WHAT IS SOMATIC THERAPY?

Somatic therapies help us access the body to integrate our physical beings into our other human areas, including our psychology, spirituality, and our cognition. In a general sense, integrating our bodies into the therapeutic process can foster wellbeing, growth, and integration. More specifically, somatic therapies can help promote healing of trauma, grief, anxiety, depression, attachment concerns, and more.

Somatic therapies work on a biological and neurobiological level. As we change the way our body and nervous system respond to stressors, relationships, memories, triggers, and traumas in our life, our body teaches the brain to rewire neurological connections and pathways that have likely been laid down early on in life.  As we refine our skills of interoception, which is our ability to feel inside our bodies into our different body systems, we engage parts of our brain that assist us in regulating during our big emotional experiences.

The body is known to hold a lot of knowledge. This knowledge can be related to past traumatic experiences, where our bodies store the felt sense of the experience at the nervous system level. On a relational level, the body’s nervous system reactions can help us make sense and interpret our experiences with individuals we are in relationship with. And, perhaps most importantly, the body can hold some of the answers of what is needed for healing, which can be done through tracking and following the body’s reactions towards wellness, towards parasympathetic nervous system responses, and towards feelings of safety and security in the body. 

This is why somatic approaches can be especially helpful for people who have not found lasting relief through talk therapy alone. When difficult experiences are not fully processed, the nervous system can become stuck in survival responses such as fight, flight, or freeze. Over time, this may show up as anxiety, irritability, exhaustion, emotional numbness, chronic tension or pain, difficulty trusting others, or feeling unsafe even in situations that are objectively safe. Somatic therapy works directly with these stored responses rather than only the story behind them.

WHO CAN SOMATIC THERAPY HELP?

Somatic approaches may be a good fit if you experience:

OUR SOMATIC APPROACHES

Somatic Experiencing®

 Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a somatic psychotherapy that helps people heal trauma by helping clients draw attention to their bodies and avoids directly evoking traumatic memories. SE™ is the life’s work of Peter Levine Ph.D., and is evidenced to treat trauma and stress disorders for more than four decades. SE™ combines biology, neuroscience, stress physiology, psychology, ethology, indigenous healing practices, and biophysics.

How does Somatic Experiencing® work?

Somatic Experiencing® views trauma as producing a highly energetic response in the body, known as the fight/flight/freeze response. When we are reliving trauma, traumatic shock is stored in our body and may result in negative symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

SE™ techniques bring coherence into the nervous system while discharging and integrating energy from your body. People develop increasing awareness and tolerance for difficult body sensations and emotions. This allows people to reorganize their nervous systems towards a new healthier, happier way of being.

Therapists trained in SE™ use a framework to determine where a client may be stuck in a physiological response (fight/flight/freeze) and provide clinical tools to help resolve those fixed states. These tools help release traumatic shock from the body and thus transform and heal old patterns in the nervous system caused by post traumatic stress, emotional wounds, and developmental/childhood traumas. 

Learn more about Somatic Experiencing® here.

Somatic Attatchment THERAPY

Somatic Attachment Therapy is an integrative psychotherapy that blends attachment theory with body-based healing. It recognizes that early relational wounds and attachment trauma do not just live in the mind, they are stored deeply within the body and the nervous system. By combining somatic (body-centered) tools with relational therapy, this approach helps individuals build a sense of safety from the inside out and is particularly helpful for those who haven't found relief through talk therapy alone.

How does Somatic Attachment work?

Somatic Attachment Therapy views early insecure or traumatic caregiving bonds as leaving lasting imprints on our physiological state, often keeping the nervous system stuck in survival responses. When early emotional needs are unmet, the body can hold onto distress, which may manifest as anxiety, emotional disconnection, low self-worth, or chronic relationship struggles.

This approach helps clients develop nervous system awareness and regulation by tuning into physical sensations. By building safety internally, individuals can gently access and release stored survival responses without becoming overwhelmed. This process rebuilds trust in the body’s internal signals and helps clients physically and emotionally experience what safe connection feels like.

Therapists trained in Somatic Attachment Therapy provide a warm, grounded, and secure relationship that acts as a safe base for healing. They use clinical somatic tools to help clients track their nervous system states, discharge stuck energy, and rewire internal patterns shaped by fear, neglect, or judgment. This empowers clients to transform old relational wounds and create deeper, more secure connections with themselves and others.

Somatic Embodiment and Regulation

Somatic embodiment and regulation strategies are practical, body-based tools for calming and steadying the nervous system. Where deeper somatic trauma work focuses on releasing what the body holds, embodiment and regulation work focuses on building capacity: learning to recognize your own nervous system states, ground yourself during anxiety, overthinking, or emotional flooding, and return to a felt sense of safety in your body.

How does Somatic Embodiment and Regulation work?

Many of us learned early in life to manage emotions from a place of fear or self-protection, without the co-regulation we needed from caregivers. Embodiment and regulation work teaches the skills that were missed. Through practices such as orienting to your environment, grounding, breathwork, and gentle movement, you learn to notice the physical signals of stress responses as they rise and to guide your nervous system back toward calm. These strategies become resources you carry into daily life, and they often form the foundation that makes deeper trauma processing possible.

At TGTHC, therapists integrate embodiment and regulation strategies within somatic therapy sessions rather than offering them as a separate service, tailoring the tools to your nervous system and goals.

WHICH SOMATIC APPROACH IS RIGHT FOR ME?

You do not need to choose before you book. Your therapist will help determine the best fit during your initial sessions. As a general guide:

Somatic Experiencing® may be the better fit if your primary concern is trauma, shock, or a nervous system stuck in survival mode after specific overwhelming experiences, whether a single event or accumulated stress.

Somatic Attachment Therapy may be the better fit if your struggles are rooted in early relationships and show up most strongly in how you connect with others: patterns of anxiety in relationships, difficulty trusting, fear of abandonment, or emotional disconnection from partners, family, or yourself.

Somatic embodiment and regulation strategies are woven into both approaches. If your immediate need is practical tools for managing anxiety, overwhelm, or emotional flooding in daily life, this is often where somatic work begins.

Many clients benefit from elements of more than one approach, and therapists integrate somatic tools flexibly based on what your nervous system needs.

THERAPISTS HERE TO SUPPORT YOU WITH SOMATIC THERAPY