What is Somatic Therapy?

We all have a human nervous system. Because of this we are beholden to its inherent way of working. How our nervous systems naturally manage stress, interact with our environments, and perceive safety in our lives can dictate a lot about our lived experience.

Symptoms like anxiety, depression, panic, feeling “other”, over-functioning, burnout, and certainly trauma symptoms (hypervigilance, distrust, sleep disturbance, relational challenges, etc.) can be an expression of a nervous system that is dysregulated.

A healthy nervous system is supposed to activate when we are under threat and relax when we are not, but so many experiences can impact this system. We may find we are perpetually on alert, perpetually in anticipation, or unable to fully calm down and rest.

We can work directly with the nervous system through somatic therapy. In somatic therapy, we incorporate a deep understanding of the nervous system and a focus on the body’s own experience and felt perception into our therapy work.

How Can This Help Me?

By integrating the body into therapy, we can:

• build the ability for self-connection

• grow our capacity to feel

• promote increased regulation

• more deeply understand our current symptoms

• explore new ways of being

• increase access to a felt sense of safety

Overall, we can build (or rebuild) a more flexible, effective stress management system.

What Does a Somatic Therapy Session Look Like?

I am trained in Somatic Experiencing®, a specific somatic therapy approach. When working somatically in session, we limit the focus on verbal content, story, and analysis and instead focus on what we can learn from the body and its felt experience. It is a gentle, incremental, collaborative approach where we include your body and internal experience in our session. You will learn to pay attention to and mindfully track your inner experience in a way that can generate information, allow for release or completion of patterns, and help the system move towards a more integrated, balanced way of functioning. It can feel a little like a body scan or maybe like a mindfulness exercise. You may notice sensations, images, emotions, memories, or whatever may arise as you attend to your body.

Somatic Experiencing® can complement other therapy work or be a primary modality to work towards change. I use SE® because I have seen it help build resilience in an otherwise depleted system and help restore energy and capacity. It also emphasizes incremental, bite-sized progression in order to avoid overloading the system or any sort of re-traumatizing experience, which can be helpful for those who are engaged in trauma work.