Principles – Decompression Somatics Client’s Touch:
As practitioners we need to remember that: Touch is always two-way: whatever we are touching is touching us. When we touch a part of the client’s body we are also being touched by the client. Every   part of the client’s body surface has touch sensors. So the client can play a role in meeting the practitioner’s hands with touch through the surface of the body part. In fact the client can also bring the deeper inner sensations of that body part to the surface through the touch sensors that are being activated. This is a volitional act on the part of the client. In other words the client can bring the felt experience to the hands of the practitioner. This may also include emotive material as well.

Decompression Somatics as a shared meeting place:
Probably the most difficult concept in DS is the concept of somatics. It is difficult because the state of conscious awareness, or shared presence, we are trying to produce for the client and achieve for ourselves. While it relies upon presencing at the core, it also relies upon the willing participation of both parties.
DS is called DS because somatics is at the heart of our work. We are using a slightly different approach to somatics than other forms of bodywork. We are reversing the emphasis from teaching the client somatic awareness to directly recruiting the client into the teamwork of releasing (ego based) holding patterns. Thus we become equal participants with the client and visa versa. It works both ways because we have established a shared meeting place.
The first step starts with bringing the client into that part of the body.
The second step involves using interactive tools like breath. The third step, and perhaps the most powerful, is to support the client’s words to come forth or emerge directly from his/her felt experience. This search for words that convey the felt sense (process borrowed from Focusing) induces a state of exploration and curiosity in the client. This state becomes an open doorway to the direct inner perception of the body. The client searches for words and, as the search proceeds, the client’s tissue is changing; the searching for an exact verbal description produces the opposite of control and faking it (ego devices). The words have to fit or the tissue will not respond. The process involves finding the fit in an ever-changing domain of somatesthesia (somatic awareness).