Somatic Therapy

Somatic Psychotherapy is effective for helping clients learn to:

  • Reduce or eliminate symptoms;
  • Function better: at work, home, and play;
  • Increase their sense of vitality and liveliness;
  • Feel more comfortable in their own skin, and more confident in the world.

The primary therapeutic method I practice is called Somatic Experiencing, or SE. I am also trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). With these tools, I help people learn the language of their unconscious minds and bodies. Then we can work in partnership with the body, to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of traumatic stress. 

I firmly believe it’s essential to include the body’s feelings and reactions in therapy. Why is that? Because that’s the primary place where the trauma lives.  That’s why it’s nearly impossible to “think” trauma away! The body’s survival responses are much more powerful than the thought process. 

Our physical bodies contain incredibly powerful energy! For some people, it’s nearly explosive. We are talking about survival energy here, and that is our most potent. Survival energy is what enables someone to lift a car off of their child.  

These survival states can have a very profound impact, and it is often very tricky to unwind them. Therefore, I believe it’s important to work with an experienced practitioner to help restore a good state of self-regulation in the mind, body and spirit.

Here are issues I frequently work with:

  • Depression and anxiety
  • Low motivation
  • Eating problems and substance abuse
  • Anger/irritability
  • Eco-anxiety, stress, despair about the state of the world/environment
  • Trauma and post-traumatic stress/PTSD
  • Non-Neurotypicality (Autism, ADHD, etc)
  • Racism, oppression, bullying, economic or other systemic stressors
  • Relationship difficulties, difficulty relating to others; being quirky, creative, or different; feeling disconnected or alone
  • Difficulty in sensing or managing emotions (numbing, flooding)
  • Childhoods that might have seemed okay, but were actually kind of rough in subtle ways
  • Childhoods that were clearly difficult.

Come Home To Yourself

Somatic therapy includes awareness of the many signals and experiences coming from the client’s physical body. In my experience, this brings people home to ourselves. By connecting with the bodymind through the language of sensation and implicit memory, we strengthen our internal connections. We tap into knowledge and understanding we weren’t even aware we’d had inside of us.

This physical awareness can include sensations, images, emotions, behaviors (voluntary and involuntary), and more. The information from the “felt sense” is included in the dialogue, and it becomes an active part of what therapist and client are working with.

Somatic therapy works along with other therapy “schools” or modalities.
Many somatic practitioners include psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, CBT, cognitive, Gestalt, and other practices alongside their somatic “tool kit”.

The real power of somatic therapy is that it can “get to” and resolve symptoms that just aren’t so easily accessible by the upper (cognitive) layers of the brain. In other words, you can’t think your way out of trauma, depression or anxiety–even though many people have really tried!

In my experience, when we include the physical body in therapy work, we are working more deeply and effectively. We are also teaching the body and mind to “talk” with each other. So then, the client isn’t working at cross-purposes within themselves (where the mind wants one thing but the body is clearly not cooperating!).

I am trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE), a modality developed by Dr. Peter Levine for the treatment of trauma, anxiety, depression, etc. I’ve been practicing SE since 2009, and I assist SE faculty members in teaching the modality to other therapists and helping professionals.

For more information, please feel free to refer to the articles I’ve written about trauma, PTSD and somatic psychotherapy.