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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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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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