Healing Through the Body
Have you ever noticed how your chest tightens when you're anxious, or how your shoulders tense up when you're under stress? The body has a language of its own, and often, it's trying to tell us something important. In embodied (somatic) psychotherapy, we learn to listen to it.
As a psychotherapist who works in an embodied and integrative way, I sit with people who feel stuck, disconnected, or weighed down by patterns they can't seem to shift. That's where the body comes in.
What Is Embodied (Somatic) Psychotherapy?
Somatic (or body-oriented) psychotherapy is a therapeutic approach that recognises the deep connection between mind, body, and emotion. Rather than focusing solely on words, it invites us to tune in to how experiences live in the body, through breath, posture, muscle tension, and sensation.
By paying attention to these subtle physical cues, with curiosity and care, we create space for healing that is not only cognitive but deeply felt.
Why the Body Matters in Therapy
Trauma, anxiety, stress, and emotional overwhelm often live in the body. We might feel this as a racing heart, a churning gut, chronic pain, or a sense of numbness or shutdown. Even when we understand what's going on intellectually, our nervous system may still be caught in old survival patterns.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, argues that trauma is held not only in memory but in the body itself. Neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges proposes that our sense of safety, or of threat, is registered in the nervous system, often outside conscious awareness. Both have been influential in how therapists think about trauma, and both remain the subject of ongoing scientific debate.
How Somatic Psychotherapy Complements Talk Therapy
Talking is a vital part of therapy, it helps us make meaning, find language for our experience, and feel understood in relationships. Embodied psychotherapy doesn't replace talk therapy, it expands it, inviting us to also pay attention to what's happening beneath the words.
What Does a Session Look Like?
Sessions might look a little different from what you'd expect in traditional therapy. We'll talk, and we might also pause to notice what's happening in your body as you speak. You're always in charge of what we explore, and nothing is ever forced.
Who Is Somatic Therapy For?
This approach can be helpful for many people, including those experiencing chronic stress, burnout, anxiety, low mood, a sense of disconnection from the body or self, trauma, chronic illness or pain, or feeling "stuck" despite having insight.
Body-based approaches are still building their research base, and for trauma in particular there are well-established treatments with stronger evidence behind them. I see somatic work as something that sits alongside those rather than replaces them, and if a different approach would serve you better, I'll say so.
Curious about working this way?
A free 15 minute conversation is a low-pressure way to ask questions and get a sense of how I work.
Get in touchvan der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body. Norton.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.