The word “somatic” comes from the Latin root word “soma,” which means “of the body.” Somatic Therapy is body-oriented psychotherapy. It is different from other types of therapy because it includes both talking about your lived experience, and connecting with your embodiment through body-based practices. Somatic Therapy integrates body awareness with talk therapy, offering deeper levels of insight into the relationship of your body and mind.

Somatic Therapy can help build confidence, self-esteem, self-awareness and compassion for ourselves and others. It can also provide a deeper knowledge of our motivations and feelings, which supports healthy decision making.

Our bodies often give us cues through sensations and perceptions, and when we learn to identify these cues, it helps us to understand ourselves better. This understanding can help reduce anxiety, stress, tension, PTSD symptoms, and more.

Emotions and thoughts are deeply connected with our embodiment, and when we pay attention to our bodies we can start to make more sense of our lived experiences. This offers us greater access to growth, change and healing on many levels.

My fee for sessions is $175 per 50-minute session. The cost of therapy covers weekly meetings, preparation time, continuing professional education, any necessary research to support treatment, professional certification, regular clinical supervision and consultation to ensure effective treatment, and collaboration with other care providers as needed.

⬩ Connecting with the present moment and how you show up
⬩ Noticing sensations in your body and allowing your body’s cues
to guide your experiences at your own pace
⬩ Grounding techniques, such as feeling your feet and settling
⬩ Engaging with your breath, and learning to breathe more fully
⬩ Centering yourself by following your body’s cues
⬩ Getting in touch with your nervous system and learning to
recognize and address different states of activation, including
fight/flight/freeze
⬩ Learning to track your body’s cues in the present moment,
across a range of emotional states

When the pandemic hit, and therapists were required to work remotely, we Somatic Therapists had to be really creative. Over the last several years I’ve adapted to engage with embodiment in the online format. I’ve developed a variety of ways to work somatically with my clients (check out the answer to the question above for examples), and have discovered that online somatic therapy can be just as effective as in-person work--and surprisingly, sometimes more so! For many of my clients, it is a grounding and comforting experience to engage in somatic therapy work without needing to commute before and after sessions. Additionally, as a clinician I have observed that the practices, observations, and awareness that I bring to sessions do translate through the screen, and I tailor my work to support the needs of each individual client.

Embodiment is your experience of your body. It is the way you move through the world in your body. Studies have shown that how we perceive and engage with our bodies can affect and change our embodied experiences. The more awareness we have of our embodiment, the more we are able to choose how we experience and interact with our bodies.

Psychoeducation is an offering of information and knowledge relevant to your therapeutic process. It can be very useful to have a common language to talk about particular experiences, issues, challenges, and feelings. When we have a frame of reference to understand our experiences, we have more agency and choice around how live our lives. Examples of psychoeducation include (but are not limited to):

⬩ giving information related to a diagnosis, such as anxiety or
depression
⬩ explaining and/or describing therapeutic concepts and skills,
such as setting and maintaining boundaries
⬩ identifying causes, triggers, and/or symptoms of a specific
condition, such as PTSD
⬩ offering outside resources where information can be accessed,
such as other clinical professionals, books, websites, and
podcasts