Somatic Therapy is essentially an integrative therapy that brings about growth and healing in a deep way by addressing all aspects of the client: physical (or “soma”), emotional, mental, and spiritual. In particular, Somatic Therapy facilitates this healing by supporting the client to come into relationship with their bodies through sensation, movement, touch, postures, as well as through talk and awareness practices. Slowing down, and focusing on what we feel in our bodies and our feelings can bring about natural healing processes when supported in a safe and skilled manner. Remaining issues from stressful or traumatic issues may manifest in movements of muscles or tissues, chronic illnesses, emotional issues like rage or depression, or any number of ways. Healing these issues in a somatic way can bring about healing and growth where other therapies might not.

How does somatic therapy work?

The places where we struggle in our lives invariably have related emotions and sensations associated with them, when we look closely enough with trained eyes. The therapist gently supports the client in becoming more aware of some of these underlying clues, and supports them in becoming more able to not only tolerate them, but to become curious about them, to discover where they do not need to be avoided, where they may have roots in health and a healthy response to what may have been a threat in the past. Supporting this process in somatic therapy helps to bring about integration of sensations, feelings, movements, and understanding and coming to terms with the past, and learning new ways to be in the present on all cylinders: emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Perhaps the breath is stuck or shallow in a particular way, or there is a habit of reacting to imagined humiliation with rage, or there is an addictive attachment to destructive people or behaviors,with any of these there are keys that present in the client that a somatic therapist can decode and reflect to the client in such a way that they can begin to unravel the unhealthy patterns and release the stress and trauma from their system.

An important aspect of this process is that despite the presence of unpleasant feelings or sensations associated with stress and trauma, somatic therapy works best when the focus is primarily on the aspects of the present moment that are positive, empowering, pleasant, or in some way positive. From these positive aspects, forays into the more difficult material in  brief and manageable ways is essential to the success of the work. The myth that healing these difficult things has to be purely painful and uncomfortable is clearly dispelled with effective somatic therapy.