tree with expansive roots, trunks, and leaves. metaphorical image of growth and healing with somatic therapist

Heal your WHOLE self.

Somatic Experiencing® Therapy

with certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

virtual in San Francisco Bay Area and across CA & PA.

Let’s not just talk about what happened.

Let’s actually heal its impact on the body.

Neurobiology shows us that things you are feeling right now — shutdown, shame, hypervigilance, deep exhaustion —are likely responses to painful past experiences.  Stressful and traumatic experiences disrupting the natural rhythm of our bodies and nervous systems.  

Talk therapy limits the depth of our mending and healing.

Only areas of the brain that use language - the outer cortex of our brains - are accessed.  Stress and trauma - held in our nervous systems - impacts the brain’s ability to think rationally, causing memories to be stored in fragments.  You can experience recurring patterns (for example: hyper-vigilance, checking-out, freezing-up) which manifest and habituate as emotional, physical, and relational challenges. 

What is Somatic Experiencing®? 

Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a proven, holistic method that restores the natural rhythm of our nervous systems - our bodies’ innate capacity to recover and heal.  

Is SE™ the right fit for you?

Through SE, we balance processing painful experiences with here-and-now awareness and resources

In our therapeutic container, you build a greater and compassion-based relating with all of your body:

  • your breathing

  • your posture

  • tension-filled or disconnected parts of the body

  • your thoughts

  • your feelings

  • your imagination & memories

  • your vocalizations & movements

In turn, you deepen your capacity to regulate your nervous system.   The life forces within you - previously agitated, held back, or even frozen in the body due to past painful experiences - can be moved and released through the body.  Through SE, you experience greater wholeness and new life possibilities open. You have greater energy and resiliency to meet current life experiences and challenges.  

With guidance and attunement from an experienced SE therapist, clients access their resiliency by gently and safely tuning into their inner experience - discovering greater embodiment, wholeness, and connectivity to themselves and resiliency through their lives.  

Somatic Experiencing® (SE) therapy can help you…

  • Instead of pushing through blocks, painful physical discomfort or emotions, Somatic Experiencing® (SE) focuses on your current range of resilience. Your body is designed to heal from intense and stressors experiences, and it has deep wisdom on when, how much, and what the body needs. We discover this inner wisdom!

  • Instead of hyperfocusing on challenging thoughts and beliefs, Somatic Experiencing® (SE) expands gentle inquiry into your bodily movements, physical sensations, feelings, and imagery. SE empowers you to pay attention and offer compassionate attunement to internal, external, or missing resources to aid healings from stressors and traumatic events. Your body gently unfreezes from past intense and extreme experiences. Feel the stretch and spaciousness of now with then. Your present body can bring new light and softness to the difficulties and hardness of past painful experiences.

Get in touch

Nourish today!

FAQs

Frequently asked questions

  • A: SE was developed by Dr. Peter Levine - a distinguished clinician in medical biophysics and psychology. Through research and clinical practice, Dr. Levine discovered that traumatic experiences and chronic stress disrupt the natural rhythm of the nervous system. SE is a proven and powerful body-heart-mind method to rewire the brain and nervous system to resolve and heal from stressful and traumatic experiences.

  • Resourcing: The practice of inviting one’s body/heart/mind to attune to sensations of okayness or goodness - big or small, internal or around our environment. Building capacity to resource augments our bodies to experience stress and return to settledness.

    Pendulation: The innate power to move and notice different parts of our experiences and bodily sensations in a rhythm. The ability to pendulate in our bodies expands through SE therapy, which increases your ability to meet challenges in your day-to-day and within yourself.

    Titration: In trauma and stressful situations, our bodies experience “too much, too fast, too soon,” and your mind may have strong urges to “get it over with.” In SE, I can guide you in tuning into an amount of sensation that is not overwhelming. This titration of feeling into survival-based arousal or difficult sensations while being supported increases stability and resilience.

    Tracking and Settling: You and I both track where there is rhythm. We notice arousal responses that need completion, as well as passive, biological immobile responses that need tending for your body to return to greater equilibrium and flow rather than shutdown.

    And many more. Connect today to expand your skills and resilience.

  • In addition to anxiety, grief, and trauma, Somatic Experiencing® can be transformative for the following issues:

    • Life transitions

    • Depression

    • Self-worth

    • Impact of systemic oppression

    • Relational conflicts

    • Intergenerational & ancestral legacies

    • Spirituality

    • And others. Reach out today for a free phone consultation to discuss.