The Seven R’s of Relational Integrity

A somatic-ethical compass for living in right relation—with self, others, and the wider field.

1. Respect The root of all ethical contact. Honouring difference, dignity, and sovereignty—in self and in others.

2. Rights What must be protected and upheld. Bodily autonomy, voice, boundaries, and justice—individually and collectively.

3. Responsibility The ability to respond with presence. Choosing care over reaction. Being accountable without collapsing or blaming.

4. Relatedness We are made through relationship. Connection to land, lineage, body, community, and the more-than-human world.

5. Resonance The felt sense of what is true. Attunement to inner knowing, subtle feedback, and the larger energetic field.

6. Resilience Life’s capacity to reorganise under pressure. Adaptive strength rooted in the body, community, and the regenerative field.

7. Reciprocity Giving and receiving in sacred balance. Living in cycles of exchange, gratitude, and mutual nourishment.

Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a body-based approach to healing trauma and chronic stress.  Developed by Dr Peter Levine, SE™ supports the nervous system in resolving the physiological effects of trauma by working with the body’s natural rhythms, rather than revisiting or re-telling traumatic stories.

Trauma isn’t in the event itself, but in how the nervous system responds when overwhelmed.  SE™ gently guides the body to deactivate survival energy and restore balance.  This process can bring relief to long-standing symptoms (physical, emotional, and relational) even when talking therapies haven’t.

How SE™ Works

SE™ supports the body’s capacity to self-regulate by working at the level of sensation, movement, and instinct.  Rather than reliving traumatic memories, SE™ focuses on the ‘felt sense’ the moment-to-moment physical experience in the body, to gradually release bound survival energy and restore equilibrium.

Some key principles of SE™:

• Stabilisation before processing: SE™ first supports safety and regulation before approaching any traumatic material.

• Titration: SE™ works slowly, with small amounts of activation at a time, so that healing is integrated rather than overwhelming.

• Pendulation: Clients are guided to move between activation and resource states, helping the nervous system reintegrate this natural internal movement.

• Working from the edges: SE™ often begins away from the most intense part of the trauma, approaching it indirectly and gently.

• Trust in the body: SE™ helps clients reconnect with their internal resources, growing their capacity to feel and trust their bodily experience.

This gradual and resourced process helps renegotiate trauma without retraumatisation, allowing people to feel more present, empowered, and connected in their lives.

How SE™ Differs from Talk Therapy

SE™ is a bottom-up approach, working with the body’s physiology and survival systems, rather than beginning with thoughts or emotions.  While cognitive and emotional insights may emerge, they arise as a natural part of the somatic process rather than being the focus.

Traditional talk therapy can sometimes overwhelm the nervous system when trauma is discussed without adequate regulation.  SE™ gently supports the body to complete interrupted survival responses, helping restore the natural flow of life force, without needing to relive the past.

Who Can Benefit from Somatic Experiencing®?

Anyone seeking to reconnect with their body’s natural ability to heal and regulate can benefit from Somatic Experiencing®.  SE™ can be supportive for people of all ages who’ve experienced:

• Car accidents, falls, or sports injuries

• Medical trauma or surgery

• Physical or sexual assault, abuse, or violence

• Developmental trauma, neglect, or abandonment

• Loss, grief, or prolonged stress

• Birth trauma or early attachment disruptions

• Natural disasters or witnessing traumatic events

Even when trauma is not consciously remembered, its effects may show up in symptoms like anxiety, chronic pain, emotional reactivity, dissociation, or shutdown.  SE™ works gently to unwind these patterns, helping restore a sense of safety, connection, and vitality.

Through Somatic Experiencing®, many people rediscover their innate capacity to heal.  Over time, this work can support deeper presence, more authentic relationships, and a greater sense of aliveness in everyday life.

NeuroAffective Touch® is a somatic modality developed by Dr Aline LaPierre, that uses touch as a vital bridge to body-mind integration. By highlighting the primary role of the body and emphasizing its equal importance to the mind, NeuroAffective Touch® (NATouch™) addresses emotional, relational, and developmental deficits that cannot be reached by verbal means alone.

A polyvagal-informed psychobiological approach, NeuroAffective Touch® integrates the key elements of somatic psychotherapy, attachment and developmental theory, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and affective and interpersonal neurobiology.

NeuroAffective Touch® engages thousands of sensory nerve receptors in the joints, muscles, connective tissue, and organs.  These sensory receptors send information directly to the brain, hence the term “neuro.”

The “affective” part refers to the strong emotional impact touch can have.  The nervous system and emotions are deeply intertwined and cannot be separated.

How NATouch™ Works

Through the interweaving of talk and touch, NeuroAffective Touch® sessions facilitate embodied awareness, a felt sense from which new possibilities for identity and self-expression can emerge.  NATouch™ works at deep, often wordless layers of experience, supporting integration beneath memory and language, within the tissues of the body.

Why Use Therapeutic Touch?

Touch is our first language.  Long before words, we are shaped through contact, being held and mirrored, or left alone.  When early relational experiences are disrupted, the body holds those patterns in implicit memory: muscle tone, posture, physiological regulation.

NATouch™ works “bottom-up” by accessing these deep nervous system layers.  It is especially helpful for people who:

• Have experienced early trauma, neglect, or attachment wounding

• Struggle to connect emotionally despite talk therapy

• Feel stuck in their body or disconnected from feelings

• Experience symptoms that don’t shift with talking alone

What Can NATouch™ Support?

NATouch® may support healing from:

• Early relational trauma and neglect

• Developmental deficits and unmet needs

• PTSD and complex trauma

• Anxiety, shutdown, and hypervigilance

• Chronic stress and depression

• Dissociation and disconnection from the body

• Chronic pain and tension

• Attachment difficulties and emotional regulation

• Addiction, grief, and loss

• Reconnecting with impulse and inner movement

• Formation of new neural pathways

By supporting nervous system regulation and integration, NATouch™ helps restore safety, trust, and the capacity for authentic connection.

Somatic Constellations™ is an integrative approach, blending somatic therapy with constellation work to support deep insight and embodied change.

In constellations, we use the mind’s eye, other people, or simple objects to represent people, parts, or systems.

In Somatic Constellations™, we combine the representational power of constellations with the embodied presence of somatic therapy.  We slow things down and support the body to stay present with what arises, so that shifts can be integrated in the mind-body.

The process draws on several forms of constellation work, as well as the use of the GenoGram.

Structural Component

A process for mapping the inner field — sometimes referred to as the intrapsychic world. Using representatives or internal images, we explore how parts of the self have been shaped by family, culture, and experience. This is similar to traditional parts-work-focused models such as Transactional Analysis (TA), Ego State Therapy, or Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS).

Family & Systemic Component

This lens expands outward to include the wider systems we’re part of—familial, cultural, ancestral. It often reveals dynamics and patterns passed down across generations, offering opportunities for resolution through embodied presence, witnessing, and reconnection to the greater whole.

The GenoGram

A genogram is a visual map of a family system, showing relationships, patterns, and significant events across generations.  Although the genogram was formalised as a clinical tool in the 1980s, the practice of mapping lineage and relational order is ancient - seen in traditional Aboriginal systems of kinship, as well as in Celtic kinship-clan structures that preserved genetic lines..

—————-

When someone is struggling with an issue

• a relationship

• a physical symptom

• a life decision

• a recurring emotional pattern

…they’re not only reacting to the situation itself, but to an internal image or schema they carry about it.

This inner schema or map contains beliefs, emotional states, sensations and felt senses, internal images, and automatic behaviours.  It shapes how we perceive and relate, not just to the issue, but to ourselves, and to current and future experiences.

When something upsetting, threatening occurs, our orientation system attempts to track it so our response can keep us safe.  The eyes, and other senses, search for the source of threat or loss. Sometimes they find it and become fixated; other times (such as in the case of absence or neglect), they can’t locate anything - so the nervous system remains caught in this unresolved searching.

In Somatic Constellations™, we help re-map this process.

By placing representative objects in the field, we give form to what was previously held internally - images, sensations, meanings, etc.

These placements reflect how the brain and body have unconsciously mapped the situation: the self, the other, and where the missing or burdened pieces lie.

As these positions are seen, named, and gently adjusted, a new image begins to form, one the body can integratively orient toward.  We support the orientation system, including the eyes, to track and land, working with coupling dynamics and embodying a new map of spatial arrangement and somatic tracking. The system can complete any defensive or protective movements, then settle -  a different kind of knowing and reorganisation can arise.

⸻

Somatic Constellations™ is not about fixing something from the outside.

It’s an invitation for the body-mind system to re-map its relationship to what is inside

While I am trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), I don’t practise it in the traditional protocol-based way.   

Instead, I weave the essence of what makes EMDR effective- bilateral stimulation - into my SomaticMaps™ approach, combining somatic awareness, creative expression, and relational safety to support integration and healing.

Bilateral stimulation refers to rhythmic, left–right experiences that support the brain and body to process stress and integrate overwhelming or fragmented experiences.  This might include slow, rhythmic left–right tapping (on the thighs, hands, or arms), gentle alternating foot movements, side-to-side eye tracking, bilateral auditory tones, or the use of handheld buzzers that vibrate alternately in each hand.

These practices can gently help regulate the nervous system, support sensory integration, and create space for patterns of connection and coherence to emerge.

Rather than pushing for desensitisation alone, I’m interested in resensitising … reawakening the body’s capacity for curiosity, creativity, and aliveness.

This is especially important in work with complex trauma and attachment, where safety, pacing, and trust in the body’s rhythm are essential.

Trauma is not defined by an event in itself, but by how one or a group of nervous systems, at a particular point in time, respond to an overwhelming threat or rupture, especially when there is no support or resolution.

In those moments, the body does what it’s designed to do: it activates protective responses like fight, flight, freeze, or collapse.

These states are governed by the autonomic nervous system, a deeply embedded biological system that constantly scans for safety or danger, often beneath our conscious awareness.

When survival responses aren’t able to complete (because we were too young, isolated, or overpowered) the energy of that response can remain stuck in the body, creating patterns of dysregulation that show up as anxiety, numbing, reactivity, or a sense of being disconnected from self and others.

From a polyvagal perspective, trauma disrupts our capacity for neuroception - our ability to detect safety accurately - and interferes with the rhythm between mobilisation and rest.

It’s not just emotional; it’s relational and somatic.

The body may remember through sensation, posture, and tension what the mind has pushed away.

Healing involves creating enough safety, attunement, and right pacing for the nervous system to renegotiate these unfinished survival states.

Approaches like Somatic Experiencing® and NeuroAffective Touch® support this process by restoring connection - first within the body, then with others - so that regulation, presence, and integration become possible again.

As Bessel van der Kolk reminds us, “the body keeps the score”, and healing begins when the body is invited back into the conversation.

Understanding Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)

Complex trauma, often referred to as C-PTSD, arises from repeated or prolonged exposure to traumatic events, especially those that are relational or occur in situations where escape wasn’t possible. While the “C” stands for complex, you might also think of it as chronic or childhood, reflecting how often the trauma is long-term and begins early in life. However, complex trauma can also develop in adulthood, particularly in situations involving captivity, coercion, or sustained abuse.

Three common features that tend to define complex trauma:

• The trauma was caused by someone close or trusted

• The trauma occurred repeatedly or over a long period

• The survivor remained in ongoing contact with the perpetrator or environment

What types of events can cause C-PTSD?

C-PTSD can result from a range of experiences, including (but not limited to):

• Childhood neglect or abandonment

• Childhood abuse (physical, psychological, and/or sexual)

• Ongoing domestic violence or abuse

• Living in a war-torn area

• Being held hostage or prisoner of war

• Sex trafficking

• Slavery or torture

• Kidnapping

• Long-term exposure to crisis conditions

• Racial trauma

• Religious trauma

What are the symptoms of C-PTSD?

Survivors of C-PTSD often experience many of the same symptoms as those with PTSD, such as:

• Flashbacks

• Hypervigilance

• Emotional numbing

• Avoidance

In addition, C-PTSD may involve:

• Difficulty regulating emotions

• Distorted self-perception

• Persistent shame or guilt

• Interpersonal struggles and patterns of mistrust

• Dissociation (feeling disconnected from body or surroundings)

• Loss of meaning, hope, or trust in the world

A hallmark of C-PTSD is emotional flashbacks, sudden and intense emotional states that feel overwhelming but aren’t connected to a specific memory. These can make the present feel just as unsafe as the past, without survivors always knowing why.

The Body Remembers

The effects of complex trauma aren’t just emotional or mental, they often show up in the body too.  Survivors may experience ongoing issues like:

• Fatigue

• Digestive problems

• Headaches

• Muscle tension

• Chronic pain

These symptoms can appear without a clear medical cause and may come and go depending on stress or triggers.

In Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) and NeuroAffective Touch® (NATouch®), we recognise these as syndromal patterns, signs of survival stress held in the body.  Through gentle, body-based therapy, we support the nervous system to release these patterns, restore regulation, and ease the long-term effects of trauma.  This work can reduce chronic symptoms and help the body feel safe, present, and connected again.

Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr Stephen Porges, offers an understanding of how our autonomic nervous system responds to safety, danger, and life threat.

Rather than a simple fight-or-flight model, it describes a three-part system: the ventral vagal pathway (social engagement and connection), the sympathetic branch (mobilisation—fight or flight), and the dorsal vagal system (immobilisation—shutdown or collapse).

These responses aren’t chosen consciously - they’re automatic, body-based reactions shaped by neuroception, the nervous system’s way of detecting safety or threat beneath our thinking awareness.

In trauma, the nervous system can get stuck in survival states long after the original threat has passed. People may feel anxious, numb, hypervigilant, or disconnected. These are symptoms that reflect a nervous system doing its best to protect, but struggling to return to regulation.

Polyvagal-informed therapy helps bring awareness and compassion to these states, not as pathology but as adaptations.

Somatic Experiencing® and NeuroAffective Touch® both work gently with these physiological responses, supporting the body to move between states with more flexibility, and helping to complete survival impulses that were once interrupted.

As Deb Dana beautifully says, “Story follows state.”

This means how we feel in our body deeply shapes how we think, connect, and make meaning. By listening to the body’s cues, restoring safety through co-regulation, and tracking small shifts in sensation and rhythm, trauma healing becomes possible.

Polyvagal theory gives us a compassionate map - a way to understand our nervous system not as broken, but as brilliantly protective, and ready to return to connection when the conditions are right.

Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to the natural variation in time between each heartbeat - a subtle rhythm that reflects the flexibility and resilience of the autonomic nervous system.

Rather than aiming for a perfectly steady beat, a healthy system shows dynamic shifts in heart rhythm, adapting fluidly to both challenge and rest.

In trauma work, we’re often supporting this kind of physiological flexibility: helping the body move out of stuck survival states and re-engage its natural capacity for regulation.

In a flexible nervous system, the in-breath causes heart rate to increase slightly, and the out-breath causes the heart rate to decrease slightly.  Heart rate variability (HRV) is the difference between these two rates

This natural rise and fall is called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and it’s a sign of good vagal tone and ventral vagal activation.

The vagus nerve plays a central role in this dance, acting as a communication line between the heart, lungs, gut, and brain.

Practices that foster ventral vagal tone - such as co-regulation, gentle breath awareness, orienting, and titrated movement - can support shifts in HRV over time.

Research from organisations like HeartMath shows that cultivating heart–brain coherence (through breath and emotion-focused practices) can increase HRV and enhance resilience.

From an SE™ perspective,  we  invite the body to rediscover safety, at its own pace.  As regulation grows, the rhythm of the heart often follows, becoming more spacious, adaptive, and alive.

Dissociation is a protective response in the autonomic nervous system that helps manage overwhelming stress or threat. When the system assesses that active fight-or-flight is not possible or safe, it may shift into a freeze or shut-down state, disconnecting from sensation, emotion, or present-moment awareness. This can manifest as numbness, derealisation, depersonalisation, or a sense of watching life from the outside.

From a somatic perspective, dissociation is not simply a psychological issue, it is a physiological state, often accompanied by changes in heart rate, muscle tone, and interoceptive awareness. It is a way the body organises itself around survival. Working with dissociation requires a slow, titrated approach that honours the body’s pacing, supports tracking, and rebuilds capacity for presence without reactivating overwhelm.

Epigenetics is the study of how our experiences can shape the way our genes express themselves, without changing the DNA itself. It shows us that while we may inherit a genetic blueprint, the environment we live in (including stress, nourishment, relationships, and safety) can influence how that blueprint is read and carried out in the body. In other words, our genes aren’t fixed instructions, they are responsive and dynamic.

Through a somatic lens, this means the nervous system doesn’t just reflect our story. It also carries echoes of what came before us. The imprint of intergenerational stress, trauma, or resilience can travel through families, not only through behaviour and parenting/caregiving patterns, but biologically. Epigenetics helps us understand how ancestral wounding might live in our tissues … and how safety, and connection can turn those signals down or even transform them.

Neglect is not what happened—it’s what didn’t. It’s the absence of essential relational experiences like touch, attunement, and emotional mirroring. In early development, when caregivers don’t consistently respond to a child’s needs or signals, the system doesn’t just register danger, it begins to adapt around the absence of recognition. Without a regulating other, the child’s nervous system is left to organise itself in isolation. This kind of early aloneness can register not just as threat, but as a more existential experience - one of annihilation or non-being.

In this vacuum, children may learn to feel invisible or unnecessary. To survive, they might disconnect from their needs, mute their emotions, or orient around being low-impact. Over time, this can shape an adult nervous system that feels flat, overly self-reliant, chronically tense, or numb. Many describe feeling cut off from their inner world, unsure of what they need or whether their needs matter, and struggle to receive care even when it’s available.

Neglect leaves no explicit memory, but its imprint is deep. Because it often begins before language or narrative memory, those affected may not understand why they feel the way they do. Still, the body remembers. SE® and NeuroAffective Touch™ help us recognise how these early relational wounds shape our autonomic responses and implicit body maps. Shame, self-blame, and a mistrust of closeness often emerge in this early void. Even safe, present-day intimacy can feel overwhelming or unsafe.

Where trauma is often about too much—too fast, too soon—neglect is about not enough. However, it is still a form of trauma . Over time, that lack can come to shape a core belief that the world is barren, unresponsive, or unable to nourish. Healing begins by slowly introducing new patterns of co-regulation, warm presence, and felt safety. In somatic work, this may include attuned touch, tracking internal signals, and making space for the tiniest moments of connection. With care and time, what was once unreachable can begin to come back into contact.

📚 Recommended Reading for Trauma & Healing

Here are some of the most supportive, client-friendly books I often recommend. They cover trauma, embodiment, attachment, and relational healing in accessible and compassionate ways. Whether you’re just beginning or deepening your healing journey, these books can offer insight, and practical guidance.

⭐️

🌿 Body-Based Trauma Healing

• The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk

  A trauma classic that explains how trauma affects the brain and body. Accessible, story-driven, and deeply validating.

• Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma – Peter A. Levine

  Introduces Somatic Experiencing®, showing how trauma can be released through the body rather than relived in the mind.

• The Body Remembers – Babette Rothschild

  A clear and practical guide to understanding how trauma is stored in the body and how to work with it safely.

• Radical Wholeness – Philip Shepherd

  An invitation to reconnect with the body’s intelligence in a culture that prioritises the head. Deeply philosophical, but super grounding.

⭐️

🌱 Trauma & Health

• When the Body Says No – Gabor Maté

  Connects chronic illness, stress, and trauma. A compassionate look at how emotional suppression impacts the body.

• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts – Gabor Maté

  Explores addiction as a response to trauma and disconnection. Deeply humanising and full of heart.

⭐️

🧠 Understanding the Nervous System

• Anchored – Deb Dana

  A simple and accessible guide to working with the autonomic nervous system using polyvagal-informed practices. Gentle, encouraging, and full of practical tools.

• The Whole-Brain Child – Dan Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson

  A user-friendly introduction to how the brain develops and responds to stress - ideal for adults, parents, and anyone curious about emotional regulation.

⭐️

💞 Attachment & Relational Healing

• Attached – Amir Levine & Rachel Heller

  An easy-to-read guide to attachment styles and how they play out in adult relationships. Especially helpful for those healing early relational wounds.

• Hold Me Tight – Sue Johnson

  Based on Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), this book explores how couples can repair and strengthen emotional bonds through attachment-based connection.

• Wired for Love – Stan Tatkin

  A practical, neuroscience-informed book about building secure-functioning relationships. Warm, playful, and insightful.

• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work - John M. Gottman & Nan Silver

  Offers practical, research-based strategies to build lasting intimacy, resolve conflict, and strengthen the emotional connection between partners.

⭐️

🧩 Parts Work & Complex Trauma

• Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors – Janina Fisher

  Introduces parts work in an accessible way. While written for clinicians, many clients find it empowering and easy to relate to.

⭐️

🧬🌏 Intergenerational, Collective & Systemic Trauma

• It Didn’t Start with You – Mark Wolynn

  Explores inherited family trauma and includes reflective practices to identify and shift transgenerational patterns.

• Healing Collective Trauma – Thomas Hübl

  Explores how trauma affects not only individuals, but families, cultures, and societies. Offers insight and practice for healing at the collective level.

⭐️

If one of these books speaks to you, trust that. You can borrow them from the library. You don’t need to read them all — sometimes a single page, metaphor, or phrase can shift something inside.