Somato Emotional Release St Petersburg FL
SomatoEmotional Release Treatment — Relief for Trauma & Chronic Pain
How SomatoEmotional Release Treatment Works
If trauma, chronic pain, or unresolved emotional stress has been affecting your health and daily life, SomatoEmotional Release treatment at Body Wisdom CranioSacral Therapy in St Petersburg FL offers a gentle, proven path to lasting relief. As an Advanced Level CranioSacral Therapist with 20+ years of experience, Sandy Schell specializes in treating the physical patterns that trauma leaves behind in your body’s tissues and nervous system — providing real relief where other approaches haven’t.
Somato Emotional Release is a comprehensive way of releasing and neutralizing negative experiences and emotions that get stuck in our tissues and can cause things like:
- aches
- physical pain
- depression
- anxiety
- sleep pattern changes
- unexplained stress
- feeling “off”
- mood swings
- increased emotional sensitivity
Negative experiences, both physical and emotional, can get trapped in our fascia and tissues, which cause disruptions in how our cells function and communicate with each other and with the nervous system. Optional functioning and communication become compromised, which diminish our health, our vitality, and quality of our daily life.
Somato Emotional Release (SER) is a gentle, non-invasive therapy that combines hands-on therapy of CranioSacral Therapy with a focus on mind-body awareness to facilitate the release of negative experiences that have caused stress, tension patterns and diminished functioning in the body.
When the body is able to unwind and release these negative, stuck patterns, patients experience a lifting of heaviness, energy moving in areas that have felt disconnect, pain going away, and other pleasant sensations, which can continue for a day or so beyond the session.
An Example Of Somato Emotional Release
Ann had been stopped at a stop light, arguing with her partner, when she was rear-ended. She saw the car coming up fast behind her and braced her hands on the steering wheel. While there were no serious injuries, after the accident, she had lingering pain in her shoulder that even muscle relaxers prescribed by her doctor didn’t really help much.
Ann went to a neurologist, and scans didn’t show any damage to the joint, which was a relief, but the pain continued, and was slowly getting worse. She went for massage and other therapies, which helped temporarily, but the relief didn’t last. She started to become irritable, and began having challenges at work.
A friend of Ann’s referred her to me, and Ann described how this accident was affecting her shoulder, her sleep, her mood, her work, her relationship, and her daily activities.
During the session, we did some SER, with Ann briefly observing herself in the car while I worked with her shoulder. During this, Ann was able to make a gentle mind-body connection between her body experiencing the accident and her emotions of the argument and the accident. Ann left the session feeling better, with decreased pain.
She was understandably a bit skeptical that the pain had really left, but when I checked in with her a couple days later, the pain had not returned, and her mood was bright and much more cheerful.
Ann came in a few weeks later as a follow-up, and was still feeling great, and grateful for the SER, which had unlocked her shoulder and helped her to get her health and life back on track.
Related Post: Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury – A Comprehensive Guide
Why SomatoEmotional Release Treatment Produces Lasting Results
The mind-body connection has been studied extensively. Psychoneuroimmunology explores the relationship between the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system. Research shows how emotional states can affect one’s health, including the immune system, which underscores the importance of addressing emotional well-being for overall health.
The neurobiology of emotions reveals how our brain processes and integrates our emotional experiences with physical sensations. Understanding these connections show how unprocessed emotions can cause pain or illness, which underlines the need to release stuck emotions and tension patterns to relieve symptoms and maintain one’s health.
Chronic emotional stress can have profound effects on the body, contributing to a wide range of health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, lung disease, liver disease, digestive issues, weakened immunity.
Studies have shown that by releasing negative emotions or trauma stored in the body can lead to profound improvements in mental and physical well-being.
Addressing emotional stress and tension patterns lodged in the body can alleviate physical symptoms and enhance one’s well-being and quality of daily life. From easing chronic pain to improving one’s relationships, SER offers a cathartic release that goes beyond words.
Trauma
Trauma can have a profound impact on an individual’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Trauma can affect the way you think about yourself, how you react to stress, and it can affect your relationships, career, health, and your daily living.
“Emotions are constantly being generated – subconsciously or consciously – in response to the reactivation of memories or unsatisfied goals. The touch to X area is simply a reliable stimulus to reconstruct the pattern associated with that traumatic event.” Mark Olson, PhD, LMT, owner of the Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork
When trauma isn’t processed fully, it can linger long past the actual event. This happens with people who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The trauma causes physiological changes in the brain and in the nervous system.
Trauma can even effect your posture or how you sit or sleep at night. Notice that when you feel confident, you tend to stand more upright than when you’re feeling vulnerable. These unconscious patterns begin to become habitual when trauma or emotions aren’t fully processed.
What SomatoEmotional Release Treatment Addresses In Your Body
There are tendencies for where emotions get stuck in the body, as the chart above indicates. Not everyone feels the same emotions in the same areas of the body though.
Anger tends to be felt most often in the upper body and head, which may explain the expression “hot headed”.
Anxiety is often felt in the stomach or the chest.
Trauma Release
Ever feel like having a good cry or screaming into a pillow? Many of us have been taught to be strong, keep moving forward, bury our pain and emotions. Over time, this can lead to repressed emotions. Research has shown that repressing our emotions can cause health issues and depress our immune system functioning.
Often there are things we experienced all the way back to childhood that are still lingering in our subconscious and our body, such as abuse, neglect, bullying, loss of a loved one, accidents, or injuries.
Releasing trauma can be facilitated with an experience Somato Emotional Release Therapist, who can help you with gently connecting with your emotions, acknowledging them, as facilitating release and processing from your mind and body, allowing for more optimal health and functioning to return.
If trauma, chronic pain, or emotional overwhelm has been holding you back, SomatoEmotional Release with CranioSacral Therapy offers a gentle path to release what’s been stored in your body, without re-traumatization.
📞 Call or text: 727-415-4772
✉️ Email: body.wizdom@gmail.com
Advanced CranioSacral Therapy • 20+ Years Experience
Somatic Therapy
Somatic Therapy is safe, gentle, and body-focused, focusing on the body to discover the experiences and emotions lodged in the tissues of your body.
9 Benefits of Somato Emotional Release
- Stress reduction
- Reduced pain & discomfort
- Improved emotional regulation
- Reduced anxiety
- Reduced depression
- Feeling more at ease
- Healing of past trauma
- Increased energy
- Improved relationships
Common Questions About Somato Emotional Release
What happens after an SER Session?
CranioSacral Therapy and Somato Emotional Release are meant to facilitate release of tension and strain patterns, as well as trauma and emotions that are lodged in your body. After the session, there is usually a 1-2 day processing time wherein the Central Nervous System will gently reorganize in a more optimal manner from the releases. Your body will also reorganize around the session releases during this processing time.
During the processing period, many people describe feeling energy moving around in their body, or feeling lighter, or noticing that X part of their body doesn’t hurt anymore. Others have described not feeling as angry, reactive, or anxious after a SER session.
How many sessions will I need?
The number of sessions depends on the individual. Age, health history, trauma history, how long emotions or trauma have been stuck in the body – all these are factors, and each person responds to SER differently. For some it may take just a few sessions to feel physically and emotionally better, for others, it may take a little longer to release long-standing, deeply set traumas.
SomatoEmotional Release Treatment in St Petersburg FL
When looking to begin your journey with SER, finding an experienced therapist is important for your success in gently discovering and processing past trauma and emotions stuck in your body.
Hi, I’m Sandy Schell, a Certified CranioSacral and Somato Emotional Release Therapist with 20+ years experience. As an Advanced Level Therapist, I’ve helped people with a wide variety of health conditions. My primary focus is CranioSacral Therapy and Somato Emotional Release, although I will also combine other modalities as necessary into a session, such as Myofascial Release, Reiki, Grid Balancing, Vagus Nerve Balancing.
CranioSacral Therapy St Petersburg FL has a long, proven track record of being able to restore health and vitality by focusing on the core elements that “run” the body – the nervous system, it’s fluids, rhythms, and fascia (connective tissue).
CranioSacral Therapy is based in Osteopathic Medicine, and dates back to the early 1900’s. It’s safe, effective, and results-oriented.
The proper functioning of your nervous system is vitally important to your health and well-being. Your nervous system is based in communication, which happens through the cells, the energetic impulses, the fluids, and the connective tissues of the body. Having clear, strong, healthy communication, energy, and fluid movement is what underlies a health body. By focusing on the nervous system, a properly trained, experienced CranioSacral Therapist can release stress patterns at the causative level, resulting in symptoms disappearing once balance and communication throughout the body are restored.
Musculoskeletal tightness, neurological imbalances, autoimmune disease, many types of pain, and organ dysfunction are some of the many categories of health conditions that typically respond well with CranioSacral Therapy.
Please call for a complimentary consultation to discuss your particulars and goals.
Last Updated on 04/01/2026 by Sandy Schell
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