ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of somatic awareness in neural oscillations. The practice of somatic awareness begins in embodiment, fostering a compassionate, gentle, and communicative relationship between the mind and the body. Somatic awareness stimulates right-hemispheric processing and reorganization by "putting the spotlight" on neural networks, an intention called "selective attention" that can increase neural firing by 300 percent. When trauma occurs and there is little or no support available to make sense of what is happening, a person's implicit memory system becomes overloaded and interrupts right-hemispheric processing. In therapeutic work with traumatic memories, neural coalitions can be differentiated, releasing the fusion and allowing the neurons to relink into more adaptive coalitions in the present moment. Daily practices for somatic practitioners include embodied meditation on lived experience and journaling the felt sense of dreams. The key to the effectiveness of somatic awareness lies in the wholeness and well-being of embodied practitioners.
