Somatic Therapy

Trauma lives in the body—and that's where healing begins.
In EMDR therapy, somatic awareness plays a powerful role in helping you prepare for and process distressing memories in a way that feels safe, grounded, and effective. By tuning into your body’s signals, we can support your nervous system as it moves through the healing process.

Educational models of human organs, including a brain, kidney, and a neuron- representing Somatic Therapy for healing trauma.

What Is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic therapy is a body-based approach that helps you reconnect with physical sensations, emotions, and nervous system responses. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which focuses mainly on thoughts and behaviors, somatic therapy works directly with how trauma shows up in the body—through tension, numbness, chronic pain, or dysregulated emotions.

By learning to notice and safely respond to what your body is trying to communicate, you can shift out of survival mode and into a state of regulation, connection, and healing.

How Somatic Therapy Helps Heal Trauma

When trauma occurs, the body often stores the experience in the form of incomplete fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. These stuck survival patterns can create ongoing symptoms like anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, or chronic stress.

Somatic therapy helps you:

  • Reconnect with your body in a safe and supported way

  • Identify and release patterns of physical tension or holding

  • Regulate your nervous system and increase resilience

  • Build awareness of how emotions and sensations are connected

  • Restore a sense of safety, presence, and agency in your body

How Somatic Therapy Supports EMDR

Somatic tools are woven into EMDR therapy to help you feel more resourced and regulated during every phase of the work.

In the preparation phase, we may use grounding, breathwork, or awareness of bodily sensations to help you build tolerance for emotional discomfort, stay present, and access internal safety. This creates a stronger foundation before engaging in trauma reprocessing.

During reprocessing, tracking your physical sensations helps us identify when your system is feeling overwhelmed or stuck. Gentle somatic interventions—like orienting to your environment, reconnecting with your breath, or slowing the process—can support your nervous system in completing unfinished responses and moving toward resolution.

A Body-Informed Approach to EMDR

You don’t need to feel deeply connected to your body to benefit from this approach. We’ll work together to build that connection at a pace that feels safe and manageable—using somatic awareness as a gentle guide, not a requirement.

This integration allows us to work not just with the story of what happened, but with how your body has been holding the impact of those experiences—so that true healing can occur on both emotional and physiological levels.

Online EMDR with Somatic Integration

Somatic work is highly adaptable to online therapy. Whether you’re joining sessions from Arizona, Oregon, Washington, or Massachusetts, I’ll guide you in simple body-based practices that support your healing and help you stay grounded throughout the EMDR process.

Begin Your Healing Journey

If you’re feeling stuck, flooded, or disconnected during therapy—or if talk therapy alone hasn’t helped—this integrative approach may be exactly what your nervous system needs.

Reach out today to learn how EMDR with somatic support can help you heal from the inside out.