Somatic Psychotherapy
Somatic psychotherapy uses your body as a trusted and wise source of information because often, your body is the first to know something is wrong.
A tight chest, a clenched jaw, a racing heart. When we experience something stressful or traumatic, our nervous system goes into survival mode: Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. When these survival responses do not get fully worked out, the leftover energy stays trapped in the body, which can create significant mental and psychical health issues over time.
We work directly with the cues of the body, learning how to notice changes in sensation, and practicing regulating the nervous system.
How somatic psychotherapy looks in session
If you're telling me about something hard and I notice your breathing change or your shoulders rise, I might gently pause you to ask what you're noticing in your body right at that moment. Dp you feel tightness or looseness? Warm or cold? Spacious or trapped? We slow down, get curious about what’s happening in the body, and practice tracking your sensations.
Sometimes we'll pause and breathe together, or notice the natural back-and-forth between a hard sensation and something steadier nearby, like your feet on the floor or your breath moving. I draw on mindfulness practices, helping you notice present-moment sensations without judgment.
In this work, you do not need to recount your trauma story in detail for this to be effective. We helping your body complete what it wasn't able to at the time, without requiring you to relive it.
This is why you can intellectually understand something, but your body continues to react as if the threat is ongoing.
Where somatic psychotherapy comes from
Somatic psychotherapy draws on the research of Dr. Peter Levine, who believes that the traumatic event isn’t what causes long-lasting trauma, it is the overwhelming trapped response to the perceived life-threat that is causing an imbalanced nervous system.
Somatic theory also utilizes Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, which maps how the nervous system moves between states of safety, danger, and shutdown, and how we can help the body find its way back to feeling safe.
In addition, mindfulness and meditation traditions offer tools that are just as relevant to nervous system regulation today as they were centuries ago.
Who somatic psychotherapy helps most
Somatic work tends to help people carrying trauma, chronic stress, or grief. Those who feel like they intellectually understand what’s wrong, yet their bodies continue to go into panic. It's also supportive for people managing chronic illness or pain who want their body to feel like an ally again, and for anyone who notices they live "in their head" and want to feel more connected to their physical experience.
TL;DR: Somatic psychotherapy helps you release stored stress and learn how to get back into your body.
