What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a bottom-up approach that aims to renegotiate traumatic experiences, building resilience and expanding our capacity to feel. When we encounter a threatening situation, our body may enter one of four survival modes: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. If the situation resolves immediately and the mobilized energy is used through actions like fighting or escaping, there's no traumatic residue. However, if the energy isn't resolved—like when we freeze for a prolonged period or can't escape—the energy becomes trapped in the body, leading to trauma.
During a typical session, we gently focus on a small portion of the traumatic energy held in the body and invite it to surface. We then allow ourselves to feel it—only to the extent that is tolerable—so that the body can complete what it wasn't able to at the time of the event. This process helps the body re-engage with sensations it couldn't fully experience before, gradually increasing its capacity to hold and process that intensity. Ultimately, this allows the autonomic nervous system to release the trapped tension, restoring the body's natural equilibrium and resilience.
Why Somatic Therapy?
Traditional approaches often address trauma through the mind, but trauma lives in the body—in the tension we hold, the breath we restrict, the sensations we've learned to avoid. Somatic therapy offers a pathway to healing that speaks the body's language, working directly with the physiological imprints that keep us stuck in survival patterns. When we've spent years managing symptoms through willpower or understanding alone, this approach provides something different: a way to discharge the activation that understanding cannot reach.
Many people come to somatic work after finding that insight alone hasn't brought relief. They understand their trauma intellectually but still feel hijacked by their nervous system—the racing heart, the shutdown, the overwhelm that arrives without warning. Somatic therapy addresses this gap by meeting the body where it is, allowing it to complete interrupted protective responses and discover that the threat has passed. Through this work, we don't just manage our reactions; we transform our relationship with sensation itself, reclaiming the aliveness that trauma has held hostage.
Differences Between Somatic Therapy and Talk Therapy
Talk therapy primarily works top-down, using language, insight, and narrative to process experiences. We explore our stories, understand patterns, and develop new perspectives through cognitive and emotional reflection. While powerful, this approach can sometimes leave the body's held experiences untouched—we may understand what happened and why, yet still feel the tightness in our chest, the collapse in our posture, or the hypervigilance that won't quiet.
Somatic therapy takes a bottom-up approach, beginning with the body's wisdom rather than the mind's interpretation. Instead of talking about what happened, we notice what's happening now—the sensations, impulses, and movements seeking expression. Rather than analyzing feelings, we track the body's subtle communications: the impulse to push away that was never completed, the tears that were held back, the "no" that couldn't be spoken. This allows us to access pre-verbal and implicit memories stored in the nervous system that talk therapy may not reach.
The two approaches complement each other beautifully. Talk therapy helps us make meaning and integrate our experiences into coherent narratives, while somatic therapy helps us release what's been locked in our physiology, creating the regulation necessary for deeper cognitive and emotional work. Together, they offer a more complete path to healing—one that honors both the stories we tell and the truths our bodies hold.