What is Pendulation in Somatic Experiencing® with Peter A Levine, PhD

There's another thing, a term that I coined; apparently it doesn't exist. I call it "pendulum. " Now, here's a person who's been traumatized, and they're locked up.

They are not in contact with this; you know, this is just the way the body is. What happens is, when they begin to first notice this, it actually feels worse, and they feel themselves contracting. But the therapist, skilled with the rhythm and knowing when the right time is, leads them to be with that sensation again, with the understanding that they've helped create a body container that is able to tolerate this.

They feel a contraction; it becomes even more intense, but then it starts to open. See, we have an intrinsic life rhythm—it's contraction and expansion. At any time, we are either contracting or expanding.

Consider a one-celled organism: it contracts and expands; that's its basic rhythm, and it's also our basic rhythm. So when the person discovers that the contraction, when experienced in this particular way, opens into an expansion, and then another contraction and another expansion, they go from the shutdown state to more and more openness. Again, it has to be slow so that the person doesn't become overwhelmed.

I'm going to show you a toy that I have—I just happened to have it in my back pocket. Okay, this is called a Hoberman sphere. So, here’s the rhythm of expansion and contraction: expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction.

Then trauma comes along—boom! Contraction. So, then you're helping the person experience the contraction, and then it moves into an expansion.

Again, it starts to contract, and you let the client know; you guide the clients so that they're not resisting. They feel again the contraction, and then again an expansion, and a contraction, and an expansion, and a contraction, and an expansion. I would say that the basic life feeling is one of expansion.

People who are really engaged in their lives, who are living lives fully and are creative in their lives—doing the things that they want to do—feel so much expansion, right? But again, there's always contraction and then expansion. As they learn to tolerate this, as they learn to befriend this, they learn to embrace this, and then to be taken by this—led by this contraction, expansion, contraction, expansion.