Somatic Archaeology is an indigenous healing approach to clearing generations of historical trauma in mind, body and spirit. Somatic refers to the body, and Archaeology to the study of ancient cultures through examining their remains. Somatic + Archaeology denotes the capacity to excavate familial and cultural memory imprints buried in our body.
Somatic Archeology is a ‘bottom-up’ approach which means you focus on areas of your body that are making you feel stuck or disconnected. In traditional psychotherapy, the Western therapy model uses ‘top-down’ approaches. These ‘top-down’ approaches can give us useful Information about our thoughts and beliefs but does not give us the felt sense of our issues.
Trauma often harbors in our bodies, not just our minds. By going into our bodies first, we are able to get to the root cause of what’s making you feel stuck. According to Somatic Archaeology, we carry traumas, memories, and intergenerational patterns in our muscles, blood, organs, and bones.
Our inherited ancestry behaviors - family predispositions - and the choices or decisions that impact our life course, render us with a set of actions that are not fully acknowledged whether they are our personal actions or they have been borrowed from long before we were born. This set is what molds our subconscious beliefs. Somatic archeology has the power to heal by investigating your personal history and recognizing the physical body's generational influences.
Somatic Archaeology is the process of becoming whole by curing your amnesia and remembering your stories. When you dig, you remember, and when you remember, history is revealed, and when history is revealed, you clearly recognize the trail of stories that formulate your life. This knowledge affords you choices and restores to you the power to manifest your unique destiny in a conscious way. Somatic refers to the body, and Archaeology to the study of ancient cultures through examining their remains. When we bring the two words together, Somatic + Archaeology, we are denoting the capacity to excavate familial and cultural memory imprints buried in our body. Exploring somatic memory and body narratives help us understand what impels us biologically to certain behaviors and symptoms, and provides us with skills to release neurological patterns of historical amnesia so that we can become free to live unburdened, non-fragmented, compassionate and harmonious lives.
These techniques are designed for use in mind-body, mental health and self-care applications. Somatic Archaeology relies on the wisdom of the body to access and process unresolved tension through points of pain, which are referred to as body narratives: inherited and embodied life stories that have not yet become conscious or remembered. Our mind can remember linear or sequential events of our lifetime, but our body remembers antiquated events instinctively, in a language unique to itself—sensation. Tracking our senses, and following them with guided breath and conscious attention, allows memory to reveal itself. In the world of biogeneaology, there is a good reason for the origin of every symptom and the manifestation of all disease, and the code is this: what stays buried persists and what is remembered alleviates. While acknowledgment, activation and reconciliation of the information contained in these memories may bring forth the emotional charge of a historical experience, this will also simultaneously release the persistent anxiety neurologically associated with forced repression, hence creating a relaxation response and reducing physical pain. Somatic Archaeology cultivates a skill set that allows caregivers to safely address the “relaxation response,” a neurophysiological shift innately constructed to “restore order” to our body processes. The methodology of Somatic Archaeology© was designed to excavate memories using a self-directed and instinctive neurophysiological system based on natural law and kincentric principles in order to develop self-awareness and historical reconciliation, fulfilling the need for the next generations to complete the transformation of their ancestors.
The practice of Somatic Archaeology was created by Dr. Ruby Gibson (Lakota). Somatic Archeology helps you ‘unearth’ feelings, sensations, thoughts, unhelpful generational patterns and that are stuck in your mind, body and spiritual self.
“The Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover are the three basic personalities that manifest in our interactions with people and situations. Shifting from one archetype to another will allow you to approach your somatic excavation with confidence and compassion. Embody these three archetypes as you address the fears and self-doubt that are an integral part of the excavation process.