What is SomaticS?

Somatic therapy is a holistic approach to healing and integrating expereince through the wisdom of the human mammalian nervous system. I beleive somatic work can help reconnect us with innate capacities to be at home in our bodies, and more readily available for connection in our communities.

Somatic work draws from an understanding of the human mammalian nervous system. This work is recovery work as much as it is healing. Other mammals, though threatened often, are rarely traumatized. Animals in the wild utilize innate mechanisms to regulate and discharge the energy arousal from self-protective survival behaviors. These mechanisms provide animals with a built-in “immunity’’ to trauma, enabling a return to stasis in the aftermath life-threatening experiences. Human mammalian trauma is often more complex than in wild animals, spanning life and crossing generations, due to forces of colonization, oppression, and other conditions of modern living. I hold a political and social systemic lens in my practice. I believe trauma healing happens on all levels of life, from gut bacteria to social change to the cosmos, present, past, and future.

Our work together:

·      I will engage my training and intuition in our work together, and you will decide whether to consent to any suggestion I may offer.

·      Our work will explore awareness of body sensation to help "renegotiate", integrate, and heal rather than re-live or re-enact trauma.

·      SE's guidance of the bodily "felt sense," allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged.

·      We may employ touch work in support of the integration process.

·      We will work at a pace that “titrates” you experience (breaks down into small, incremental steps), rather than evoking catharsis - which can overwhelm the regulatory mechanisms of the organism.