Using the Safe and Sound Acoustic Protocol (SSP) with Clay Field Therapy: a Mother’s Feedback

Clare Jerdan AThR, SATh, ANZACATA, PACFA, IEATA

Stephen Porges' Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is an Integrated Listening System (ILS) using heavily filtered music to install safety into your nervous system. Safe and Sound Protocol is a therapy designed to reduce stress and auditory sensitivity, and to enhance social engagements and resilience. Known to work well with children on the Autism Spectrum it can help all clientele with emotional control, behaviour organisation, hearing sensitivity and listening. It calms the physiological and emotional state, which opens the door for improved communication.

The SSP exercises the neural pathways associated with regulating behavioural state and social engagement. These are aspects of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). And just as the brain is plastic and can change based on experience, the ANS is also plastic, and change is possible.

With SSP the participant listens to specific audio tracks over a series of days whilst doing a quiet activity with their therapist or remotely with someone they socially and safely connect with. Clients can tolerate different amounts of exposure ranging from a few minutes a day to 30 minutes a day program for a total of 5 hours Core program in the company of a safe support. Longer programs may be recommended (Unyte).

Clay Field Therapy is based on the profound neurological connection between the hands and the brain in Art Therapy. Haptic sensory and motor experiences shape cognitive development and our sense of self from infancy. Clay Field Therapy offers a pathway to re-educate the senses and rebuild the sensorimotor base via deep non-verbal pathways in the brain, offering a powerful approach to healing trauma and attachment challenges. (Elbrecht)

Clay Field Therapy is a touch therapy. The moment we touch the clay, it becomes relational and as we touch it, it touches us. The resistance of the clay provides an instant feedback loop between the physical world with the sensory response within the individual. Attachment and complex trauma imprint implicit memories in our body and inform how we form relationships with the world. We reach out through motor impulses and receive sensory feedback from these encounters. Adults and children explore these haptic experiences in their search for fulfillment in the world. (Elbrecht)

I have a busy practice with Sensorimotor Clients, and this includes a steady stream of children that come for after school Clay Field Therapy. I usually set my Clay Field sessions for later in the day so that the mess is contained for an afternoon clean up. I generally see two separate and disparate types of child presentations.

One is the quiet, timid, hypo-aroused, immobilized client who doesn’t want to move from the care giver and is a little reserved with me to start with. They may be hesitant to engage with motor impulses, like movements or touching the clay, and may avoid getting ‘dirty’. With these children I find I need to really be present for and find the fun with, while encouraging and empowering and clapping at every gain. Once they make contact and get the sensory feedback, they usually want more and more contact with the clay until that need is satiated.

The second type of children present as hyperactive, hyper-aroused, with scattered energy; they have a dissociated sensory division. Their system equates feeling with getting hurt. They are hyper-active, but they do not receive any sensory feedback from their manic cycles. Their nervous system is hyper-aroused. These children come with a range of stories about not being able to focus at school or getting into trouble. They are accused of bullying or hitting out and being generally frustrated. These clients are often asked by the school to have an ADHD assessment to assist with their behaviour in the classroom.

Both client groups do well with Clay Field Therapy. The re-education of the senses can meet the needs of the somatosensory base.

I know that many children cannot get the most out of their therapy because they do not feel safe or they are so dysregulated that they require a faster multipronged approach. Bruce Perry states that we must help the child to regulate and calm their fight/flight/freeze responses first. Only then can we relate and connect with the child through attuned and sensitive relationships. Perry cites the bottom-up model of his three ‘R’s, Regulate, Relate and Reason. (2019) Once the downstairs brain is regulated then the upstairs brain can come online. Only then can we encourage the child to reason, reflect, learn and become self-assured.

Polyvagal Theory created by Stephen Porges developed a two-pronged theory of the nervous system state and our social engagement system. These two parts of Polyvagal Theory inform us that as humans we are constantly on the lookout for signs of danger and signs of safety in our environment. This is experienced internally through our nervous system state and externally between people in a co-regulatory response. In the Safe and Sound Protocol by Porges, the music trains the auditory pathways by focusing on the frequency envelope of human speech. As the client learns to process the speech related frequencies, they improve the functioning of the two cranial nerves that are important in social engagement:

1. Cranial Nerve VII (Facial Nerve) helps clients to focus on the human voice and to tune out irrelevant frequencies.

2. Cranial Nerve X (Vagus Nerve) enables self-soothing and autonomic regulation.

Last year I trained in this Safe and Sound Protocol by Dr Stephen Porges. Based on four decades of research into the relationship between the autonomic nervous system and the social-emotional processes, it is designed to inject safety into the child’s nervous system.

After a year of using the acoustic sensory program, I have found quite dramatic and unexpected results that enhance clients’ work at the Clay Field by increasing the sense of safety in their nervous system. A 60-year-old man spontaneously recovered the ability to speak rather than the pre-planned and sparse speech he had after a brain injury. A child slept in their own bed for the first time since their house flooded. Both Safe and Sound Therapy and Clay Field Therapy work in a bottom-up body-based way.

The following are my reflections with one of my clients. I will cite some of the feedback from his care givers to highlight the value of the program.

Mike is 6 years old. He has relocated with his mother and 2 older siblings, after they have lived with his maternal grandparents for 3 years. The parents are undergoing an acrimonious divorce after many troubled years; his father has limited contact. Mike also has a medical issue which impacts his nervous system.

For his first session Mike arrived with a cheeky infectious grin and a whirlwind of activity. He dismantled the solar lights on the way into the studio and ran around the backyard jumping into puddles and ignoring pleas from his mother to come into the studio. He refused to interact with the clay and crawled over his mother to the point of hurting her looking for sensory feedback any way he could find it. I suggested we make slime instead and that lead to a rich session where we could add shaving cream at the end for sensory bliss.

While mum was talking after the session Mike went outside and hid, then dismantled a pile of bricks and bought in a rusty tool. He then opened the slime container and dripped the content over my car. Next, he hid in the shed and avoided getting into the car when called. I decided in the next session to channel this destructive energy into the Clay Field.

Haptic Aggression is a necessary developmental milestone. “Our vital relational haptic sense lives by aggression and destruction. It is not peaceful; it is about piercing, drilling, taking, grabbing, penetrating, dividing - and in all this, it is about us and the natural urge of life’s unfolding.” (Deuser, cited in Elbrecht 2021, p. 185)

When Mike went home, he threw the rest of the slime all over the house, triggering more negative feedback of being naughty. However, I was now a star. He told his sisters I was the best. His mother was desperate for help, so we scheduled Clay Field Therapy sessions for 3 x per week.

For his next session he engaged in the Clay Field, and I observed how little strength he had in his hands to move the clay. A toy bear-figurine was introduced to the field and Mike decided to make a jail. He started making channels and bridges and then added water to make it flow into the channels. He used the sponge to squeeze water in and to dab it out. He focused for a long time on honing his engineering skills. He flowed water into the jail and then released the water. Then opened the jail and released the bear. Next, he wanted to make slime again.

At home and at school he continued to be disruptive; he was frequently excluded from school and disruptive at home and the whole family were stressed. As I was shortly going on leave, I decided to introduce the Safe and Sound Protocol as an additional support to be delivered at home with his mother as his safe person. His mother was directed to spend 30 minutes each day drawing, reading or moving with Mike while he listened to filtered music.

Hi Clare. “We have now completed 1 hour of core groove. Mike is showing great signs already, calmer, happier, singing, listening more, having more fun with sisters, more affectionate, reduced meltdown intensity, less rough, more socially engaged, joking, smiling more and just said I’m on top of the world! See you in the morning.”

In his next two Clay Field Therapy sessions Mike gained increasing strength to manipulate the clay. He could punch into the Clay Field and apply intense downward pressure with healthy aggression. The field could hold his interest for longer and he was gaining trust into his own abilities. Mike began to receive sensory feedback from his action cycles, which reaffirmed his own vitality.

Jean Ayres describes the process that drives such discoveries as “curious and spontaneous and unplanned and yet driven by an unseen force”. (Jean Ayres) Increasingly, Mike engaged in age-appropriate landscaping, and he relished the sensory feedback. The bear was buried in a jail and then flooded with water. A special gem was added that the bear could float on. Mike started to make elaborate mountains with waterfalls. He created channels and water flows between compartments; great care was taken to get the water flowing between the channels and the waterfalls. He created sensory connections, while he maintained focus for an extended time. Then he wanted to make slime again.

Hi Clare."...this morning he woke me up saying he was packing his lunch and filling his water bottle. He then put his bag in the car. All out of the ordinary! We are also reading for half an hour each morning while listening to the music (SSP)! It was a struggle to read for three mins last year! Thank you so much. It’s a miracle!”

Mike’s sixth Clay Field session before I went on leave coincided with completing the Safe and Sound protocol. At the Clay Field he did not introduce water initially as he had other times, because he was no longer flooded with emotions. Mike removed central chunks until he had cleared a central space in the field and then gathered all the clay up and plonked it in the middle as a large lump. He built “the mountain” up with agency, and eventually the bear was placed on the side of it. Next, he used the sponge with a small amount of water and blessed the bear. If we consider the bear as a symbolic representation of himself, Mike had found a place in the world in which he was accepted and ‘blessed’. His relationship with himself had been restored. With this completed, he wanted to finish. To end the session, we made slime again. This time with no colour in it so as not to make a mess at home. Mike left directly after the session. He decided to leave his slime with me.

“Dear Clare, Mike came to me and said “I was going to hit my sister with a stick but my brain stopped me.’’ I cried in happiness!"

Combining Clay Field Therapy and the Safe and Sound Protocol has had some surprising results; the modalities can complement each other. The Clay Field enabled Mike to find agency. He could engage his body through depth sensibility (Elbrecht), to discover his physiological identity. At the same time, he experienced that his action patterns had consequences; he could direct the flow of water, and build a mountain, but also decide not to hit his sister with a stick. He began to receive sensory feedback and insights from his action cycles, once his nervous system was more downregulated due to the Safe and Sound Protocol.

The injection of safety into his nervous system from the SSP allowed him to be more regulated, which in turn enabled him to create connections, repair relationships and find order through destruction in the Clay Field. It noticeably improved his social engagement with his family and at school, with the feedback from the school citing that Mike had better focus and had less time outs. The feedback from both the teacher and his mother confirmed a turning point for this little boy.

Works Cited

• Ayres, Jean. Sensory Integration and the child: Understanding Hidden Sensory Challenges. 6th Edition. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services, 2015.

• Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2021. Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy; sensorimotor embodiment of developmental milestones. Berkley CA: North Atlantic Books.

• Perry, Bruce D. “The Three R’s: Reaching the Learning Brain.” Boston: Beacon House. 2019

• Porges, Stephen, W. 2011. The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. New York: W. W. Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.

• Unyte Integrated Listening Systems: https://my.unyte.com/Resources