Somatic Therapy (Body Centered)

I believe your body is innately intelligent. It knows what it needs and communicates constantly. You might not have ever learned (or been allowed to learn) how to listen. Becoming curious about and aware of what it’s communicating - how and where it holds emotions, tension, trauma, memories - is foundational to healing. Through awareness and curiosity you can tap into your body’s wisdom and move toward wholeness.

Our bodies hold important information, when we're able to listen. I've done trainings with Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk , and integrate their valuable lessons into my therapeutic work. We will get "centered" at the beginning of every session, slowing down and noticing the important experiences that we have in our core, in that "place without words." By listening closely to our emotions, paired with our thoughts, we find greater clarity and the energy we need for change and growth.

We live in a society that does not support embodiment- true connection with the wisdom of the body. As a result we may live disconnected from our bodies, especially when we have experienced trauma or stress. Numbing out, avoiding, overriding the signals of stress, anxiety, trauma reactions from the body, are common best attempts to cope. Somatic therapy offers a bridge between body and mind so that we can heal and release stuck trauma physiology, and return to wholeness.

My graduate degree is in somatic psychotherapy and a lot of the trainings I have attended since graduating have focused on neuroscience and body based interventions. I don't have particular certifications because I studied many different modalities in school. We experience the world around us through our bodies, so the healing has to include the body. I typically start with education about how our bodies process the world and then utilize body based interventions.

Somatic Experiencing helps clients process trauma by addressing how it’s stored in the body and nervous system. As an intermediate-level Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) qualifier in the second year of a rigorous three-year training program, I bring extensive expertise to this approach. This training includes multi-day intensives, case consultations, and personal sessions. I use SE to help clients release stress, regulate their nervous systems, and foster resilience and healing

My favorite way of working includes the body. When the body mind connection are recognized, you access your wisest self. You also experience an improvement in mood, a decrease in anxiety, and experience more fulfilling connections with yourself and with others.

I could have spent my whole life talking about trauma instead of moving it through. As a student who stumbled into the field, I was its biggest critic. I wanted evidence that the body mattered. In my most profound relationships now as client or healer, we don't talk a lot & the evidence is right there in the ability to process & release pain without analysis paralysis. I lead folx to learn from their own body how stress shapes the way they walk the world & they let it lead them toward freedom

I use somatic awareness and yoga therapy.

Somatic therapy incorporates the intelligent healing power of the body into the therapy room. A neuroscientifically researched approach, somatic therapy reaches well beyond the limitations of "talk therapy". This approach moves into the realm of how our bodies have processed wellbeing, stress and trauma throughout our lives and incorporates experimenting with : breath, movement, alignment and other "bottom-up" interventions to aid the progress of healing.

Body Psychotherapy and Movement Therapy go beyond traditional “talk therapy” as these specialized approaches offer mindful consideration to the crucial role of the body structure and process of the psyche. During a session, I pay close attention to sensation and body states, which allow unconscious material to authentically manifest and possibly be worked with using breath, spatial awareness, consented therapeutic touch, movement, sensation, and imagery.

Somatic therapy, or body-oriented therapy, taps into the wisdom of the body as a gateway for healing. By focusing on physical sensations, posture, breath, and movement, somatic therapy helps clients connect with and release stored emotions and trauma that are often held in the body. This approach empowers clients to build a deeper awareness of the mind-body connection, fostering a sense of presence and grounding that supports emotional resilience.

I incorporate body-focused techniques to help clients to be present with their experiences, clarify their emotional experience, and process through emotions that have been "trapped" in their bodies.

My entire graduate studies were focused on Somatic Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies. This orientation provides an added dimension by taking the therapy out of the arena of second-hand reports (from your verbal mind) and into first-hand, felt experience. Our bodies often reveal first what our verbal, self conscious mind attempts to disguise and hide. I utilize Somatic interventions to potentially open you up to information that can be overlooked in most analytic psychotherapy. Traditional therapy practices pay attention almost exclusively to thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In Somatics, the added awareness of sensations and felt experiences within the body are used to deepen the work. This can provide a channel of cooperation between the unconscious and conscious. In turn, Somatics helps to facilitate communication among parts of yourself that may be lost, hidden, or isolated.

Somatic therapy, sometimes known as body psychotherapy, is a therapeutic approach that places importance on what we experience in the mind and the body as well as the connection between the two. “Somatic” itself means “of or relating to the body.” I work with clients to hone their skills of listening to their body, their gut, and intuitive guidance to improve their self knowledge. If we are talking about the body and sexuality or the body as guidance to making decisions, the body is your friend!

Somatic techniques can help you to detach from unwanted energy, emotions and negative core beliefs that may have attached to you during a traumatic event, inner child wounding or period of chronic stress. Learn to use the body as a tool for self-regulation. Learn to use somatic techniques to enhance healing. Learn to rewire and re-stabilize your nervous system.

I have a certificate in somatic psychotherapy from anti-och university.

Practicing somatically means including the physical body as a source of assessment and treatment. That means I will stay curious about physical sensations in the moment, may incorporate movement into sessions or refer you to a bodyworker, and will teach you about the psychobiological core of our behaviors and emotions—the nervous system. If you are looking for a way to feel at home in your body, you may be in the right place.

What does somatic therapy mean and look like? Implicit memories (the ones without a movie in our head) are stored in the body keep people stuck. These memories can be released and accessed to heal the body and the mind with or without the story being shared or even touched. Together we bring on regulation, safety, with a compassionate witness to have a felt sense of being seen, heard and understood. Internalizing the safety into your body is the thrive of health.

The body doesn’t lie. When we pay attention to the signals of our body — flutters in the belly, chills up the spine, the urge to run, etc.— we learn a lot about the state of our nervous system and how safe (or not safe) we feel. Through somatic exercises, we can release what has been stored in the body through traumatic experiences, and learn to restore our sense of safety. Furthermore, with keen bodily awareness, we can gain greater trust in our own intuition and reclaim agency and empowerment.