SSIBAM.
A Somatic Exploration Technique
Spirit. Sensation. Image. Behavior. Affect. Meaning.
SSIBAM
The acronym, SSIBAM, can be a useful reminder in learning to garner inner self-awareness from experiences. Pausing regularly to notice and become aware of the six SSIBAM categories related to current situations can allow us access to important information during both difficult and joyful moments. Using SSIBAM allows us:
• to ultimately allow the body to finish processing the experience to a natural conclusion.
• Build more capacity and resiliency in our bodies.
• Build a deeper relationship with the wisdom held within our somatic experience.
Suggestion: Practice SSIBAM at least once a day. Soon after experiencing a moment, pause to recall the recent experience, and explore each of the six categories.
Let’s Explore SSIBAM Deeper
SPIRIT
A mysterious divine presence that permeates our existence. Often located through states of stillness informing activity, awareness, and arriving in the present moment.
SENSATION
These are the interoceptive, physical sensations that arise from within the body, including (from the most conscious to least conscious):
Kinesthetic — muscle tension patterns
Proprioceptive — awareness of our position in space
Vestibular — acceleration and deceleration
Visceral — sensations from the viscera (guts, heart, and lungs) and blood vessels
IMAGE
Refers to the external sense impressions, which include sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch (tactile sense). This can also include memory, shape, color and an inside picture (example: seeing a flower in the chest).
BEHAVIOR
These include:
Voluntary gestures
Emotional / facial expressions
Posture — the platforms from which intrinsic movement is initiated; typically refers to the spine
Autonomic signals — includes cardiovascular and respiratory systems. The pulse rate can be measured by the carotid artery
Visceral behavior — digestive shifts can be “observed” via changing sounds in the gut, burping, passing gas, feeling hunger
Archetypal behaviors — include involuntary gestures or postural shifts that convey a universal meaning (like prayer hands)
AFFECT
Refers to the categorical emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, joy and disgust, as well as contours of feelings. Contours are the nuanced, sensation-based (felt sense) feelings of attraction and avoidance, of “goodness” and “badness”, that guide us through the day.
MEANING
Meanings are the labels (words) we attach to the totality of experience from the combined elements of S, S, I, B, & A. These include trauma-based fixed beliefs. Staying open to forming positive meaning from even moments of discomfort. Meaning making also comes from the exploration of revealed symbols or mythologies.
————
I have added the 6th element, Spirit, to SIBAM which originated from Peter Levine and his brilliant Somatic Experiencing model.
RESOURCES
Levine, P. (2015). Trauma & Memory: Brain and body in a search for the living past. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA ISBN: 978-1-58394-994-8
Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA ISBN: 155643233X
Our bodies are a great mystery, perhaps the greatest, full of unfathomable worlds and discoveries, if only we brave its frontiers. The body is a hidden portal, a time travel machine, a dancing ecology. It beckons our attention often speaking in aches and pain, anxieties and terrible melancholy. As a collective our current society is deaf to its language and longing. We numb it with substances and technology. Submit to its medicalization. Divorce it from nature. And miss the immense and cosmic relational field that a sensitive and responsive body gifts.
—Elissa Solari