Somatic Therapy
What Is Somatic Psychotherapy?
In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to feel stuck in our heads. Many of us spend our workdays tethered to computers, where the relentless stress of deadlines takes its toll. In our downtime, we often turn to our phones for escape, adding even more hours of screen time to our days.
This lifestyle can leave us overwhelmed by sensory input while also feeling disconnected from our bodies. Perfectionism, anxiety, work-related pressures, or past trauma often exacerbate this disconnection, making it hard to navigate emotional challenges. Too often, we attempt to "think our way out" of these struggles, overlooking the profound wisdom our bodies hold.
Somatic therapy provides a “bottom-up” approach that bridges this gap. By reconnecting with the body, somatic therapy offers an embodied way to address issues stemming from emotional dysregulation, trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, and unresolved grief. This therapeutic practice helps release stored tension, process emotional pain, and foster physical healing, leading to deeper emotional awareness and resilience.
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How Does Somatic Therapy Work?
In somatic experiencing therapy, you are guided to recognize the specific physical sensations that arise whenever an intense emotion triggers you. For example, you may experience pain, constriction or tightening in the chest, butterflies, aching, tingling, tearfulness, or other sensations when connecting to challenging mental and emotional experiences. These sensations serve as cues to help you recognize when you’re in a triggered state.
Instead of resisting or fighting these feelings, in somatic processing therapy, we explore them for deeper understanding. Initially working with your therapist in sessions, you will learn how to deescalate the emotional intensity using somatic techniques—such as breathwork—to reconnect with your body and realign how you want to respond.
By developing skills to regulate emotions, release stored tension, and process trauma through body awareness techniques, you can improve coping strategies and cultivate greater emotional resilience. With somatic experiencing therapy, you will:
Learn polyvagal theory and the nervous system’s impact on emotional regulation;
Increase self-awareness by learning to recognize the physical sensations tied to your emotions and triggers;
Identify where trauma is stored in the body and apply somatic techniques to release it;
Reprogram habitual stress responses by integrating somatic tools, allowing you to remain more grounded and respond to challenges more intentionally;
Gain a deeper connection to your body and a more balanced, empowered approach to daily life.
In addition to the breathwork techniques learned in therapy, you can explore other somatic bodywork practices outside of sessions to support your healing. These include engaging in yoga to cultivate mindfulness and flexibility, incorporating gentle stretching to release tension, or experiencing the therapeutic benefits of massage. You might also experiment with changing your body temperature—taking a hot shower, enjoying a warm bath, or going for a brisk walk in the cold can help regulate your nervous system and bring you back to the present moment.
Who Can Benefit From Somatic Therapy?
Somatic experiencing is an effective therapy for high-achieving individuals—particularly millennials and Gen Xers—who struggle with trauma, emotional regulation, anxiety, and chronic stress. It is particularly helpful for anyone who feels disconnected from their body or prone to dissociation.
By focusing on physical sensations, somatic therapy enables clients to process and release stored trauma, which is often overlooked in stand-alone talk therapy. Research shows that trauma stored in the body can impact emotional and physical well-being, and somatic psychology directly targets these physical manifestations, leading to faster and more integrated healing. [1]
Compared to traditional talk therapy, somatic therapy helps clients access and release deep-rooted emotional blockages by promoting physical awareness of the body. This bottom-up approach is a breakthrough for clients who have struggled to find relief through cognitive methods alone. With its mind-body integration, somatic counseling allows clients to bypass cognitive blocks and engage in healing through their bodies, promoting lasting emotional relief and resilience.
Our Background In Somatic Therapy
We were inspired to integrate somatic therapy into our practice after seeing how profoundly the body holds onto emotional experiences and trauma. While traditional talk therapy can offer insight, we found that many clients struggled to release the physical tension and unresolved emotions that were deeply embedded within the body.
Somatic experiencing therapy provides a unique, holistic approach, helping you foster mind-body connection, process emotional pain at a deeper level, and promote healing. Our approach is grounded in trauma-informed care, ensuring a safe and empowering environment for you to explore and heal through somatic awareness.
As therapists who practice somatic healing, it’s incredibly rewarding for us to witness clients reconnect with their bodies, feel their emotions without being overwhelmed, and release the tension and pain that’s been stored for years.
Somatic counseling can help you rediscover a sense of safety, grounding, and empowerment in your own skin. The process is not always easy, but it’s truly transformative when you begin to experience the freedom and peace that comes with embodied healing.
In both the short and long term, somatic therapy offers real, tangible hope. Clients often experience relief right away as they reconnect with their bodies and gain tools to regulate their emotions.
By addressing the root causes of stress and trauma, you can experience significant shifts in how you feel and react to triggers, leading to a greater sense of control and calm. Over time, these changes compound, helping to build lasting resilience and promote healing from deep-rooted emotional pain.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8276649/
Find Out How Somatic Therapy Can Help You
True healing comes from the integration of mind and body. To find out more about somatic experiencing with the Union Therapy Group, please call or text 914-274-4811 or visit our contact page.
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