Somatic compassion is a natural human way to offer emotional support to another person, to help resolve painful events, let go of painful feelings, and find new positive possibilities in life.

The method uses compassionate presence enhanced with particular forms of affective touch, such as soothing strokes applied to the upper arms and the face. 

While this combination of compassion and touch is intuitive, for example in the way a mother comforts a distressed child, recent advances in neuroscience show how somatic compassion has a powerful healing impact at any age. Specialised nerves in the skin detect a soothing touch and create many rapid changes in brain function, allowing us to process and heal painful life events and feelings. 

Let’s look at the two elements…

Compassion

Compassion is the human quality of understanding another person’s suffering combined with the desire to relieve that suffering – it’s more than just a feeling, it’s an action and a motivation. Compassion is beneficial to both the giver and receiver and elicits powerful healing responses, for instance in reducing pain and promoting faster recovery from illness or injury. It combines elements of empathy, loving kindness, human bonding, and a desire to reduce suffering.

Affective Touch

While most forms of touch are localised and give us information about the environment, affective touch is a non-localised form of touch that creates an emotional response. Examples include our intuitive action when we touch and rub the upper arm of someone in distress, or express love by caressing the face of another.

These forms of soothing touch have evolved as a critical element of our social connection and they elicit very powerful biological responses. Both the giver and the receiver of this touch feel more connected, safe and loved. This touch quickly regulates our agitated nervous systems, reducing anxiety, fear and physical stress responses.

Somatic compassion in practice

Somatic compassion taps into our inherent capacity for healing and provides methods that community and family members can safely use to provide emotional support, heal past hurts and enhance personal strengths and resilience. These methods are underpinned by neuroscience and may in the long run prove equal to, or better than mainstream approaches to mental health – such as counselling or medication – for common problems such as anxiety, depression, phobias, self-harm, and past events that have traumatised us.

We can make more sense of how somatic compassion works by understanding how and when trauma gets stored in the brain. We get through some very difficult life events without being traumatised – when we retain power, are able to problem solve, or take some action to overcome the threat. But when we are emotionally vulnerable and feel trapped and powerless, the trauma gets stored in the brain. Traumatic memories can be re-visited and if we feel completely safe and supported, the trauma will dissolve away. Somatic compassion creates this feeling of safety accompanied by rapid brain changes that process and start to dissolve away the traumatic memory. Learn more about trauma here.

Somatic compassion is not a therapy, it simply taps into our inherent capacity to heal when we feel safe and supported. It should not be used in an attempt to treat major mental illness, such as chronic PTSD, psychosis, suicidal depression, or panic disorders. Please consult your mental health professional for help and advice on such matters.

Somatic compassion also embodies a philosophy regarding our approach to mental health. It’s a move away from individualism towards human connection and community; it removes healing practices from the economic system, thereby making them available to all; and it takes back our healing power from the control of health professionals.

A vast body of research shows that social isolation and loneliness have major harmful impacts on both our mental and physical health, increasing the risk for hospital admission and shortening our lifespan. Conversely, close supportive relationships enhance health and wellbeing, of which the most powerful are those enabled with compassion and touch.