Somatic Psychotherapy for Embodied Living

Trauma-Informed Self-Compassionate Care

What is Embodiment and Embodied Psychotherapy?

Embodiment can be simply defined as living life informed through the sense experience of the body.

Our bodies are our first lived experience in the world before words and the development of higher intelligence. Unfortunately, as we grow we often attempt to understand ourselves or any struggles we are having just through one area, the mind, rather than using all that is available to us for knowledge and insight. Our body offers us a whole area of often untapped knowledge and awareness that is highly effective in creating lasting insight and change.

A “Bottom-Up” Approach Starting with the Body First

Somatic Psychotherapy is about accessing and using information from your body and nervous system to increase your self-awareness. It is a “bottom-up” approach used to reprogram long-held beliefs and stories that no longer serve you, as well as for proper trauma resolution work, teaching you how to live a more embodied life.

My somatic psychotherapy sessions go beyond just the story of what you are struggling with, as stories keep us stuck in the past and teach us to fear the future. Rather, in each session, I will help you to recognize how the struggle and suffering you have been living with can be shifted from the inside out, starting with the body first.

When learned in this way it stays with us long-term, as we are not just developing a new thought; rather, we are developing a felt sense of internal regulation. It is through that felt sense of regulation, called the Ventral Vagal response, that we begin to heal mood disturbance (anxiety, depression), traumatic memories and reactions, relational struggles, and lack of well-being.

The outcome is many “aha” moments born from embodied experience rather than just thought.

More Info:

  • In an Embodied Psychotherapy session, I help you to slow down and internally “listen” to the experience of your body and your nervous system. Sometimes, this may appear to be no different from any other talk therapy session. However, the difference is in my unique method and style of helping you to attend and witness in the moment, both obvious and subtle shifts within your nervous system—along with additional information your body is offering to you as you speak.

    We are so programmed to attend just to our stories, that we often lose this body connection and communication.

    You will explore, in various ways, such as specific verbal dialogue, sometimes breath work, and sometimes movement, such as subtle shifts to maybe even a relaxing restorative yoga pose that opens areas of the body where tension is held. 

    You will also learn, through psycho-education, a great deal about your nervous system and how you operate in the world as well as notice when and how that begins to shift. 

  • Somatic psychotherapy sessions leave you feeling more empowered and connected to yourself and your body through feeling an understanding that there is no separation between our mind and body.

    Through somatically tracking your Autonomic Nervous System’s response, we learn to shift and re-program your internal response in the moment. 

    Over time, this integrated knowledge and nervous system re-programming will offer you various skills to help keep you present so that you may live life feeling safe, connected, integrated, embodied and fully alive with yourself and with others.

My Unique Training and Approach

The Somatic Interventions I use are informed and framed through:

  • My Certified Advanced training as a Polyvagal Theory (Stephen Porges and Deb Dana) informed therapist

  • Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT) Interoceptive Awareness Practitioner (see below)

  • Self-Compassion Expert and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) Teacher

  • A Level 3 Certified Somatic IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapist

  • Certified Yoga Therapist

  • Certified Mindfulness Therapist

Interoceptive
Awareness

MABT is an evidenced-based program created by researcher Dr. Cynthia Price. It is a program to build interoceptive awareness skills helping you to access and use them in your daily life.

Interoceptive Awareness training helps you to sense your body from the inside out and it is an essential neurobiological skill that builds corrective body to brain signals and awareness of these for greater self-awareness and self-development. Interoceptive awareness and nervous system regulation are intimately connected and the somatic interventions I teach you bring these connections alive for lasting healing from the impact of trauma, eating disorder recovery, as well as for emotion and mood regulation and over all well-being.

Psychospiritual Framework

My extensive training as a certified yoga therapist 18 years ago, as well as a Transpersonal Psychologist, offered me an in depth study of mind/body integration through a holistic, spiritual viewpoint, different than any Western Psychotherapy training. This knowledge allows me the opportunity and ability to create a unique addition to my somatic sessions, helping you to also learn how your body moves and functions on an anatomical level as well as integrating a psychospiritual framework. I will often incorporate this knowledge through yoga therapeutic interventions such as breath, mantra, movement, Ayurvedic recommendations, and/or gentle restorative yoga therapy poses to enhance internal regulation and teach additional skills that you can use on your own in between sessions.

Work With Me

My practice is currently full to new somatic psychotherapy clients. 
Please see my availability for Somatic Skills Embodiment Coaching Sessions:

FAQs:

  • Studies in mental health and the medical professions have proven that long after an emotional or physical trauma, the body still responds as if it was a current event even though memories may have faded. Traumatic events and emotions leave an “imprint” in our sensory, autonomic, and hormonal systems. Therefore, long after the event has occurred there still may be bodily sensations, reactions and feelings that continue to occur and cause anything from worry, anxiety, fear, and panic attacks, to states of depression. We are now discovering that to have an effect on this “visceral” response we must work in heightening awareness of sensations, and integrating the body into treatment along with the mind. However, it need not be a trauma. All emotion and thoughts have a body connection. We learn to discover what that connection is about. Grounding through the experience of the body we “re-claim” the body as a safe place to be.

  • The fee for Individual Psychotherapy Sessions is $200 per session.

  • Most clients find they gather a great deal from each session and therefore schedule twice a month.