What is Somatic Therapy?
The word 'Somatic' comes from 'soma', the Greek word for body. The term somatics is used to describe the body as you experience it from the inside: what you sense, feel and notice.
Somatic therapy works with your body and nervous system alongside your thoughts. Stress, anxiety, trauma and difficult emotional patterns can show up physically: a tight chest, a clenched jaw, a body that stays on alert. We work with those signals directly.
What happens in a somatic session?
Depending on what you are working through and what your nervous system needs, we might use any combination of the following approaches.
Body Attunement and Interoception:
Learning to notice and interpret your body's internal signals, the tightness in your chest, the heaviness in your shoulders, the subtle shift in your gut. Most people have learned to ignore these signals. We learn to listen to them instead.
Orienting and Grounding:
Practices that bring your nervous system back to the present moment and your immediate environment. Particularly useful when anxiety, or overwhelm pulls you out of the here and now.
Physical Discharge and Release:
The nervous system stores stress and trauma as physical tension and activation. Techniques like shaking, stomping, pressing into a wall, or other movement-based practices help the body complete the stress cycle it never got to finish, releasing what has been held.
Regulation and Resourcing:
Building your capacity to tolerate, manage, and recover from difficult emotional and physical states. This expands what your nervous system can handle without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.