Our psychosomatic regulation approach addresses physical illnesses or other conditions caused or aggravated by a mental-emotional factor such as internal conflict or stress, PTSD, intrusive medical procedures and shock trauma. The National Institutes of Health has estimated that anywhere between 75% to 90% of all doctor's visits on the year 2007 were due to stress or anxiety-related causes.
 
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) can be viewed as an energy-management system, since it controls the release of most important hormones in the body including cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine and dopamine. When the ANS detects a threat, whether real or perceived, it causes the glandular system to release response hormones to prepare the body for a survival situation.
 
These hormones and chemical signals should remain in the bloodstream for a few minutes at most. In our contemporary world, we are faced with thousands of conflicting stimuli which our ANS cannot process into coherent and straight-forward responses. Thus stress hormones are chronically released into the bloodstream, severely draining the body's resources.
 
We share large parts of the ANS with reptiles, which are unable to feel emotions or make rational decisions, or reason in the abstract. This part of us is single-minded: kill or be killed, fight or flee - or feign death (freeze). The way out of trauma begins by helping the client engage higher neural structures in the nervous system that can feel affect and reason in the abstract.
 
When fight/flight fails, the ANS enters into what is known as freeze. This is the state where many human beings find themselves today. There are many people however, who are also "stuck" either on fight or flight. This "stuckness" is the physiological genesis of trauma. This is where our work begins, helping the ANS complete unfinished cycles of threat activation into de-activation.