Somatic Therapy
Better Understand Yourself on Every Level – Mental, Emotional, and Physical – Break Free from the Past, and Create a More Meaningful, Joyous Future
If you’re like many of the people I work with, you’ve probably spent years trying to “think” your way out of how you feel. You’ve told yourself to “calm down”, “stop overreacting”, “let it go”, “move on”, or “just get over it.”
But no matter how much you think things through, something in you still feels over-activated, overwhelmed, on guard, or just plain stuck.
I get it.
I understand how frustrating it can be to know, rationally, that you’re safe – yet your chest still tightens. Your stomach knots up. Your jaw clenches. Your breathing gets shallow. You go numb, shut down, feel restless, or find yourself constantly on edge without fully understanding why.
Worst of all, you end up feeling disconnected from yourself.
You struggle to trust your instincts. You’re not sure what you’re feeling until it’s already too much. You have difficulties setting boundaries, speaking up for yourself, relaxing in relationships, or fully settling into the present moment.
Instead, some part of you is always bracing, always protecting, always preparing for what comes next.
Sound familiar? If so, you’re far from alone.
And I want you to know that there’s nothing “wrong” with you.
So, why do you feel this way?
These kinds of reactions start to make sense when you begin to understand the powerful connection between your mind and body.
Anxiety, chronic stress, relational pain, and trauma don’t just affect the way we think … They also shape the way we breathe, move, hold tension in our bodies, respond to closeness, and experience safety.
Somatic therapy is a set of body-centered, mind-body approaches to counseling and psychotherapy that can help you understand how thoughts, emotions, and life experiences affect the way you feel physically – and use what’s happening in your body to affect the way you think, feel, and respond to life events.
In other words – unlike more traditional top-down approaches to counseling and therapy, in which you attempt to change your thoughts in order to change the way you feel – somatic therapy is more of a bottom-up approach that helps you use your posture, movement, physical sensations, and nervous-system responses to help you heal by directly changing the way you feel.
If you’re ready to try something different, finally release the pain that’s become trapped in your body, and experience the freedom of being able to choose how you think and respond to life, I invite you to contact me today and discover whether somatic therapy is right for you.
How Somatic Therapy Can Help
When people think about counseling and psychotherapy, they typically think about more traditional “talk therapy.”
Please don’t get me wrong. Talking about your problems and experiences is incredibly important.
But if the anxiety, stress, fear, overwhelm, grief, or shame you’re carrying is also showing up in your body, then healing often requires more than talking and insight alone …
It requires learning how to notice, understand, and work with what you’re experiencing physically.
This is what somatic therapy is all about.
In simple terms, somatic therapy helps you pay attention to your thoughts, beliefs, and physical experience as they unfold – what you’re thinking and how you’re breathing, your posture, your body sensations, impulses, tension, emotions, images, and so on – so you can better understand yourself and respond in new ways.
In our work together, this might mean slowing down enough to notice what happens in your body as you talk about a difficult situation. It might mean becoming aware that your shoulders tighten when you feel criticized, that your chest collapses when you feel ashamed, or that you lose contact with your own needs when conflict arises.
Rather than ignoring these responses, we begin to listen to them … not with judgment, but with curiosity.
Because your body is telling you something about what you’re experiencing &ndasjh; even if you don’t have words for it – and healing requires the ability to listen.
Somatic therapy can be especially helpful if you:
- Feel chronically anxious, tense, or on edge
- Shut down, go numb, or feel disconnected from yourself
- Struggle to identify what you’re feeling until it becomes overwhelming
- Carry trauma or painful past experiences that still affect you in the present
- Find that relationship stress shows up physically in your body
- Feel stuck in patterns that insight-based, talk therapy alone hasn’t healed
None of this is about forcing your way into painful material before you’re ready.
Quite the opposite.
Somatic therapy is about helping you build safety, awareness, and capacity first. It’s about learning to recognize your body’s signals, stay with your experience in a manageable way, and develop a more compassionate relationship with yourself.
And because no single somatic method works equally well for everyone, I use a variety of body-oriented and experiential approaches in my work, including:
- EMDR Therapy to process and heal from painful or traumatic experiences that may still be affecting your nervous system in the present
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to work more directly with physical activation, tension, and survival responses held in your body
- Hakomi Therapy to explore the beliefs, emotions, and body-based patterns operating just beneath the surface of conscious awareness
- Mindfulness to help you slow down and notice what’s happening in the present moment, without judgment
I also integrate these somatic therapy approaches with:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help you identify and shift the thoughts and beliefs that trigger or interact with the physical and emotional patterns we uncover
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy to understand, tend to, and heal the different “parts” of you that may show up and try to protect you from feelings of fear, shame, or vulnerability
And I incorporate trauma resourcing to help you strengthen your inner coping abilities, reconnect with positive experiences and inner supports, and create a greater sense of safety and stability before moving into deeper healing work.
Using somatic therapy, you can begin to:
- Feel more grounded, present, and connected to yourself
- Understand your triggers and reactions more clearly
- Regulate intense emotions more effectively
- Notice and shift long-held patterns of tension, collapse, or bracing
- Strengthen your sense of safety, resilience, and self-trust
- Experience deeper healing – mentally, emotionally, and physically
Somatic therapy isn’t about focusing on just your body. It’s about working with the ways your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, relationships, and life experiences are expressed in and through your body, so you can better understand yourself and experience true healing and growth on every level.
Ready to get started?
I invite you to contact me today, schedule a free 15-minute initial consultation, ask any questions you have, and find out whether somatic therapy can help you.
Am I the Best Somatic Therapist for You?
Somatic therapy represents a wide array of healing techniques that can have a profound impact on your health and wellness.
But no one therapy approach or technique works equally well for everyone.
And even more important than any particular therapy approach or technique is the healing relationship you create with your therapist.
After all, if you don’t feel comfortable being open and honest with me, you’ll find it next to impossible to do the deep work necessary to heal and grow.
So how can you tell if I’m the “right” or “best” somatic therapist for you?
The only way to really find out is to contact me, schedule a free initial consultation, ask any questions you have, and see if we feel like a good fit for working together.
What I can tell you is that somatic therapy is much more than just one technique among many in my practice. It is one of the foundations of how I understand healing and growth.
I’m also a holistic therapist, which means I’ll pay close attention to the ways your mind, body, emotions, and relationships all work together.
I don’t believe in any “one-size-fits-all” approach to therapy. We’ll tailor our work together to your unique needs, drawing on both insight-oriented and body-oriented approaches to help you heal in a way that feels integrated, grounded, and meaningful.
I also know how painful it can be to feel misunderstood, criticized, judged, or unsafe just being yourself. And I know how much changes when you feel truly listened to and understood. That understanding is central to the way I work with clients.
I strive to listen deeply – compassionately and without judgment – and to create a space where you can safely explore difficult thoughts, feelings, memories, and body-based reactions.
My role is to serve you as a guide – helping you reduce distress, better understand yourself, and move toward a greater sense of calm, clarity, resilience, meaning, and joy.
You don’t have to keep replaying the same mental tapes over and over again. You don’t have to keep carrying the burden of stress, emotional pain, and trauma. And you don’t need to keep feeling disconnected from yourself.
If you’re ready to make this the day you finally begin to understand yourself on every level, break free from the past, and create a more meaningful and joyous future, I encourage you to contact me at 510-866-4781, or email me at eleanor@eleanorlew.com, and schedule a free, 15-minute, initial telehealth consultation. I look forward to meeting you, but the person you’re really going to meet is you.