In the pursuit of holistic well-being, the world of somatic therapy emerges as a transformative gateway to self-discovery and healing. At the forefront of this remarkable field stands Andria Lea, a certified Somatic Therapist associated with the esteemed Somatic Therapy Center. Specializing as a Somatic Rubenfeld Synergist, Andria brings a wealth of expertise, having also undergone training in Integrative Synergy and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Proudly affiliated with both the United States Association of Body Psychology and the International Association of Rubenfeld Synergists, Andria Lea is on a mission to guide individuals on a profound journey toward inner harmony and genuine self-connection. Join Mystic Mag as we delve into the realm of somatic therapy with Andria Lea, exploring the art of embodied healing and the transformative power it holds.
Somatic therapy involves a deep mind-body connection. What unique challenges do you encounter in your practice, and how do you address them to ensure holistic healing for your clients?
I believe that it is incredibly common for people to have a hard time connecting with their body or internal experience. I operate my business both internationally through Zoom and locally here in New York City. I’m sure you can appreciate how in modern society we often operate from our shoulders up—get things done, move through the day, go to work, get home, pick up the kids, do the laundry, etc.
So often I find that when clients are seated on the table (because I always start the introduction to this process with clients seated), the first thing we are integrating for this person is how to slow down and be with themselves without distractions or avoidance. Many people might think it sounds very easy, but if you were sitting down in silence and I stood to your left with my back facing you in close proximity and asked, “How does your body respond to this kind of closeness? What do you feel?” Many people are surprised that they feel pulled away, some people are pulled towards, or they noticed resistance or even saddness or anger.
I use similes, metaphors, images, analogies, and lots of creativity to help them tune into this, probably for the first time in many years. I often suspect (though I do not work with children) that if I had a 10-year-old on the table, they would be able to give me that feedback easily. But something happens as we get older and enter society as peers, lovers, workers, bosses, etc., where we disconnect from our feeling selves. We have more time to experience the “bad” things in life. Many of the clients I work with come from dysfunctional homes, and in those dysfunctional homes it’s very common for feelings to be shamed, judged, or deemed a weakness. Many of my female clients feel that they were often called too sensitive, too emotional, too needy.
A lot of the men I work with associate feelings with weakness or believe they should not have feelings. No one cares about your feelings; they care about your athleticism, intellect, drive, ambition, and capabilities. We often associate capabilities with our heads, not our feelings. So much of my work is allowing these feelings to have some stage time. Our feelings learn from our collective experiences, we’re constantly sending information throughout our body and brain in the form of neurosynaptics.
Those neurosynaptics send information following one rule, one guide: How do I keep this person from feeling bad? Because bad is interpreted as danger, whether it’s getting out of the way of a speeding car or your boss saying, “Can we talk at the end of the day?” It doesn’t care whether it’s physical, emotional, or mindful. If it causes a bad feeling, your body will prioritize that information to learn, document, store, and prevent it from happening again, to avoid it when it does happen, or compartmentalize it to cope with it. We operate on our own information highway of how not to feel bad, and that can be intrusive to how we want to live and who we want to be in that life.
Slowing down is probably the biggest challenge. And then, helping clients meet, greet, and allow the obstacles—their defenders, protectors, protection mechanisms—to come up in those initial sessions. So if a client is leaning to the right when I approach her on the left, that tiny exchange contains so much information about how this body perceives closeness as dangerous, potentially causing the client to feel bad. How long has that system been in place? Does it go back five years? Does it go back to a relationship? Does it go back to a person, or has it always been with you?
Throughout the sessions I help them, drawing from my extensive experience with various bodies, systems, and the privilege of working with people from all over the world with different histories and cultures. It’s much easier to assist clients by offering options, suggestions, and potential responses. “Your shoulders are leaning away. Does it feel like a string is pulling you away from me, or does it come from somewhere deeper inside? Does it feel hot, cold, safe, apprehensive?” There’s a huge difference between resistance and apprehension, and I love the specificity of language. Semantics can be powerful, so when someone uses a specific word we can sink our teeth into it because it’s our guide!
As a Somatic Rubenfeld Synergist trained in Integrative Synergy and IFS, how do you seamlessly integrate these diverse approaches into your therapeutic practice, and what benefits have you observed for your clients?
Rubenfeld Synergy and somatic therapy are incredibly similar in many ways synonymous; when it comes to IFS or Internal Family System it is essentially “parts work”, and parts work is incredibly useful in somatic therapy. In fact, part work is part of our training; IFS simply takes it much further.
So, parts of what I do often looks like a familiar question: “If you could go to dinner with anyone famous, living or dead, who would you choose?” Instead, I ask, “If you could go to dinner with any feeling you’ve experienced in your life, good or bad, what feeling would you like to go to dinner with?” Let’s take it further. How would you feel sitting across the table from that feeling? What knowledge, insight, or guidance would you like to learn from that feeling? That feeling has been with you your whole life and knows you better than I ever will—better than perhaps you even do. What would you want to ask about that feeling? Most people choose anxiety, fear, or other such slippery emotions we wish to reduce.
In parts work, what we’re doing is taking a feeling, and when I say feeling, it’s interchangeable with emotion. When I ask people what emotion they are feeling, it’s very difficult to answer. But when I ask someone, “What does that feel like for you? What’s the feeling?” they can often access it more easily. Getting to know these parts or getting to know these feelings, understanding our fears, anxieties, concerns, worries, neuroses, insecurities, and our lack of joy, is how we can begin to change them. We can treat that feeling as a character in a play, separate from their identity and ego, distinct from what they consciously align as themselves.
Feelings often get left to the wayside until they become a problem, and that’s where I come in to mend the fences, to bridge the communication. Parts work makes that a lot more accessible and less intimidating. It also makes it less scary if I’m working with a client who has fear, insecurity, or shame. Fear can sometimes feel bigger than oneself, ergo the boogeyman tales of old. Feelings like fear, shame, and insecurity tend to hide, so making them a “part” such as an apple you can hold in your hand, makes it much more approachable for the client to engage with without the fear of flooding, retriggering, or intimidation. Parts work levels the playing field between us and our feelings.
What type of services do you offer?
I offer the same service in two different ways. The service is an hour-long session of this work, and it’s always one-on-one. I offer it both remotely, nationally, and internationally, as well as in person locally in New York City.
How has your own journey and evolution in the field of Somatic Therapy influenced your approach, and how do you continue to grow and adapt in response to emerging therapeutic modalities?
Absolutely. I’m going to answer the second part of the question first, get it out of the way. I am insatiably curious about the human experience. I am on so many newsletters, I am part of so many groups because being a solo practitioner can be very lonely. These groups have really emerged a lot lately – Facebook groups, Reddit groups, Discord groups – where people are bringing little nuggets of wisdom and sharing the sources. The Somatic Therapy Center in Philadelphia, where I hold my certificate, requires continuing education credits annually. Most of our continued education is brought by the International Association for Body Psychology.
The second part of the question I would say I had a very challenging upbringing in a dysfunctional family. I’m an ACA, which is an adult child of addicts and alcoholics. My parents and my sibling were addicted to opioids. It was very difficult, and I didn’t really realize how difficult it was at the time; I normalized it. It’s incredible what we can normalize and what we can do to survive. In my early 20s, I came down with a chronic pain condition caused by Hypertonicity, which is excessive tightness in my pelvic floor, causing a condition called vaginismus or pelvic floor dysfunction. It was incredibly hard to get a diagnosis and treatment. A physical therapist who specializes in this condition saved my life. She helped the pain condition, first and foremost. She became a friend and someone I admired. After making a tremendous amount of physical progress with my pain, I would occasionally have flare-ups about every 30 to 60 days, and she said, “Hey, have you ever wondered if your flare-ups have anything to do with what’s going on in your life? Because when you come in and you’re in pain, you’re often telling me stories of something happening and being upset or being angry or being nervous. I think you should try this thing called somatic therapy.” I trusted her, so I met a somatic therapist in Brooklyn, and it changed my life. It took away the armor of normalizing things that were not normal and helped me heal my connection with my physical body and my emotional self. After about 10 years, almost, of being a client – I was 28, so it was about eight years – we had kind of reached the term of our work, and I needed a career change. She said, “Why don’t you do this?” I said, “Really, you think I could?” After a lot of encouragement and support, I took the training.
Somatic therapists often deal with intense emotions and energies. What self-care practices do you personally find essential to maintain your own well-being and ensure you can bring your best self to each session?
You know, in the beginning I was apprehensive about exactly that. I thought, “This could be draining. This could be triggering. This could be dark or heavy.” But I actually find that it is the opposite. I find that it brings me closer to the love of humanity, unconditional positive regard for our shared experience. I think it actually brings me closer to connection and love than it does heaviness and darkness.
I believe that, in order to do this you have to have incredibly healthy boundaries – where the client begins and where you begin and end. Taking care of yourself is unique to the individual and for me taking care of myself looks like starting my day at noon and ending my day at 6:30. It’s a pretty short day. It means no more than five clients a day. However, I typically cap my week at 16 or 17 people. Now, that’s not the most capitalistic thing I could do, but for me to be fully present I need to recharge and that doesn’t look like recovery. It does not mean I come home and meditate or journal. It doesn’t look like recovery it looks like just being me, watching Grey’s Anatomy for the third time. It means talking to my husband about his day and playing with my Pitbull. It just means making enough time for my life to be the majority so that I have the space, the bandwidth, the capability, and the access to come from positive regard, compassion, and care for clients.
