Somatic Psychotherapy

Somatic means of the body.

The most direct way to connect with your inner experience is through the body because your body is expressing your felt experience all the time:

The way your heart starts beating faster when you think of the person you are grieving.

The sudden numbness that often comes over you when your partner speaks in that exact way.

The way your shoulders collapse when you find yourself telling your friend, yet again “oh don’t worry about me”.

The smile that unconsciously plasters on your face as you share feelings of anger or frustration or sadness.

The body, your body, is speaking all the time. It speaks in the language of physical sensations, posture, movement and images.

There are many types of somatic therapy. My training is primarily in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling, which centers the outwardly expressive ways that we express our emotions and experiences through gesture, posture and movement as much as the internal ways that we experience ourselves through sensations.

Somatic psychotherapy as I practice it is about learning how to listen to, believe, express and respond to what your body is telling you both verbally and non-verbally, which I do by integrating somatic awareness and expressive practices with Internal Family Systems therapy. Overtime, building your capacity to connect your present moment sensations and movement patterns to what you experienced in your past increases your capacity to be your fullest, most authentic self.

For example, let’s say you have a pattern of smiling when you are sharing feelings of sadness or anger. You probably learned when you were young that it wasn’t safe or okay to express your “negative” feelings in their fullness, so you learned to soften the blow that your body has come to expect by smiling at the same time. As I reflect the incoherences I witness between what your body is expressing and what you are internally feeling, you get to become curious about the part of you that is covering up the true emotion and build a relationship with it. Overtime, this part will learn that you are not in the same situation you were as a child and that is safe to express your anger and sadness. Alternatively, if you are in fact in a living situation or relationship in the present day that is activating this part, connecting with it can give you the energy and grounding to express different boundaries that support your ability to express yourself authentically.

Growing your capacity to be present with your body naturally increases your capacity to be present with all the parts of your life without shutting down.

In my work with my clients, I focus on helping you connect to your felt experience, and utilize movement based practices to grow your body’s capacity to be present within a wider range of emotional experiences without shutting down.

This is creative, playful, wild and tender work.

Ultimately, I want you to get to the place where you are able to feel and be present to more of life’s challenges and joys rather than expend energy trying to protect yourself from experiencing pain.