Reembodying Wholeness
Expand
your self regulation abilities
Inhabit
your body as a safe home
Restore
mind-body-spirit coherence
Experience
resilience, connection, presence
and aliveness
Improve
your capacity to engage socially and sustain intimate relationships
Reconnect
with your body's wisdom, natural intelligence and innate capacity to self heal
Contraction is expansion waiting to happen
What is Trauma?
Trauma, also referred to as Accumulated Stress, is often the result of an overwhelming event that exceeds one’s ability to cope or integrate the emotions and sensations involved with that experience.
It can involve one experience, or repeating events that can become encapsulated and have delayed response by weeks, years, or even decades.
Trauma involves a dysregulation of the nervous system. The traumatic impact lies not in the event, but in the nervous system.
Our instinctual flight and fight mechanisms, charged by our nervous system during the event, are not able to complete and discharge the energies involved. These energies become thwarted and held up in the nervous system.
This often results in feeling stuck in flight, fight or freeze.
The energy fixations in the system cause an array of symptoms, patterns or cycles that continue to repeat themselves within our lives, continuously attempting to complete and discharge.
What is Somatic Experiencing®?
Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a body-centered therapeutic method for healing from traumatic or overwhelming life situations and chronic stress. SE can offer you an experience of re-embodiment where there has been disconnection caused by trauma.
SE is an integrative psycho-physiological (mind-body) approach. Deepening its roots in neurobiology, SE is a form of somatic body oriented therapy and works with the physiology of the autonomic nervous system.
The SE method helps the nervous system resolve and move out of fixated physiological states and traumatic shock; with a specific focus on emotional regulation, arousal modulation, and the biological discharge, release and completion of self-protective responses (orienting/ fight/ flight/ freeze). SE is also applied for the resolution of relational trauma.
It is the life's work of Dr. Peter A. Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application.
For more information about Somatic Experiencing® and Dr. Peter Levine, trauma causes and symptoms, please visit the Resources section.
Trauma is a fact of life. It doesn´t have to be a life sentence
Peter Levine
How Somatic Experiencing® can help heal Trauma
When the nervous system is overwhelmed, we experience over-arousal and disorganization, often called dysregulation. This can lead to debilitating symptoms of panic, anxiety, depression, shame and disconnection, among others.
Trauma can seriously impair a person's ability to function with resilience and ease.
Somatic Experiencing® helps the body restore its innate capacities for healing, guiding us to reconnect with the innate wisdom of your body.
Somatic Experiencing® facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body. In this way it addresses the root cause of trauma symptoms.
What makes SE different to traditional talk therapy? SE is a deep physiological process using body focused awareness and a container of safety.
The aim is to access the body memory of the traumatic event, not the story. This serves to gradually reset the nervous system, restore inner balance and enhance resilience to stress.
During the safe environment of SE sessions you will:
- Be guided to notice your body's felt sense and explore your inner somatic landscape through the language of sensations. This sensory awareness will provide internal awareness of sensations, awareness of safety or threat in the environment, and your body's felt sense in relation to the outside world.
- Gain access to restorative physiological action patterns, allowing the thwarted survival energies bound in the body to be safely and gradually discharged and completed. This is a renegotiation of traumatic past events, which will allow you to reengage life with renewed optimism, presence, creativity, spontaneity and joy.
- Learn increased tolerance for both difficult and pleasurable bodily sensations and suppressed emotions, building a wider container to hold your life experiences.
Liberate
accumulated Stress
Learn
to Self-Regulate
Understand
your Nervous System
Amplify
your Resilience towards
future Trauma
More effects, shifts and benefits you can expect with SE work
- Reduction or alleviation of trauma symptoms such as: anxiety, depression, irritability, anger, rage, unexplained chronic physical pain, recurring tension, hyper vigilance, flashbacks, fatigue, mood swings, hypersensitivity, disconnection, confusion, extreme vulnerability, etc.
- Stabilisation of the nervous system function, from fixation to flow.
- Increased capacities to self-regulation and co-regulation.
- Transformation of past negative, abusive, overwhelming experiences.
- Restoration of healthy personal boundaries (internal and external) and connection to Self and others.
- Settling anxiety, honoring emotions and exploring healthy aggression.
- Building the capacity to tolerate both pain and pleasure.
- Recognizing the tendency to disregard or override body's responses and reconnecting with its wisdom.
- Learning to resource and self-soothe to support settling and containment.
- Increased resiliency to face and deal with stress, challenges and difficult emotions.
- Coming back to one's window of tolerance.
- Increased responsiveness flexibility.
- Growing abilities to be more present and spontaneous, more engaged in life.
- Rewiring of addictive coping mechanisms.
- Increased focus and concentration.
- Deeper sense of ease and fulfillment within the Self and the world.
- Restoration of spiritual connectedness.
- Recovering a deeper and stronger Sense of Self.
- Developing more secure and fulfilling relationships guided by our body's here-and-now wisdom.
- Increased connection to a sense of joy, contentment and flow.
Daya Cabestany
SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® PRACTITIONER
As someone who found profound healing and improved resilience trough SE, I feel deeply honored and passionate for having the opportunity to hold space for others as they embark on their own journey of healing, embodiment and self-discovery.
Daya Cabestany
SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® PRACTITIONER
As someone who found profound healing and improved resilience trough SE, I feel deeply honored and passionate for having the opportunity to hold space for others as they embark on their own journey of healing, embodiment and self-discovery.
How I work
I believe in the innate wisdom within our bodies, SE has taught me that by honoring the organic intelligence in our nervous system and facilitating the proper conditions within both the therapeutic relationship and within the client, the system is supported to greater re-organisation and integration.
My aim is to offer you tools and take-aways from the beginning of our work together.
I intend the therapeutic process to be an empowering experience, helping you build skills for daily life.
During sessions you will gradually learn to calm your body's emergency response system, quiet your mind, self regulate, ground, build a sense of safety and greater resilience.
I gently interweave somatic psycho-education into the processing, aware of the importance of meeting the mind in its search for meaning. Not just because of the relief that offers but as a way to ignite a training for your prefrontal cortex's capacities.
For a while you may feel as if you were learning a new language; the language of sensations, a trustworthy guide into the exploration of your somatic inner realms.
Understanding how necessary emotional safety, solid boundaries and complete trust are for trauma healing work, my intention is to hold space for your process in a way that allows you to feel safe and contained every step of our work together.
My clients often describe me as compassionate, non-judgmental, gentle, respectful, intuitive, skilled, grounded, reliable, sensitive and safe.
My personal and academic experience with yoga, meditation and mindfulness practices and philosophy, consciousness exploration, the 12 Steps, recovery from codependency, attachment wounds and childhood trauma, and understanding of addictions inform my SE practice and approach to healing.
My practice is primarily inspired by the work and research of Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Stephen Porges (Polyvagal Theory), Dr. Pat Ogden, Dr.Janina Fisher, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, Dr. Richard Schwartz, Pia Melody, Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Bessel van Der Kolk and other cutting edge researchers and trauma and attachment experts.
I am a certified Somatic Experiencing® practitioner and Kundalini Yoga and Meditation teacher, and have worked in the field of addiction in a treatment centre. I amcommited to my personal and professional process of deepening my own experience and skills through ongoing training in a variety of somatic therapeutic modalities.
I am a member of the Somatic Experiencing Spanish Association
I am also a member of the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.
I regularly particpate in international SE trainings as an interpreter and training assistant.
My Story
My passion for the healing arts developed through my own healing and life journey.
I grew up in a culturally and spiritually diverse background. From a very young age I was exposed to and often immersed in the exploration of a variety of schools of thought and practices in the fields of psychology, meditation, sacred ritual and energetic healing. I soaked it all in, curious and open.
A holistic journey of research and development began in my early twenties. During long stays in India I immersed myself in explorations, studies and trainings in different spiritual lineages and healing methodologies.
A flame of deep longing for unraveling and understanding the complexities and mysteries of human nature danced in my heart.
I was by then already enduring some of the debilitating symptoms of childhood trauma, without yet having the knowledge to understand it for what it was but a clear sense that what I sometimes felt inside did not match my reality outside. Quite confusing. An acute personal awareness was coupled with a fascination about the contradictions I noticed.
My passion for discovering the missing link was ignited.
It was some years later after having accumulated some more life experience, settled in my island home, Ibiza, having found my life partner and given birth to my two beautiful and healthy children, that the nagging sensation that something was wrong or missing became unbearable.
I could not run away from it any longer.
I dove into a new and deeper cycle of ongoing embodied learning, therapy, research, study and trainings in the realms of psychology, Yoga, meditation, energy work and addictions recovery; drawing from teachings and inspiration from east and west, and traveling the world to meet my teachers and therapists; voraciously exploring consciousness and the vast domain of human psyche.
Yet, still, something didn't make sense.
Something was missing.
I felt broken.
My life seemed perfect from the outside. I had everything I had ever wished for, yet still felt disconnected and confused by the amounts of pain and contradiction I was experiencing.
An abundance of tools and awareness were available to me, but deep down something wasn't shifting. I didn't feel safe or grounded in my body, and the anxiety I felt didn't match my life circumstances.
Until Somatic Experiencing® found me.
Certifications & Ongoing Trainings
Coach and Mentor EMCC certification
Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner SEP Certification by the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute
Level I Internal Family Systems
Level II : IFS addictions and Eating disorders
Level I: Training in Affect Dysregulation, Survival Defenses, and Traumatic Memory
Level II: Training in Emotional Processing, Meaning Making and Attachment Repair
Level III: Advanced Integrative Training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
TIST Trauma Informed Stabilisation Treatment Levels 1 & 2 with Janina Fisher Phd
NeuroAffective Touch® graduate with Aline La Pierre Phd: : introducing touch as a vital bridge to body-mind integration in the field of developmental trauma healing.
Resilience and Regulation with Kathy Kain Phd
Bodynamic International Foundation graduate
Safe and Sound Protocol Certified Provider SSP Dr.Stephen Porges's auditory protocol
Kundalini Yoga and Meditation KRI Certified
Currently in Training:
Carl Rogers person-centered group and individual therapy
Family Constellations group, couples and individual family constellations facilitator
Field related Post Advanced Continued Education:
IFS Trauma and Legacy Burdens with Dick Schwartz Founder of IFS
IFS befriending Difficult protectors with Mike Elkin
IFS Embracing our legacy burdens and heirlooms with Osnat Arbel Phd
IFS Trauma and Neuroscience with Frank Anderson Phd
IFS Compassion for the addictive process with Cece Sykes
IFS Food and Body with Jeanne Cantizano
IFS Direct Access with Paul Nestaudt
Shame and Prime, Coming to the Authentic Self with Peter Levine Phd
Breath, Emotion and Awareness with Peter Levine Phd
12th Swiss Learning Festival: Polarities with Dr. Peter Levine and Kathy Kain Phd
Autoimmune Diseases with Peter Levine Phd
Shock and Developmental Trauma with Elisabeth Schneider-Kaiser
Fascia and Embodiment with Karin Locher, Centre for Spatial Medicine
Developmental Trauma with Liana Netto
Visual function and trauma, applying Bates method to SE with Nina Hutchings
Somatic couples therapy with Kekuni Minton, at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
Certification in Somatic Embodiment and Regulation Strategies with Linda Thai
Growing our abilities to process the intensity of human experience
Testimonials
"Held within the symptoms of trauma are the
very energies, potential and resources necessary for
their constructive transformation."
PETER LEVINE
Resources
" While trauma can be hell on earth, trauma resolved is a gift of the gods, a heroic journey that belongs to each of us."
PETER LEVINE
START YOUR JOURNEY
with Daya Cabestany * Somatic Experiencing® Ibiza
I offer invidual sessions at my office in Santa Gertrudis, Ibiza.
I also offer online sessions via Zoom.
I am fluent in English and Spanish.
+34 630 919 030