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What is Somatic Therapy?

When we include the body in therapy, we don’t just cope—we transform. You are your own best resource.

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How do Emotions Live in the Body?

Emotions aren’t just psychological—they’re biological. Every feeling shows up in the nervous system: in breath, muscle tone, posture, and the subtle rhythms of the body. Because mind and body are inseparable, overload in one affects the other. This is why the body often carries what the mind learned to set aside.

When we face trauma or chronic stress, the nervous system shifts into survival responses—fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. These reactions are protective, but when they can’t complete, the leftover energy gets stored in the body.

Over time, this can show up as:

  • Chronic tension, pain, or inflammation

  • Fatigue or adrenal exhaustion

  • Digestive issues or gut distress

  • Anxiety, panic, dissociation, or numbness

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At the heart of somatic work is nervous system regulation. The vagus nerve—central to parasympathetic functioning—connects the brain to the heart, lungs, gut, and more. When we feel safe, this system supports rest, digestion, immunity, and connection. When we feel threatened (real or remembered), it defaults to protection.

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Somatic therapy helps shift from protection to presence, rebuilding safety and trust in the body. Chronic stress, emotional suppression, and early relational wounds shape not only how we feel but how our bodies operate. Healing is therefore both psychological and physiological—working with the systems that hold our lived experience.

 

Research shows trauma and stress affect:

  • Hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and oxytocin

  • Immune function and inflammation

  • The gut–brain axis and microbiome

  • Mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and dissociation

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What is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic work helps reconnect the dots—between body and mind, past and present, protection and possibility—so healing can unfold from the inside out. Instead of forcing change through thinking alone, somatic therapy invites the body back into the conversation.

 

We metabolize our stories through sensation, movement, and presence. It’s not about reliving trauma or pushing through discomfort; it’s about slowly expanding our capacity to stay with what’s happening inside us, so integration becomes possible. Over time, the body shifts from being a source of overwhelm to a wise guide that knows the way forward.

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In my practice, I draw from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, yoga, energy-based modalities, and nervous-system approaches that support vagal tone and healthy flow through the body. Through grounding, breathwork, mindful tracking, gentle movement, and co-regulation, clients learn to:

  • Recognize cues of stress, threat, and safety in their body

  • Support and regulate their nervous system in real time

  • Gently release stored tension and unprocessed emotion

  • Reclaim a felt sense of agency, connection, and wholeness​

Somatic healing is slow, kind, and profoundly transformative—and you don’t have to do it alone.

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Favourite Books on Somatic Therapy and Trauma Healing​

  1. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. Introduces Somatic Experiencing and explains how trauma gets trapped in the nervous system and can be discharged through instinctual movement.

  2. Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana. A clear, accessible guide to Polyvagal Theory with practical tools for cultivating safety, connection, and nervous system regulation.

  3. Polyvagal Practices: Anchoring the Self in Safety by Deb Dana. A somatic workbook that offers dozens of practical, body-based exercises to help trauma survivors regulate their nervous systems and build resilience.

  4. Fragmented Selves: Memory, Trauma, and Dissociation by Janina Fisher, Ph.D.
    A clinical yet accessible guide that introduces a parts-based approach to trauma using somatic mindfulness and internal systems theory to heal fragmentation.

  5. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
    A groundbreaking anti-racist somatic therapy book that explores how racialized trauma lives in Black, white, and police bodies, offering practices for embodied healing.

  6. The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
    A fierce, liberatory call to reconnect with our bodies through radical self-love as a political and spiritual act of healing from oppression and shame.

  7. Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies by Renee Linklater
    Centers Indigenous knowledge, relationality, and community in trauma healing, while critiquing colonial and Western clinical frameworks.

  8. The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation.  Porges, S. W. (2011).  

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Land Aknowledgement

I live and practice on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, in what is traditionally called Tkaronto, covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. I honour the enduring presence, stewardship, and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples on these lands.

 

With deep gratitude to the First Peoples and their wisdom, I acknowledge both the ongoing impacts of colonization and the harms that the fields of social work and mental health have caused—and continue to cause—to Indigenous communities.

 

As a settler and uninvited guest, I take responsibility for continually learning, unlearning, and repairing. I commit to practicing in solidarity with Indigenous peoples, supporting justice, healing, and land back, and working toward relationships rooted in accountability and respect.

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