ABSTRACT
Somatic reflection is an embodied way of thinking about lived experience that is a "letting go of habits of mindlessness, as an unlearning rather than a learning". It disrupts habitual perceptions and ways of thinking and opens cognitive processes to the direct experience of the subjective self, providing exciting new answers to tired old questions. Somatic reflection is characterized by mutual phenomenological-based interactions that first differentiate and then integrate sensations and emotions in "pre-reflective" intersubjective relationships. The creative expression of a somatic reflection leads to developmental growth: unformulated inner truth arises in expressive forms and the vast human reservoir of unresolved, generational trauma can be articulated and integrated in a communal way, through ceremony, drama, music, literature, and media. A somatic reflection can initiate a therapeutic encounter, be embedded within an encounter, conclude the processing of lived experience, or mark the closure of a therapeutic relationship. At the heart of somatic reflection is the activity of an embodied reflective witness.
