Somatic Counseling

My style of mindfulness-based therapy includes a body-oriented, somatic approach. By somatic therapy, I do not mean yoga or other movement practices will be part of therapy. I am referring to a cultivating a sensitive, nuanced and non-judgmental attention to the felt experience of being embodied. This will show you how truly intimate the connection between the mind and the body is, and awareness of this connection becomes an important resource in living with ease and integrity.

Somatic therapy works by noticing and unwinding habitual postures, restrictions and patterns of tension that are often a form of unconscious painful emotional experience or stress. With psychotherapy that includes this vast non-verbal realm, you can discover how attention to the body can provide understanding and release of stored emotions, easing suffering.

Learning to allow unpleasant emotions to move through the body while processing difficult experiences is a powerful and direct way for the healing process to unfold. This keeps therapy from being only a mental exercise – which would yield little change.

Your body is an expression of you, including all of the hidden parts of yourself that are causing emotional pain and reactivity. These unpleasant “triggers” — that’s your unconscious calling to you to be healed and integrated. 

Most of us grew up in a culture that perpetuates negative body images and promotes disembodiment. We learn to relate to the body as an object and try to conform it to what we think it should be. The body is more than the mind thinks it is, for it contains both stored, painful emotions from the past and untapped resources of aliveness and pleasure.