Somatic Therapy in Michigan:
When Talking Isn’t Enough, Your Body Speaks Up
Reconnect with your body, regulate your nervous system, and find relief from anxiety and trauma.
Why Choose Somatic Therapy?
You’ve done the journaling. You’ve rehashed your childhood. You’re the most self-aware person you know.
And still, something feels stuck.
You notice your heart starts racing before you even realize why, or your shoulders creeping up to your ears the moment you see a certain name pop up on your phone. Your gut keeps telling you that something's "off" even when everything looks fine on the surface.
That’s because trauma and stress aren’t just stored in your mind. They live in your body. Your body has been paying attention this whole time. It's been storing experiences, holding memories, and trying to keep you safe in ways your thinking mind might not even notice without ever taking a day off.
Somatic therapy recognizes what many traditional therapies miss: that healing happens not just in your thoughts, but in your body. Somatic therapy helps you feel better, not just think better. It's time to get out of your head and into the wisdom your body has been trying to share with you all along.
Is Somatic Therapy Right for You?
Somatic therapy can be helpful for anyone who wants to develop a healthier relationship with their body and nervous system. It's particularly beneficial if:
You’ve tried talk therapy but still feel stuck
You’re always in your head and rarely in your body
You’ve experienced trauma of any kind
You can physically feel anxiety, stress, or trauma in your body
You tend to zone out or shut down in times of stress
You deal with chronic tension, pain, or other physical symptoms that don't have a clear medical cause
You have difficulty setting boundaries or advocating for yourself
You want a deeper connection with yourself
You want to feel more confident and grounded in your own skin and move about the world as your authentic self
Really, anyone who has a body (which is all of us!) can benefit from learning to work with their nervous system.
“Everything that happens to us happens to our bodies. Every act of love. Every insult. Every moment of pleasure. Every interaction with other humans. Every hateful thing we have said or which has been said to us has happened to our bodies. Every kindness. Every sorrow. Every ounce of laughter. We carry all of it with us within our skin.
We are walking embodiments of our entire story.”
— Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic Therapy is a holistic approach that recognizes the profound connection between the mind and body. This isn't about analyzing your problems or talking through your feelings (though those things can be helpful too). Somatic Therapy is about learning to listen to the incredible intelligence of your body and working with your nervous system to create lasting change.
As an avid hiker, I like to think of our brains as a series of well-worn trails. If we have an experience that that reminds us of something scary or challenging from our past, our nervous system is really good at quickly taking that well-worn trail to get us from point A to point B. In this case, point B is usually physical patterns, emotional reactivity, and/or protective behaviors that might not make sense to your thinking mind but make perfect sense to your body.
Somatic Therapy is like slowing down and noticing a different path, an off-shoot of a trail you’ve traveled many (many!) times that’s unmarked and less traveled, and following your natural curiosity to take that path instead. Instead of fighting against your anxiety or trying to think your way out of trauma responses, we work directly with your nervous system to help it feel genuinely safer and more regulated.
How Does Somatic Therapy Work?
Somatic Therapy is based on solid neuroscience and an understanding of how trauma and stress actually affect our bodies. When you experience something overwhelming, your nervous system activates to help you survive. Sometimes, though, it gets stuck in that activated state, like a car alarm that won't turn off.
Traditional talk therapy works with the thinking parts of your brain, which is valuable. But trauma and chronic stress often affect the more primitive parts of your nervous system - the parts that are responsible for fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. These parts don't speak the language of words and logic. If they did, wouldn’t you be better by now? Instead they speak the language of sensation, movement, and embodied experience.
Somatic therapy meets your nervous system where it is.
We work with breath, movement, posture, and physical sensation to help your body complete the natural cycles of activation and discharge that may have gotten interrupted during overwhelming experiences.
This approach to nervous system regulation helps create embodiment, a state where you feel truly at home in your own body, where you can trust your physical sensations and instincts, and where your nervous system can flow naturally between activation and rest.
Book A Free Consultation to Get Started
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Book A Free Consultation to Get Started 〰️
Somatic Experiencing
I’m trained in a modality called Somatic Experiencing(SE) and this forms the foundation of how I work with clients. SE was developed by Dr. Peter Levinebased on his observation that wild animals, despite facing life-threatening situations regularly, don't seem to suffer from trauma the way humans do. The difference? Animals naturally discharge the survival energy that gets activated during threatening experiences.
Humans, with our complex thinking minds and social conditioning, often interrupt these natural discharge processes. We might hold our breath when we're scared, tense our muscles when we're angry, or disconnect from our bodies when things feel too overwhelming. Over time, this trapped survival energy can show up as anxiety, depression, chronic pain, digestive issues, sleep problems, or a general sense of feeling "off”.
Somatic Experiencing helps you reconnect with your body's natural ability to process and discharge this stored energy. This might involve:
Noticing subtle sensations and allowing them to flow and change
Following impulses for small movements that help complete interrupted responses
Developing what we call "pendulation" - the ability to move fluidly between activated and calm states
Building your capacity to stay present with sensation without becoming overwhelmed
The beautiful thing about SE is that it works with your body's own healing mechanisms. We're not imposing change from the outside; we're supporting the natural intelligence your nervous system already has.
I act as a facilitator but your body is our guide.
What to Expect in a Somatic Therapy Session?
If you're new to body-based work, it's normal to feel a little uncertain about what to expect. Some people worry they're not "good at" feeling their bodies or that they won't be able to do it "right." Here's the thing - there's no wrong way to have a body or to begin to develop somatic awareness. We will start exactly where you are. If you're very disconnected from physical sensation, we begin gently and slowly. If you're highly sensitive and easily overwhelmed, we work with building your capacity to titrate (work with small amounts of) sensation. Our sessions are collaborative and centered around YOUR goals.
Here's a glimpse into what you can expect:
1) Check-In
We'll start by discussing how you're feeling and any specific concerns. Some clients request to start with a guided meditation or some other grounding activity, some prefer to jump right in. We might pick up where we left off the last time, focus on something new you’ve been experiencing lately, or return to your overall goals for therapy. The choice is yours.
2) Body Awareness
You’ll often hear me ask the question, “What are you feeling in your body right now?” to start with. If you’re feeling disconnected from your body, we may explore activities to help you reconnect. Or we may start with a more talk therapy approach and see what you notice in your body as you get talking. Many clients are having a therapy session in the middle of their day or after a long day so it makes sense if it takes you a minute to switch into therapy mode.
3) Exploration
As things arise, like sensations, images, body movements, thoughts, emotions, memories, we gently explore them, following the lead of your body and getting your mind to step out of the way. This is often the part of the session where we might be incorporating tools to help regulate your nervous system, like breathwork, EFT tapping, guided imagery, movement, etc., all while following your body’s natural impulses to regulate and discharge stress.
4) Integration
We look at what you and your body have done throughout the session and notice any insights you’ve gained, especially as it pertains to your therapy goals. At this point, you might have some questions to ask me, I might suggest strategies to apply between sessions, or you might just have things you want to say out loud before the end of our session.
5) Closure
We end our session by ensuring you feel grounded and supported before we say goodbye. This could look like a guided meditation or visualization, a final somatic check-in, or simply savoring a sense of peace and calm in your system.
What You Might Notice Over Time
Embodiment:
Coming Home toYourself
One of the beautiful outcomes of somatic therapy work is embodiment - a sense of being truly at home in your own body. For many people, embodiment is something they lost somewhere along the way, often during childhood or after difficult experiences.
Embodiment might look like:
Trusting your gut feelings and bodily instincts
Feeling comfortable and confident in your own skin
Being able to set healthy boundaries naturally
Having access to your full range of emotions without being overwhelmed by them
Feeling connected to your own power and agency
Experiencing more ease in relationships and daily life
Being able to enjoy physical pleasure and comfort
Having a sense of inner stability even when life gets challenging
The journey back to embodiment isn't always linear. There might be times when you feel more connected and times when you feel more disconnected. This is completely normal and part of the healing process. Even your GPS has to recalculate sometimes! We work with wherever you are, helping you build capacity gradually and sustainably.
Nervous System Regulation:
Finding Your Natural Rhythm
One of the core goals of somatic therapy is nervous system regulation - helping your body find its natural rhythm between activation and rest. A well-regulated nervous system can respond appropriately to life's challenges without getting stuck in chronic states of fight, flight, freeze, or collapse.
Nervous system regulation does not mean being calm all the time. Instead, a well-regulated nervous system looks like:
Learning to discharge any nervous system activation in a healthy way
Having a greater sense of trust in yourself knowing you can feel your feelings without getting overwhelmed by them
More easily reaching for tools to regulate yourself
Feeling relief from your chronic tension, pain, or fatigue
Finally being able to “rest and digest”, instead of dissociating and collapsing or constantly scanning for threats
This kind of regulation happens at a cellular level, creating changes that last long after your therapy sessions end.
Integrating Somatic Therapy with Other Approaches
Though Somatic Therapy is a complete therapy modality in and of itself, I often integrate somatic therapy with other approaches like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Internal Family Systems (IFS). This combination can be particularly powerful because:
EMDR helps process traumatic memories while somatic work supports nervous system regulation during the process.
In IFS, we work with your "parts" and you can often feel these parts in your body. Bringing somatic awareness to your parts can provide real-time information on what those parts might need to heal.
The integration of these approaches means you get the benefits of both cognitive and somatic healing, creating more comprehensive and lasting change.
FAQs about Somatic Therapy
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This is actually so common! If you’ve experienced trauma, chronic stress, or anxiety, you may have learned to disconnect from your body to get through the day. Part of the work is gently reconnecting with sensation at a pace that feels safe for your nervous system. We start slowly and build from there.
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Not at all. Somatic therapy works with how experiences are stored in your body, not necessarily the stories about what happened. You share what feels comfortable and relevant, and we work with whatever your body is ready to process.
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Somatic work involves following your body's natural impulses for movement, which are usually quite subtle - maybe shifting your posture, taking a deeper breath, or making small gestures. I might suggest ways for you to explore those impulses but these things are always optional. And yes, it can feel awkward sometimes! You are developing, or some might say rediscovering, a whole new skillset and it can sometimes make us nervous to try new things.
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While massage works with your body from the outside, somatic therapy works with your body from the inside. I don't touch or manipulate your body - instead, we work with your own awareness and capacity to sense and move from within.
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Sometimes, yes. Many physical symptoms can be related to chronic stress and stored trauma, or at least made worse by them. As your nervous system becomes more regulated through somatic work, there’s a chance that your physical symptoms improve naturally.
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This varies from person to person. Some people notice shifts quite quickly, while deeper nervous system regulation typically unfolds over months or longer. The beauty is that even small changes in how you relate to your body can have significant impacts on your daily life. Your body has been waiting patiently for this kind of attention, and it will respond to even small amounts of gentle, respectful awareness.
Getting the Most Out of Somatic Therapy
The people that have the most success with Somatic Therapy often have these things in common:
Curiosity
A willingness to explore the wisdom of your body and notice what emerges without judgment. This openness allows you to develop a deeper understanding of your nervous system's patterns and responses.
Patience
Healing happens in layers and at your body's own pace. Those who approach therapy with gentle patience, rather than rushing toward outcomes, often find the most lasting transformation.
Consistency
Regular sessions create the safety and rhythm your nervous system needs to explore new patterns. Showing up consistently, even when it feels challenging, builds the foundation for sustainable change.
Integration
Those who thrive in somatic therapy actively practice what they learn in session throughout their daily lives. The real healing happens when these somatic tools are woven into the fabric of your everyday experience.
Ready to Come Home to Yourself?
There are a number of ways we can work together. I offer somatic therapy:
In-person in Traverse City, Michigan
Online throughout the state of Michigan
Intensives in Traverse City, Michigan
Online group therapy throughout the state of Michigan
