Somatic Therapy
The body keeps a record that the mind doesn’t always have access to. Somatic therapy is, in part, the practice of learning to read it.
Somatic therapy is an approach to healing that works with the body as well as the mind. It recognizes that our experiences — particularly the difficult ones — are not only stored as memories or thoughts, but as physical sensations, patterns of tension, habitual postures, and ways of breathing that we carry without knowing it.
For many women, this is where the gap lives. You can understand something intellectually — trace the roots of a pattern, name the wound, articulate exactly why you do what you do — and still feel stuck. The body hasn’t caught up yet. Or more precisely: the body is still living in an older story, one it learned long before you had words for any of it.
Somatic work is about closing that gap. Not by pushing the body or forcing it to release, but by learning to listen to it — and eventually, to trust what it knows.
What Somatic Work Looks Like in Practice
Somatic therapy in my practice is gentle, relational, and grounded in present-moment awareness. It doesn’t involve touch, physical exercises, or anything that would feel out of place in a therapy session. What it does involve is a quality of attention that most of us were never taught to offer ourselves.
In practice, it might look like slowing down in the middle of a conversation and noticing what’s happening in your body right now — a tightening in the chest, a held breath, a sudden urge to change the subject. It might look like tracking what happens physically when a particular memory or feeling arises, and staying with that sensation long enough to understand what it’s communicating. It might look like a moment of somatic mindfulness: simply being present in your body, with what’s here, without trying to fix or interpret it.
Over time, this kind of attention builds a different relationship with your own body — one where its signals become information rather than noise, and where the nervous system gradually learns that it’s safe to settle.
Somatic Work and the Themes I Specialize In
Somatic approaches are particularly well-suited to the work I do, because the patterns that bring women to therapy — self-abandonment, people-pleasing, relationship anxiety, complex trauma — are almost always held in the body as well as the mind.
The bracing before a difficult conversation. The tightening that happens when someone expresses disappointment. The way the body goes quiet and still when conflict arises — the same way it learned to go quiet and still a long time ago. These are somatic patterns, and they don’t shift through insight alone. They shift through a different kind of attention, offered consistently, over time.
Somatic work is woven throughout my practice rather than applied as a technique. It arises when it fits, alongside IFS, expressive arts, and the relational depth of the work itself. You will never be pushed to engage with your body in ways that feel unsafe or unfamiliar. We follow your pace, always.
Frequently Asked Questions About Somatic Therapy
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Not exactly. Somatic Experiencing is a specific, trademarked protocol developed by Peter Levine for trauma resolution. Somatic therapy is a broader term that refers to any therapeutic approach that attends to the body as part of the healing process. My work is somatically-informed and draws on body-based awareness, present-moment attention, and nervous system regulation — woven into a relational, depth-oriented frame rather than following a specific protocol.
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Only ever as much as feels comfortable. Somatic awareness is an invitation, not a requirement. For some clients it becomes a central part of the work; for others it remains a quieter thread running underneath. What matters is that you feel safe enough to be present in the room — and we build that safety together, at your pace.
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Yes — and in fact, disconnection from the body is often itself a significant piece of the work. Many women who have spent years in their heads, managing and overriding their physical experience, find that gently rebuilding that connection is one of the most meaningful things that happens in therapy. We start wherever you are. There’s no prerequisite level of body awareness required.
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Yes. All sessions are held online via a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform. Somatic work translates well to online therapy — many clients find that being in their own environment actually supports a greater sense of safety and ease in attending to their body’s experience.
Begin Somatic Therapy
If something here has named something you’ve been looking for, I’d welcome a conversation. I offer a free 20-minute consultation — a quiet, unhurried conversation about what you’re carrying and whether working together feels like the right fit.
Your body has been trying to tell you something for a long time. This work is, in part, learning to listen.
