A Little About Somatic Experiencing®:
While “somatic therapy” has become a popular umbrella term for any therapeutic approach that works with and acknowledges the body, my approach is grounded in Somatic Experiencing® (SE)—a post-graduate formalized modality developed by Dr. Peter Levine. To become a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), one must participate in an immersive 3-year professional training program, which includes 216 contact hours of training as well as 12 personal SE® sessions (yes, we plunge deep into the work ourselves) and 18 supervised consultation hours with approved providers. The modules are delivered in sequence, with deliberate spacing in between so that practitioners can integrate the learning into their own bodies. I am excited to be completing my final in-person training in November of 2026 and am on track to apply for certification shortly after.
Unlike traditional talk therapy, which uses a “top-down” approach (predominiantly works with thoughts, behaviours, and mental narratives), SE® takes a “bottom-up” approach, focussing on physical sensations and the nervous system. SE® doesn’t require the retelling of difficult or overwhelming experiences. Instead it works to track sensation, imagery, behaviour, emotion, and meaning.
The theory behind SE® is that trauma is not just a psychological event, it is an incomplete physiological response. When animals in the wild survive a life-threatening attack, they physically "shake off" the trapped survival energy and return to normal. Humans, however, often suppress these natural physical responses due to fear or social conditioning, trapping that survival energy—and the "freeze" or "fight-or-flight" response—inside the nervous system. SE helps the body complete these unfinished motor responses and discharge pent-up survival energy.
SE® can help address trauma, stress, anxiety, fatigue, depression, chronic pain and tension, and emotional dysregulation. It helps connect you with your natural ability to heal, increasing your capacity for handling challenges and for experiencing life more fully overall.
What Sessions May Include:
Grounding and Establishing Safety (Resourcing)
Working in the present: I help you anchor into the room and into the present moment, checking in on how your body feels right now rather than diving straight into work.
Building resources: I guide you in identifying internal or external anchors—such as a supportive memory, a strong physical point of contact with the chair or floor, soothing self-touch, or a neutral/safe area in your body—to use if things feel too intense.
Tracking Sensations and Developing Greater Body Awareness (The Felt Sense)
Scanning the body: I support you in bringing gentle awareness to physical cues (e.g., tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, a racing heart, shallow breathing, or a heavy stomach). I also encourage you to notice and bring awareness to images, emotions, and your sense of meaning.
Observing without judgment: Instead of trying to fix or push away any physical discomfort, you learn to track how the sensations and emotions move, shift, or change on their own.
Titration (Processing in Small Doses)
Breaking it down: I help guide you to dip your toe into a stressful memory or uncomfortable sensation in small doses, so as not to overwhelm your nervous system.
Preventing overwhelm: I help guide you in learning how to ease up on the attention to the stressful memory, difficult emotion, or uncomfortable experience before your nervous system spikes into overwhelm or shuts down, helping to teach your system that it can be with and process stress.
Pendulation (Oscillating Between Stress and Safety)
Moving back and forth: I help guide you in bringing your attention smoothly from an area of tight activation or discomfort to an area of relative ease or neutrality.
Restoring natural rhythm: This teaches your nervous system that it can move out of a locked fight, flight, or freeze state and safely return to a neutral space.
Discharge and Completion (Discharging Trapped Survival Energy)
Completing the response: When we suppress natural physical defenses, the energy can get trapped. SE helps the body complete those thwarted motor responses in a gentle and supported way.
Organic physical shifts: As the nervous system discharges bound survival energy, you may spontaneously experience deep sighs, yawning, muscle tremors, subtle shaking, warmth, or a deep sense of physical relaxation.