Somatic Therapy

Body-oriented psychotherapy for trauma, anxiety, old patterns from childhood, and nervous system overwhelm.

Somatic therapy is a body-oriented approach to psychotherapy that recognizes how closely the mind, body, emotions, and nervous system are connected.

Sometimes what we carry does not only live in our thoughts. It may show up as tension, bracing, shutdown, restlessness, digestive discomfort, shallow breathing, numbness, chronic stress, or the feeling that your body is reacting before you have time to understand why.

Somatic therapy offers a way to listen to those signals with curiosity and care, rather than judgment. Instead of focusing only on insight or talking through a problem, we also pay attention to what your body has learned to protect, avoid, hold, or expect.

How Somatic Therapy Works

In somatic therapy, we slow things down. We may notice body sensations, posture, gestures, breath, impulses, emotions, images, memories, or patterns that arise in the moment.

This does not mean forcing you to feel more than you are ready to feel. The work is gentle, collaborative, and paced carefully. The goal is to help you build more awareness, choice, and steadiness in your relationship with yourself, your body, and your nervous system.

For some people, this work helps make sense of anxiety, trauma responses, emotional overwhelm, shutdown, or old relational patterns that do not shift through insight alone.

Hakomi and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

My somatic work is shaped by my training in both Hakomi and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Both approaches combine mindfulness with body-oriented psychotherapy and can be especially helpful for exploring patterns that began early in life and continue to show up in your emotions, relationships, and sense of self.

Hakomi brings a gentle, mindful, experiential way of studying your inner world. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented therapy for trauma, attachment wounds, and early life experiences that continue to live in the body, nervous system, emotions, and relationships.

Together, these approaches support therapy that is not only about understanding what happened, but also about noticing how your system adapted — and what may become possible now.

Somatic Therapy May Be Helpful If You’re Navigating

anxiety, stress, or nervous system overwhelm
trauma or painful experiences from the past
old patterns from childhood or family-of-origin dynamics
attachment wounds or relational trauma
grief, loss, or major life transitions
emotional shutdown, numbness, or disconnection
people-pleasing, self-doubt, or difficulty setting boundaries
tension, bracing, digestive discomfort, or body-based stress
feeling like you understand something intellectually, but still react the same way emotionally or physically

Somatic Therapy and Talk Therapy

Somatic therapy does not replace talking. We still make room for your story, your thoughts, your emotions, and the meaning you make of your experiences.

But sometimes words alone are not enough. You may understand why you react a certain way and still find yourself repeating the same pattern. Somatic therapy can help us include the body and nervous system in the work, so change is not only intellectual but also felt and embodied.

Depending on your needs, I may integrate somatic therapy with EMDR, Attachment-Focused EMDR, psychodynamic therapy, parts work, mindfulness, and polyvagal-informed approaches.

Online Somatic Therapy in Colorado and California

I offer online somatic therapy for adults located in Colorado and California. Although somatic therapy involves attention to the body, it can often be done meaningfully online when there is enough privacy, stability, and capacity to stay present with what arises.

In online somatic therapy, we may work with breath, sensation, grounding, posture, movement, imagery, and present-moment awareness in ways that are gentle and appropriate for video sessions.

Online somatic therapy may not be the right fit if you are currently in crisis, feeling unsafe, easily overwhelmed by body-based awareness, or struggling to regulate between sessions. In those situations, in-person therapy, a higher level of care, or more stabilization-focused support may be more appropriate.

During our consultation and early sessions, we can talk together about whether online somatic therapy feels like a safe and appropriate fit for you.

Begin Somatic Therapy

If you are interested in somatic therapy and wondering whether working together might be a good fit, I invite you to contact me to schedule your complimentary 20-minute video consultation.