STT is a gentle yet effective way of working with chronic stress and symptoms of trauma. It can provide near immediate relief from long-lasting issues traumatic experiences force us to live with, improving the body-mind connection, alleviating distress and enhancing our self-understanding, and through that, self-compassion. When we learn that the patterns of behaviour we exhibit and often judge our selves very harshly for are, in fact, highly developed survival strategies our intelligent body-mind system created to help us cope, we can begin to soften our attitude towards our suffering. By learning to listen and understand the language of our bodies we can begin to lessen our fear and anxiety and instead improve our courage, resilience and understanding.

One of the most important elements of STT is safety. The way it differs from traditional talking therapies is that you will never be asked to recall any traumatic memories and experiences unless you are willing to do so. The therapy process is incremental – we gently touch on the difficult material but always return back to the baseline of safety and presence – the goal is to lessen and release the stress stored within the nervous system, not to create more of it. Living with unresolved trauma is inherently stressful, so the process of undoing it should have the opposite quality. We always follow the lead of the body and never go into things sooner than you are ready for – that can be re-traumatizing. The presence of an empathetic, receptive witness