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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.

How I Work Somatically

Talk therapy can change our understanding of our experiences—but somatic therapy can help change our felt sense of those experiences. It allows us to process and shift what lives in the body, not just the mind. Somatic therapy helps us metabolize our stories—through sensation, movement, and presence. It’s not about reliving trauma, but about slowly building the capacity to stay with what’s happening inside us, so integration and healing can unfold. Somatic work invites us to listen to the body—not as a problem to fix, but as a wise guide toward healing.

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In my practice, I draw from training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, yoga, and a range of energy- and nervous-system-based approaches, including tools that support vagal tone and the movement of energy through the body. Through practices like grounding, breathwork, mindful tracking, gentle movement, and co-regulation, clients learn to:

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

  • Support their nervous system in real time

  • Safely release stored tension and emotion

  • Reclaim a sense of agency, connection, and wholeness

 

How Emotions Live in the Body: Understanding the Physiology of Feeling

Emotions are not just psychological—they’re physiological. Every feeling has a corresponding pattern in the nervous system, muscle tone, breath, posture, and internal rhythm. The body and mind are deeply interconnected; when one is overwhelmed, the other responds. Our bodies remember what our minds may have needed to forget.

 

What Happens in the Body During Overwhelm
When we experience trauma or prolonged stress, our nervous system activates automatic survival responses—fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. These responses are protective and adaptive. But when they're not able to fully resolve, the body stores this survival energy. It may show up later as:

  • Chronic tension, pain, or inflammation

  • Fatigue or adrenal burnout

  • Gut distress and digestive issues

  • Anxiety, panic, dissociation, or emotional shutdown

This is not just a metaphor—the body literally holds these unresolved patterns until it’s safe enough to release them.

 

Working with the Nervous System

At the heart of somatic work is the nervous system. The vagus nerve—central to our parasympathetic regulation—links the brain with the heart, lungs, gut, and more. When we’re in a state of safety and connection, this system supports rest, digestion, immunity, and relational presence. But when our bodies perceive threat (whether real or remembered), the system defaults to survival.

Somatic approaches help us shift from protection to presence—restoring a felt sense of safety and trust in the body.

 

The Mind-Body Connection and Health

Chronic stress, emotional suppression, and early relational wounds can shape not just how we feel, but how our bodies function. Healing, then, isn’t only psychological—it’s physiological. It requires working with the systems that hold the imprint of our life experiences. A growing field of research confirms that trauma and disconnection can influence:

  • Hormonal imbalances (cortisol, adrenaline, oxytocin)

  • Immune dysregulation and inflammation

  • Gut-brain axis and microbiome health

  • Mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and dissociation​​

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Nervous System Regulation Through a Decolonial Lens

Nervous system regulation is not just a matter of individual willpower—it’s shaped by systems, histories, and power. The ability to feel safe enough to self-regulate is a privilege, often afforded to those with access to protection, care, and stability. For many—especially those from racialized, colonized, disabled, queer, trans, immigrant, or impoverished communities—the nervous system has been shaped by ongoing survival, not safety.

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What we often label “dysregulation” is not a personal failure. It’s a biological response to chronic stress and social conditions. Hypervigilance, collapse, numbness, or rage are not signs that you are broken—they are signs that your body has adapted to protect you in environments where safety was not guaranteed.

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Somatic therapy understands this. It does not aim to “fix” you. Instead, it offers ways to slowly unwind survival responses, support your capacity to feel safe again, and restore connection—to self, to others, and to the present moment.

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We must expand our understanding of nervous system care beyond self-help of the wellness market. A decolonial approach to somatics recognizes that the nervous system is always responding to systemic realities: white supremacy, ableism, colonialism, state violence, climate collapse, and intergenerational trauma. True healing is collective. It’s not about perfect calm—it’s about reclaiming safety, dignity, and choice in bodies that were never meant to survive these systems.

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Read More about Liberation in Therapy

Favourite Books on Somatic Therapy and Trauma Healing

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  1. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
    A foundational text that integrates neuroscience, trauma research, and body-based healing modalities like yoga, EMDR, and neurofeedback.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

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

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Get in Touch

Located at the junction of Lansdowne and Dundas in Tkaronto (Toronto). 

Come as you are. We’re ready when you are.

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Forest Trees

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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.

 

This land has long been a place of meeting and care for many Indigenous communities.I acknowledge the ongoing presence and stewardship of Indigenous peoples, and the lasting impacts of colonization and systemic violence.

 

As a settler and uninvited guest, I commit to learning, unlearning, and working in solidarity toward justice, healing, and land back. I offer gratitude to the First Peoples for their teachings, and strive to honour their wisdom.​​

Land Aknowledgement

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