Rebooting your somatic experiencing and attunement

Reboot Your Relationship: somatic experiencing and attunement.

Definition of Atunement

A definition of attunement ‘is a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of others knowing their rhythm, affect and experience by metaphorically being in their skin, and going beyond empathy to create a two-person experience of unbroken feeling connectedness by providing a reciprocal affect and/or resonating response’. (Erksine 1998). One could say it is our ability to be present to, and with, another’s expression of their experience. I view attunement as the meta skill of therapy which might have subheadings, such as; empathy, mindfulness, immediacy, active listening, presence, experience and knowledge, and cognitive understanding.  Any of these skills on their own is not attunement, but at times come into ‘tuning into’ our clients and sometimes work in tandem as we grapple with understanding and connecting to them. The ability to be attuned really comes down to how connected to our clients we are in the moment to moment process of therapy, and how successfully we can communicate that to them. Our responses and interventions are then a result of this attunement.

One of the core couple and relationship skills I teach is somatic experiencing and attunement. What we mean of attunement ‘is a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of others knowing their rhythm, affect and experience by metaphorically being in their skin, and going beyond empathy to create a two-person experience of unbroken feeling connectedness by providing a reciprocal affect and/or resonating response.’

This isn’t some symbiotic enmeshment or fusion but a deeper sense of ‘felt experience’ as each person holds space for the other which in turn co-creates a corrective emotional experience. Empathy and wisdom in this crucible of intimacy is attained through this process. As communication of these parts of self are a dynamic process of discovery that energizes one another to greater meaning and deeper connection.