Somatic Therapy (Body Centered)

Peter Levine's "Somatic Experiencing" work is the core from which most of my interventions extend. I continue to assist these trainings around the country and have taken various master classes with Peter. (www.traumahealing.org) Additionally, I'm trained in Somatic Resilience & Regulation work which is a touch based model for developmental trauma developed by Kathy Kain & Steve Terrell and their book is called "Nurturing Resilience". My graduate training was in "Somatic Psychotherapy" from JFK

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.

Somatic Psychotherapy is a body-oriented therapeutic modality and holistic approach to wellness and trauma survival that builds upon and integrates the diversity of somatic approaches within the context of therapy. Somatic Psychotherapy guides you in contacting and being gently with your embodied lived-experience of race, ethnicity, and socio-cultural identity. Somatic Psychotherapy promotes embodied transformation and collective liberation that interrogates and interrupts toxic social forms of

There is a wealth of knowledge in the bodymind. I enjoy assisting clients in coming into a greater intimacy with their own physical sensations and emotional experiences.

Somatic therapy is a type of mind-body therapy. It is body-centric utilizing physiology and the nervous system to regulate symptoms of anxiety, panic, fear, anger and dissociation. It can include deep relaxation exercises, mindfulness, body movement, imagery, somatic therapy (bottom-up) techniques such as Blinders-Off or Grounding In the 5 Senses.

Somatic therapy is the physical underlying prompting of all emotion and action. It is physically felt through the vagus nerve (12th cranial nerve in the brain) throughout our whole body. When you develop awareness of your sensations you can learn how to “feel” feelings in a completely new way. It is like having another sense. Once you have this sense, you can develop techniques that make moving through emotions, trauma, eating disorders and other “intense” states a breeze. It is fun and easy!

I use body-work to guide clients in releasing their trauma histories. When trauma occurs early in life before language skills are fully developed, the trauma automatically becomes stored in the body. Symptoms of pain, repeated injuries, and even susceptibility to illness can all be signs of unprocessed childhood trauma. When we work somatically, we release the emotions stored in the body to relieve the physical symptoms and postural habits.

I have been a massage therapist for 30 years and found my way to Pyschotherapy as a result of the many emotional experiences that the body released during with newborns and their parents with CranioSacral therapy. I found that the implicit memories that keep people stuck can be accessed with or without the story being shared to be released and healed in the body and the mind.

Oftentimes, unconscious psychological material gets reflected in our posture, breath patterns, tension and constriction in our muscles, habits, movement impulses, quality of voice, eye movements, and much more. When we more fully understand the subtle and complex interactions and communications throughout mind-body unity, we are more equipped to recognize what might be interfering with that natural healing force (or organicity) within us. We are then more equipped to cultivate and promote it.

Somatic therapy is the healing part of therapy. It uses the body's natural drive to process through traumatic and painful experiences.

Somatic therapy is a form of body-centered therapy that looks at the connection of mind and body and uses psychotherapy for holistic healing. In addition to talk therapy, somatic therapy practitioners like myself use mind-body exercises and other physical techniques to help release the pent-up tension that negatively affects a patient’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

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.

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.

Somatic Experiencing techniques are some of my favorite to use in session. Our bodies keep the score of every event we have endured, and connecting the emotional to the physical can be a powerful, moving experience. Expanding this connection can transform the way you show up in relationships and the way you view the world. Every nervous system is capable of finding and keeping regulation- let's discover the pathway that works for you :)

Western culture privileges the knowledge of our minds over the wisdom of our bodies. We know that the body holds memory and pain and is reponsible for a huge part of our emotional experience and reactions. We work with clients to become more acquainted with emotions as they are experienced in their bodies and build techniques to help lessen reactivity, soothe anxiety and worry, heal and release trauma responses, and feel more at ease.

iRest Yoga Nidra Level One Teacher Certification with Richard Miller, Ph.D.‘s Integrative Restoration Institute (2017) Certified in Trauma-informed Yoga with Hala Khouri & Kyra Heglund, (both LCSW, SEP, ERYT) (2017)