What is Somatic Therapy?

Have you ever noticed that when you are stressed, your shoulders tighten, your chest feels heavy, or your stomach knots up? That is because your mind and body are completely interconnected.

Traditional talk therapy focuses heavily on your thoughts. While understanding why you feel a certain way is incredibly valuable, talking alone cannot always release the physical imprint that stress leaves behind. Traditional cognitive therapies rely on the "top-down" approach, which means changing your thoughts to alter how you feel.

Somatic therapy is a body-centered movement approach to psychotherapy based on the premise Somatic therapy works in reverse: it starts with physical sensations to help shift your emotional state. Unlike traditional talk therapy that focuses solely on conscious thoughts, it uses "bottom-up" processing, helping you release pent-up tension by noticing and processing physical sensations. These techniques are used exclusively as a somatic stress-management and relaxation tool to support your over-arching clinical mental health treatment goals.

Somatic therapy is a body-centered psychotherapy that explores the mind-body connection. Rather than focusing solely on thoughts or trauma memories, it uses physical awareness tools, breathwork and movement help release tension and stress in the nervous system. Somatic therapy assists with your treatment plan to aid in learning skills to regulate the nervous system, manage anxiety and process trauma.

When you encounter stress or trauma, your nervous system can become overwhelmed, causing "fight, flight, or freeze" responses to physically get stuck in the body. Practitioners guide you to safely explore these physical reactions without becoming overwhelmed, allowing your nervous system to return to a state of balance.

Somatic therapy is widely used to treat a variety of psychological and physical conditions, with significant evidence supporting its use for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex grief, and anxiety. It can also be beneficial for depression, chronic pain, and stress-related physical symptoms like muscle tension or shallow breathing.

Using these techniques we can identify where stress is stored and help your nervous system finally return to a state of safety and balance.