Spinal Energetics is a somatic and nervous system-based modality which sits in the overlap between bodywork, nervous system regulation, trauma release practices, and energy healing traditions.

Developed by Dr. Sarah Jane Perri - a qualified Chiropractor and Holistic Counsellor - Spinal Energetics uses a low force, and often non-contact technique to engage the body’s innate capacity to heal itself.

During a session, the client will be lying on a treatment table while the practitioner uses subtle touch, gestures, breath cues, or movements around the body and spine. During a session, a client may experience: 

𖦹 twitching

𖦹 shaking

𖦹 arching or undulating

𖦹 crying / laughing / vocalising

𖦹 emotional memories or sensations

𖦹 waves of heat, tingling, or energy movement. 

These responses are the nervous system unwinding, which is a result of stored stress, tension, trauma, or emotional patterns.

Spinal Energetics is based on both Eastern and Western influences and discoveries, and draws heavily from ideas such as Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing, studies regarding, ‘fight/flight/freeze’ responses, vagal regulation and Polyvagal Theory, as well as Kundalini Activation Process, pranayama (breathwork), and Buddhist, yogic, and Chinese medicine philosophies. 

Each of these workings are the foundation which make up the modality of Spinal Energetics can be found:

In Hindu yogic philosophy (1500–300 BCE), spinal energetics, otherwise named Kundalini energy, is explained as a latent spiritual energy coiled at the base of the spine. When awakened, it rises through the sushumna nadi (central channel), transforming consciousness and clearing energetic blockages.

In Indian yogic (200 BCE–400 CE) and tantric systems (500–1200 CE), the spine was and is understood to be an energetic axis. It is here that consciousness and life-force and prana (energy), moves through nadis (subtle channels). Within both Hindu and Buddhist practices alike, breathwork, meditation, chanting, and movement are used to awaken kundalini energy.

In the 19th and 20th century, thinkers such as Carl Jung - who became fascinated by kundalini symbolism and Eastern spiritual systems, and Wilheim Reich - who proposed that trauma becomes “body armor”, both saw to the studies from which body psychotherapy emerged. It is from their work that the idea that emotional release could happen could be worked through movement and breath.

From the 1960s up until this very point in time, the studies and understandings regarding nervous system regulation, trauma discharge, embodied healing, autonomic release and somatic integration have aided humankind in their understandings of the mind-body-soul connection. Through nurturing and somatic releases, practices such as Spinal Energetics can now aid someone to elevate themselves of the weight of stored and unwanted emotions and memories, and these practitioners are now accessible near you.