About Somatic Therapy

Working somatically means grounding through the body: there’s talking, but along with meaning-making, the talking is used for tracking body awareness through sensations, in the moment, mindfully, or more accurately 'body-fully'. This leads to living life increasingly in and from our bodies.

Working this way also means that trauma can be safely processed (dissociation and freeze, for example), as overwhelm is monitored and support & resource experienced in present time.

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Sessions are typically led by the client’s process and what is arising for them in the moment. Early childhood experiences are often largely nonverbal and preverbal. They may be re-experienced as felt sense and sensory-motor (movement and sensation) phenomena... as body memories more so than as thinking memories. These body memories may be handled and processed in these sessions once a sense of safety has been established.

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In tracking these body memories we can safely reconnect with our inner child who may have felt varying degrees of alone, misunderstanding or invasion. We can learn to develop a consistent inner mothering presence to this inner child and begin to gain their trust. In doing so we find a space to observe the triggers in everyday life, become free from our patterns that we once needed to keep us safe, and reclaim our individuality so we can live our life freely and more joyfully.

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We cultivate our healthy adult part and loving witnessing presence that can observe and hold all parts of us, with the acceptance and compassion we needed and longed for from our original early environment but may not have got due to the conditions that existed in the early family system and wider culture.   

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