Somatic therapy
Trauma and chronic stress live in the body — in the tightened chest, the braced shoulders, the constant scanning for danger. Traditional talk therapy reaches the mind but can miss what's held physically. Somatic therapy works with the body's own signals: sensation, posture, breath, and movement. You don't have to re-tell every detail of what happened. You work with what your nervous system is already doing.
Most major insurances accepted.
Don’t see your plan? We sign new contracts a few times a year — ask during intake and we’ll let you know if yours is being added soon.
How Somatic works in our practice.
Somatic therapy is grounded in the understanding that unprocessed experiences leave a physical imprint. The body keeps the score — not as metaphor but as neurobiology. Somatic Experiencing (SE), developed by Peter Levine, works with the incomplete survival responses still active in the nervous system: the fight, flight, or freeze that never fully discharged.
Sessions involve gentle attention to physical sensation alongside whatever is being talked through. A clinician might invite you to notice where you feel something in your body, track the sensation as it shifts, or move in small ways that allow the nervous system to complete a response it started years ago.
Somatic approaches are particularly effective for complex trauma (C-PTSD), perinatal trauma, birth trauma, and anxiety that shows up more physically than mentally. They're often paired with EMDR or IFS for deeper trauma processing.
From first call to first session.
- 01
Body-centered awareness
Your therapist will occasionally invite you to shift attention from the story to what's happening physically — sensation, breath, posture. There's no performance required.
- 02
Slower-paced, titrated
Somatic work moves carefully. Flooding the nervous system accomplishes nothing. We work at the edge of what you can tolerate, not past it.
- 03
No physical touch
Somatic therapy in our setting is verbal and observational — no physical touch is involved. All sessions are telehealth or in-person talk-based.
Common questions about somatic therapy.
How is somatic therapy different from regular talk therapy?+
Talk therapy primarily works through language and insight. Somatic therapy also attends to physical sensation, posture, breath, and the body's moment-to-moment signals — based on the idea that unprocessed experience is held physically as much as cognitively.
Is somatic therapy good for postpartum?+
Yes. Birth trauma, postpartum anxiety, and the physical dysregulation of new parenthood all respond well to somatic approaches. Many perinatal clients find it more accessible than pure talk therapy when language feels insufficient.
Can I combine somatic therapy with EMDR?+
Commonly. Many clinicians use somatic awareness as a resourcing tool alongside EMDR. The two approaches complement each other well for trauma processing.
Somatic therapy is also referred to as somatic experiencing, body-based therapy, SE therapy, sensorimotor therapy, and somatic trauma therapy. Whatever you call it, our specialists treat it.
Often paired with this work.
Trauma & PTSD
Sexual trauma, betrayal, narcissistic abuse, IPV, birth trauma, PTSD — treated with EMDR, somatic, and trauma-informed CBT.
EMDR & trauma-informed care
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing — the gold standard for single-incident trauma.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
The most-researched, most-evidence-based talk therapy for anxiety and depression.
Ready to start?
Same-week availability, in-network with major insurance, and a specialist who actually treats somatic therapy as their main work.