“Somatic” simply means “of the body.” In somatic therapy, we use the lens of what your body is experiencing as our entryway into exploring what is going on in the whole of your self.

Every mental and emotional event has a physical counterpart. For example, stress isn’t just a mindset; it’s also very much a bodily event. Stress is our fight-or-flight response, our survival mechanism, the fuel that powers us through so many big and small moments. But when our natural stress response doesn’t come to a natural close, we can become run-down, shut down, or irritable. We can be prone to health problems or relational problems in this state, and feel cut off from our sense of vitality. Somatic therapy helps you deeply listen to the wisdom of your body, so that cycles that need to complete can do so, and your natural healing response can bring the various parts of yourself and your life back into harmony.

 

I find touch work to be the most direct and effective method of somatic therapy. There is a massage table in my office, and I often offer fully clothed hands-on work as a part of our psychotherapy. Touch work can be as quiet or talk-filled as we choose. Each session generally begins and ends with at least a little seated face-to-face time, so we can first check in, and then integrate what came up during the touch portion of our work.

Hands-on somatic therapy is for anybody with a body. We will go as slow as you want and need in preparing for touch work. We can work with issues ranging from personal growth to grief and loss, anxiety, depression, relationship issues, life transitions, and identity and spiritual crises.