+What is somatic healing?

Somatic healing is a process of utilizing the body (through identifying and experiencing physical sensations) as a vehicle for restoring cognitive, emotional, physical, and energetic health.

The instinctive response to stress and pain is resistance. Our resistance, through distraction and other strategies, decreases our awareness of discomfort but not its effects. When an experience (be it physical, emotional, or cognitive) is repressed or rejected, it is stored as a disruption in our energy field and manifests as physical tension. The greater the negative experience (trauma, chronic stressors, serious accident or injury) the greater the energetic disruption and resulting tension. Each energetic disruption increases the likeihood and magnitude of further disruptions. If they're not addressed, the tension accumulates and eventually bubbles back into our consciousness as increasingly debilitating stress. Left unattended, chronic stress becomes a precursor for chronic pain, chronic illnesses and–in my experience–makes a person more vulnerable to emotional and physical injury.

As a healing guide, I help people break the cycle of accumulating stress and declining health. The process involves two parts:

1. First, I facilitate the release and rebalancing of energy in the body using my ability to identify and clear tension.

2. Second, I teach clients, both verbally and experientially, to develop a deeper relationship with their body, showing them how and when tension is created and how to release it on their own. Increased embodiment leads to increased resilience and the ability to use discomfort as a catalyst for growth and overall well-being.

+Is somatic healing for me?

While somatic energy healing can be useful for everyone, there are particular situations when it can be especially helpful.

1. If you are struggling with mental health issues, including trauma, chronic stress, anxiety, depression, unhealthy relationship patterns, and compulsive thinking/behaviors, which persist despite typical treatments such as clinical counseling, medication, meditation, and yoga.

2. If you are struggling with physical ailments that aren’t responding to physically targeted treatments including:
   • Chronic injury or pain that persists despite physical therapy, medication, exercise, etc.
   • Chronic illnesses (ex. digestive issues) that don’t respond or respond inconsistently to dietary and lifestyle changes, probiotics or supplements, medication, and procedures

3. If you are struggling with your meditation practice, accessing your intuition, or reaping the benefits of other healing modalities.

People often include somatic healing as part of their healing tool-kit. Somatic healing can be an excellent addition to traditional therapy, physical therapy, meditation, exercise, acupuncture, and Western allopathic treatments.

+What's included in a session?

Initial appointments are 75 minutes and subsequent appointments are 60 minutes. Both are conducted either in-person or virtually. Each appointment includes a check-in, the main session, and a wrap-up. The content of the session is tailored to each person’s present situation and goals. The client can expect a combination of guided meditation, light physical touch (in-person), work with the energetic or subtle body (the area around the physical body), breathwork, movement, and sound. The work is conducted in a combination of sitting up, standing, and lying down positions.

While the purpose of the session is to reveal and explore new territory, a feeling of safety is the primary focus.

+What will it feel like?

During a session you may feel emotions ranging from sadness, anger and fear, to joy, giddiness and deep calm. You may at times feel warm or cold, tingling or pressure in parts of your body. Your body may utilize shaking, laughing, crying, or even burping as strategies for releasing and rebalancing. The amount and intensity of these emotions, sensations, and bodily actions will vary from person to person and from session to session.

When we resist experiences in our day-to-day lives, energy is redirected and stored as tension in bodily tissues, including muscle, organs, and bones. Tension accumulates over time, leading to a wide variety of chronic health issues. Somatic healing directs a person’s awareness to the tension and allows the energy to be expressed and released. The quality of the energy being released will often resemble, at least in part, the initial experience that was resisted. As the healing guide, my job is to help you experience challenging sensations in a way that feels safe and productive.

Every individual arrives with a different degree of connection to the sensations of their body. Similarly, people have different beliefs about their state of health and their capacity to heal. These factors affect the intensity of a session. As you develop deeper trust in your body and your capacity to heal, you’ll be able to feel more and do more work in a session.

+Is it safe?

Somatic healing is very safe. The body is intelligent and does an excellent job of regulating the intensity of somatic experiences. In a quiet, controlled environment, the body will create the right degree of sensation. The primary limitation is the conscious response, the mind deciding a sensation is not acceptable or change is not possible. As you develop a relationship with your body, as well as the sensations and energies it produces during a healing session, you’ll find you can go deeper and experience larger shifts in a single session. In either case, whether the body or the mind is limiting the intensity of sensation, their objectives are to maintain safety and that's a healthy response.

+How do I know if I'm ready for somatic healing?

Healing requires engagement, participation, and effort on the part of the client. It involves experiencing sensations and emotions that have been blocked or repressed in the past (“You have to feel it to heal it”). As a healing guide, I will introduce you to and support you through the right experiences at the right time, ensuring repressed material is accessed, experienced, and integrated in a safe, productive way.

+How many sessions does it take?

It may take one session or many, depending on client's concerns and goals. Long lived, complex issues generally take longer to resolve. Some people are looking for a reduction of symptoms while others want to resolve the root cause. Some clients go even deeper, becoming fluent in the somatic langauge and using it as a primary way to navigate life. As with therapy and meditation, deep sustainable progress through healing work takes time. Spontaneous, dramatic healing can happen but is the exception, not the rule. Ideally, lessons and skills gleaned from somatic energy healing become a daily practice, reducing the number and frequency of sessions required to achieve and maintain desired results.

+When should someone NOT try somatic healing?

While somatic healing is safe, it can produce strong emotional and physical sensations. People experiencing acute cognitive, emotional, psychiatric, or physical conditions are advised to consult with their medical providers before trying somatic healing. Somatic healing is not a medical treatment and is not a replacement for medical treatment. I am not a licensed clinical counselor or medical provider.

+What is the difference between somatic healing and energy healing?

Energy healing is a general term describing a collection of modalities that work with the body‘s energy (aka Chi and prana) as the primary way of restoring balance in the body. These modalities are based on the understanding that imbalanced or insufficient energy flow is the precursor to many physical and emotional illnesses including disease, chronic pain, and depression. Examples of energy healing modalities include: Reiki, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, and Jin Shin Jyutsu.

Somatic healing is a form of energy healing I have developed that utilizes the client’s awareness of physical sensations in the body. When these sensations are felt without resistance, the body is able to express and release bound up energy and restore balance to the overall energetic system. This balance is experienced as greater ease, flow, presence, and connectedness.

+What is the difference between somatic healing and Reiki?

Unlike Reiki, which addresses concerns by transmitting life force energy from practitioner to client, somatic healing works by identifying and removing bound up energy from the client’s body. The body becomes free to restore its own inherent balance and the client gains essential skills and insight into maintaining well-being.

I am also a certified Reiki practitioner and, while I do not conduct Reiki sessions, there is occasional overlap between my somatic healing work and elements of Reiki. People who have experienced Reiki will likely be familiar with aspects of a somatic healing session.

+What is the difference between somatic healing and somatic therapy?

Somatic therapy is a collection of clinical therapy modalities, involving licensed clinical counselors (therapists) that combine traditional talk therapy with various mind-body exercises and physical movement. Examples of somatic therapy are the Hakomi method and Somatic Experiencing®.

Somatic healing combines elements of somatic therapy, such as conversation and body based guided meditation, with tools and techniques of energy healing such as physical touch, manual work in the energetic subtle body, and breathwork. I am not a licensed therapist and I am not certified in somatic therapy.