Approaches → Somatic therapy
Somatic therapy in Langley, BC
Your body has been paying attention even when your mind has tried to move on.
The tightness in your chest before a difficult conversation. The way you hold your breath without realizing it. The exhaustion that never quite lifts, no matter how much you sleep. These aren’t separate from what you’ve been through — they are what you’ve been through, stored in the only place the body knew to put it.
Somatic therapy — body-based therapy — recognizes that healing from stress, anxiety, and trauma isn’t purely a cognitive process. Talking about what happened can only go so far. The body needs to be part of the conversation too.
As Peter Levine, PhD writes: what we couldn’t fully process at the time doesn’t disappear — it waits, patiently, in muscle and breath and bone, until we’re safe enough to complete what was interrupted.
What somatic therapy looks like
Somatic work in our sessions is gentle and always led by you. It might look like:
- Pausing to notice what’s happening in your body as we talk
- Becoming curious about a sensation — tightness, heaviness, warmth — without judgment
- Slowing down enough to let the nervous system complete what it started
- Gradually building a felt sense of safety in the body
- Working with breath, posture, and movement as part of the healing process
I trained directly in Peter Levine’s work — Addressing the Emotional Roots of Physical Pain — and I bring somatic awareness into almost every session, even when we’re not explicitly naming it. When the body is in the room, healing goes deeper.
Who somatic therapy helps
Somatic therapy is especially helpful for anxiety, trauma, chronic stress, physical symptoms with emotional roots, and anyone who has tried talk therapy and felt like something was still missing. If you’ve ever said “I know it in my head, but I can’t feel it” — somatic work is often what bridges that gap.
