What is Somatic Therapy?

SomaSoul® Somatic Therapy is a mind-body healing modality that utilizes mindfulness practices and the expressive arts (drawing, journaling, movement) to aid clients in accessing and bringing healing to mind-body tension. Too often our focus in therapy is on our verbal narrative. What happened? When? Why? We tend to neglect another powerful storyteller, our body! In fact, our bodies record our emotional experience as adeptly as our mind. Our viscera and nervous systems record our entire lives and express these memories in body tension as well as emotional and physical imbalances.

In SomaSoul® we aim to help clients strengthen their ability to notice, experience, and bring understanding to their body-centered emotions as they connect with heartfelt support from their therapist.

Every experience that we have as human beings needs a safe connection, whether the experience feels alive and joyful or whether it feels painful and traumatic.  When we don’t have support for traumatic experiences, they get stored in the body and can manifest as depression, anxiety, fatigue, chronic pain, illness, digestive issues, etc.  We may make many efforts to ignore or numb these parts of ourselves, and can can grow accustomed to trying to get rid of these symptoms that may feel “inconvenient” or “bad.”

Somatic Therapy invites us to befriend our bodies and to listen to the messages they send about what is hurting and what needs healing.  SomaSoul® utilizes mindfulness and the expressive arts as safe ways to drop more deeply into the body and hear these messages.  When we feel safe and become more embodied, we can take in a connection to old wounds, listen to what they need, and eventually transform them.

My experience as a client of this work is that it has allowed me to feel more ground, more aliveness, and a deeper connection to myself and to others.  I have more support to feel the full array of emotions and physical sensations that live in my body, and as a result that has made my life feel fuller and more meaningful.  As one of my teachers Stuart says, “This work won’t make your life easier, but it will make it more authentic.”  

I offer one-on-one counseling sessions at my office in Easthampton, MA.  I look forward to answering any of your questions or inquiries via email, text, or telephone.