Somatic therapy offers a path to reconnect with your body and process trauma and stress. It is a way to regulate your nervous system, fostering better body awareness through the felt sense, and supporting recovery from burn-out, fatigue, insomnia, chronic stress and pain, trauma, and more. It offers a deeper understanding your own inner embodied wisdom and the ways you relate to yourself (intrapersonal) the outside world (interpersonal).
Embodiment is the practice of being fully present in your body, acknowledging its wisdom and intelligence. Movement is integral to embodiment, serving as a gateway to express emotions, release tension, and enhance the mind-body connection. Embodiment and somatics aim to shift the focus to a more holistic approach that emphasizes the bidirectional relationship between the mind and body. These practices acknowledge that the body holds wisdom and valuable information (emotions, sensations and intelligence) and by tuning into these signals (bottom-up), we empower ourselves to more effectively manage our mental states, decision-making processes, and overall well-being.
Somatic therapy and embodiment coaching employ gentle techniques rooted in trauma-sensitive somatic orienting, talk therapy, sensory perception & polyvagal awareness, gentle movement, mindfulness/insight oriented practices, attunement & co-regulation. Through a person-centered and humanistic lens, sessions may incorporate elements of top-down talk therapy (cognitions, emotions, narrative), combined with bottom-up processing which includes attending to body cues, awareness, internal sensations, movement, stillness, breath, visualization/somatization, touch and deep listening. Somatic therapy and embodiment exploration is unique in that it moves beyond only talk or cognitive processes and incorporates an experiential learning through the felt senses. It honors the living body, embracing its aliveness, unspoken narratives, stories and subtle expressions to heal holistically.
There are three core pillars of my practice that I follow:
- Safety - We practice in not judging ourselves or others & practice exploring sensations & soft observation or experimentation.
- Non-Violence - Nothing should hurt or cause pain, all movements should be soft and at your own speed and your own interpretation.
- Slow - This is a mindful practice, staying with the body's attention requires us to slow down so we can unlock & discover bodily wisdom that is often missed when we are moving fast or without awareness.
Each session will combine and integrate the following elements:
- Bottom-up & Top-down: an integrative & experiential process to strengthen the mind-body connection and to heal holistically
- Trauma Informed: slow, with on-going consent & at your pace
- Relational: trusted, compassionate, boundaried & empathically attuned relationship to help to neutralize emotions & co-regulate the nervous system
- Integrative: informed by my training and practices in Body-Mind Centering (BMC), Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) Felt Sense, polyvagal & attachment theory, EFT, narrative therapy, Parts work/IFS, mindfulness practices and neuroscience.
I have experience working with folks navigating:
- Mental health challenges (anxiety, depression, complex PTSD, mood and personality disorders)
- Recovery/substance use (harm reduction, abstinence, AA/NA, SMART recovery)
- Chronic pain/stress/illness/burnout
- High risk coping strategies (suicidal ideation, self-harm or high risk behaviours)
- Neurodiversity (ADHD, ASD, giftedness, intense minded)
- Intimate partner violence/Gender based violence
- Relational/developmental/attachment trauma
- Structural trauma
- Birth trauma/perinatal mood challenges
- Gender exploration/transition
- Poly/ENM/Kink/BDSM/Sex work
- Grief, loss, bereavement
- Major life transitions
Other modalities/interventions that inform my therapeutic work include my training and practice in Alexander technique, Generative Somatics, Authentic Movement, Restorative Justice and decolonial ways of working.
