The somatic approach
Somatic therapy works with the body as a participant, not a symptom. Sensation, breath, posture and impulse carry information about your nervous system that words alone cannot reach, including body awareness and interoception.
Why the body and not only the story
Most of what governs how safe you feel is decided below conscious thought. Your body assesses the situation, prepares a response and only afterwards does the thinking mind produce an explanation for the feeling that already arrived.
This is why understanding a pattern so rarely dissolves it. The explanation reaches the part of you that reasons; the pattern lives in the part that protects. Somatic work addresses that second layer directly, which is why change, when it comes, tends to feel less like a decision and more like a loosening.
What we pay attention to
- Sensation: tightness, warmth, buzzing, heaviness, emptiness
- Breath: where it stops, where it deepens, when it changes
- Posture: how you hold yourself and what that holding does
- Impulse: to move, to withdraw, to reach out, to push away
- Timing: what happens just before something shifts
- Ease: the places that already feel neutral or steady
Body awareness and interoception, in practice
Interoception is the sense of your own inside. It is how you know you are anxious before you know why and how you know you are tired before you admit it. For many people it has been dulled, by chronic stress, by trauma, or simply by years of having to override it in order to function.
We rebuild it in small, tolerable steps. Rather than asking you to feel more, we start with what is already available: a hand on a chair, the weight of your feet, one breath that goes slightly deeper than the last. Precision matters more than intensity.
As that sense sharpens, something practical happens. You begin to notice stress earlier, while there is still room to respond. You recognise the difference between real tiredness and collapse, between a genuine no and an old fear. That earlier information is what makes different choices possible.
The traditions I draw on
Somatic Experiencing®
Peter Levine's approach to resolving traumatic stress by completing survival responses, in small increments.
Body psychotherapy
The broader tradition of working with the body as an active participant in psychological change, not a symptom carrier.
IFS & Focusing
Internal Family Systems and Inner Relationship Focusing, for meeting protective parts with curiosity rather than force.
Questions people ask me
What is somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy is a body-based approach to counselling. Alongside talking, it pays attention to sensation, breath, posture, movement and impulse, because these carry information about your nervous system's state that words alone cannot reach.
What does interoception mean?
Interoception is your ability to sense the internal state of your own body, heartbeat, breath, tension, temperature, hunger, the vague sense of unease or ease. It is the channel somatic work uses and it can be strengthened with practice.
Do I have to be good at feeling my body?
No. Many people arrive feeling numb, disconnected or unable to answer 'what do you notice?', that is information, not failure. Building that capacity gently is often the first part of the work.
Is somatic therapy the same as bodywork or massage?
No. There is no manual treatment. You stay clothed, seated or lying down as you prefer and everything happens through your own awareness and movement. Online sessions work well for exactly this reason.