peaceful and serene experiences you have ever encountered. The real intent of sensorium therapy is to allow you to enter rather than exit your body so that you can recognise, probably for the first time ever what the real story of your life is.

With sensorium therapy you get to experience who you really are behind all your sensations of anxiety, fear and panic in a safe and relaxed way so that new patterns of awareness can become a larger part of who you want to be.

Why do we experience stress in our bodies?

When we have difficult experiences in our lives, both our minds and our body’s can get overwhelmed with stress. These stresses if left unreleased or unaddressed end up trapped inside our body creating tension, illness and anxiety. Talk therapy alone is not enough to release these tensions as it does not deal with the physical release of the sensations that were stored in our body at the time of our experiences.

For instance when we feel anxiety, we feel it in our body. When we feel fear, we feel it in our body. When we feel sad, we feel it in our body. When we feel love, we feel it in our body. We jump for joy, slump for sadness. Literally every single experience we have ever encountered is experienced as a sensation in our physical bodies. However, what happens when we experience these sensations is that if they are not allowed to fully express themselves they remain trapped in our bodies, repeating themselves over and over again until they find a way to get released.

Rather than trying to cure an emotional or a physical issue, the aim of sensorium therapy is to unlock the emotional meaning and message of your sensations so that you can gain an understanding as too why they have arisen in the first place.

Sensorium therapy works with your sensations and it helps you discover where in your body and where in your life these sensations arose from. It asks what does the inner wisdom of your body want to share with you and it then works on transforming and releasing your tensions so that real change, awareness and therapeutic healing can occur on all levels of your emotional and physical wellbeing.

Why choose Sensorium Therapy?

Being stuck in our past emotions usually shows up in our bodies and our lives as depression, anxiety, lethargy, exhaustion, inability to stick to things/see things through to the end, low motivation, panic, chronic fatigue, dissociation, numbness, IBS and many other physical and emotional symptoms. However, unlike other models of therapy that focus on eliminating your symptoms and behaviours, sensorium therapy takes you deeper into your symptoms with the touch and trust of a confident, skilled therapist with the absolute knowing that your symptoms and arising sensations are the key to healing your trauma.

Sensorium therapy whilst being a system of therapy that has its roots in science, meditation, mindfulness and other forms of ancient healing, touch and massage also incorporates the verbal expression of your sensations, so that you can integrate your whole mind-body experience into a deeper healing therapeutic practice that permeates through all aspects of your life and wellbeing.

What happens during a treatment?

As with all of my clients – I will begin my work with wherever you are when you walk into the treatment room and with whatever your body is displaying in the moment. Working in this “present moment experience” allows us both to focus on whatever your body wants to bring to your attention so that the you can explore its deeper meaning and hidden messages.

The treatment itself is both private and safe and will involve a combination of deep relaxing touch and movement of my hands over the many muscles, facia and energy networks of your body. And then, either during or after your treatment you can have the opportunity to explore with words and talking how you physically and emotionally experienced the treatment and what it may mean to you on a deeper level so that you can integrate these experiences into your life outside the therapy sessions.

By moving slowly, we can teach your body and mind how to relax so that experiences and sensations that were too difficult or raw to deal with in the past can rise to the surface to be dealt with now in a safe and nurturing process of deep understanding, integration and letting go.

Simply put, sensorium therapy is a deep and relaxing therapy that helps you release the negative sensations that have been residing in your body so that the you can live your life without “the baggage” and “heaviness” of your past experiences. It shows you new ways of connecting with yourself and your body and leads to the possibility of a whole new different emotional response and a new understanding of yourselves and others.

How does Sensorium Therapy work?

Just like any other therapy, sensorium therapy aims to help you understand yourself and your experiences so that you can change aspects of yourself and your life that you are not fully satisfied with. However unlike other therapies – it works with your body and your mind to access and release deeper emotional wounds so that the associated sensations such as anxiety, fear, depression and disconnection are no longer a dominant part of how you feel and live your life.

Like a snake shedding its skin, painful emotions and experiences tend to shed themselves in layers. However behind each layer of pain or painful emotion that is experienced – lies an open new space for new beginnings and new experiences.

Is Sensorium Therapy similar to massage?

Sensorium therapy is similar to massage in that it relaxes the body and works with the physical aspects of healing and rejuvenation, however the touch I use is experienced as something far more advanced than a usual massage treatment due to the fact that I am trying to connect you with the emotional messages, stories and experiences within your physical structure. So whilst I will still work with the accumulated knots and tensions you feel in the muscles and structure of your body, I will be also be working with the accumulated experiences you have encountered in your life.

Another difference is how I will work with your body, during a normal massage treatment, a traditionally trained massage therapist will often dig right into your knots or tensions to release the pain from the centre of where the pain is residing, which may feel good at the time, however what it really does is cause the muscles to tighten which then makes the emotional pain that lies behind this place of tension go even deeper into your body.

Sensorium therapy is different because it begins to unfold your physical knots from the edges to the centre just like a fisherman would when working to release knots in his fishing nets. Working from the edges to the centre allows your body to relax and trust the hands of your therapist which allows the emotional issues that are behind your physical structure to come to the surface and release themselves.

How many treatments would I need to have and what results could I expect to see?

When we work with pain, emotional or otherwise we are working not only with the tensions in your body and the resulting sensations of anxiety, depression, panic, guilt, shame, sadness etc. but also with the layers of resistance (emotional and physical) you have placed there to try and keep this pain contained.

The number of sessions you may need to resolve this pain and bring it safely out of your body can never be estimated as it really is a unique experience for every single person I meet at my practice. For some people only 3 or 4 treatments are enough to help them move forward with their lives, whereas for others a weekly appointment of 1 or 2 treatments over a period of weeks or even months maybe necessary to make the progress they need.

Trying to avoid pain is a normal reaction, however what goes in must come out, otherwise we end up with unresolved issues remaining in our body long after the experiences that caused them occurred which end up seeping out into our everyday life.

The most important thing about this therapy is that “you” are the person in control of how fast or how slow you wish to progress. And also that “you” are in control of how often or how frequent you want to have your treatments. And because we work with the “here and now” of your body and what it wishes to share with you there are no initial time plans, homework or frameworks involved at any point throughout your treatments.

In my work, I am much more interested in helping bring awareness to your body, so that you can make decisions from a new sense of intuitive knowing rather than from what I know. And whilst I am more than happy to share my knowledge around healing and use my hands and experience to help you reconnect with yourself, I will always view the knowledge you bring as the most important aspect of our work together.

If you would like to discuss any of the points raised above or any other aspect of sensorium therapy with Zara then please call her direct on 07756 3366 06 or via her online booking form by clicking here.

Appointments are currently available Monday to Saturday, 10am until 7pm and are priced according to your individual circumstances. (Sliding scale of £38.00 to £48.00 is the usual price most clients need to pay for a 1 hour and 20 minute treatment and between £48.00 and £68.00 for a 2 hour treatment.)