Somatic Experiencing
Creating a new experience of safety in the body.
FOLLOW
Your chest tightens.
A held breath. An impulse to pull away. Your hands start shaking. Your stomach drops. Your jaw clenches. Heat rises to your face. The urge to move, freeze, brace, or disappear.
Sometimes your body responds before you consciously understand what is happening.
Somatic Experiencing offers a way to slow down and work directly with these responses as they show up.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to trauma and stress rooted in the physiology of survival. It grew in part from observations of how animals in the wild respond to threat and then return to equilibrium, even after intense survival activation.
The approach focuses on how fight, flight, freeze, and other protective responses show up in the nervous system, and on helping those responses become more flexible rather than remaining stuck or easily reactivated.
HOW SOMATIC EXPERIENCING WORKS
01
Notice
Bring attention to sensations, impulses, breathing, movement, and shifts happening in the present moment.
02
Follow
Stay curious about what your nervous system naturally moves toward or away from without forcing a particular response.
03
Regulate
Build greater capacity to move between activation and settling without becoming overwhelmed, shut down, or disconnected.
Somatic Experiencing can help with:
+Trauma
+Chronic stress
+Nervous system dysregulation
+Feeling chronically on guard
+Flight-fight-freeze responses
+Shutdown or disconnection
+Anxiety
+Chronic tension
+Medical trauma
+Strong body reactions during conflict or closeness
Creating More Flexibility in the Nervous System
I integrate Somatic Experiencing throughout therapy rather than treating it as a separate exercise that has to happen every session.
In therapy, we may slow down and notice sensation, movement, breath, impulses, or shifts in activation and settling. The work is gradual and pays close attention to what your nervous system can manage without becoming overwhelmed.
If This Resonates
If you would like to learn more or explore whether we might be a good fit, I would love to hear from you.
IN PERSON WEST LOS ANGELES
VIRTUAL THROUGHOUT CALIFORNIA