What Is Somatic Therapy? (And How It Can Help You Heal)
If you've ever noticed your shoulders tense up when you're stressed, your stomach clench before a difficult conversation, or your chest tighten when something feels wrong, you already understand the basic premise of somatic therapy.
Your body holds what your mind can't always put into words.
Somatic therapy is a body-centred approach to healing that works with the physical sensations, movement patterns, and nervous system responses that live in the body, not just the thoughts and beliefs we explore in traditional talk therapy. It's a growing field that many people are discovering as a powerful complement, or alternative, to conventional approaches to mental and emotional health.
What Does "Somatic" Actually Mean?
The word somatic comes from the Greek word soma, meaning body. Somatic therapy, then, is literally body-based therapy.
Rather than focusing exclusively on what happened to you (the story, the timeline, the analysis), somatic approaches ask: how is what happened showing up in your body right now? Where do you feel it? What does it want to do? What happens when you simply stay with that sensation?
This shift, from narrative to sensation, can be profound, particularly for people who have spent years in talk therapy and feel like they understand their patterns intellectually, but haven't been able to shift them at a deeper level.
How Is Somatic Therapy Different from Talk Therapy?
Traditional talk therapy (CBT, psychodynamic therapy, counselling) primarily works through the mind, exploring thoughts, beliefs, memories, and emotions through conversation. It's valuable, and for many people it's genuinely helpful.
But trauma, in particular, doesn't only live in our thoughts. Research by Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), and others has shown that traumatic experiences can become lodged in the body's nervous system, creating chronic activation patterns, hypervigilance, shutdown, or disconnection that talking alone often can't resolve.
Somatic therapy works at the level of the nervous system. Rather than talking about an experience, you're guided to notice what's happening in your body as you explore it, and to complete the natural self-regulatory cycles that may have been interrupted.
What Happens in a Somatic Therapy Session?
This varies depending on the practitioner and the modality, but generally you might expect:
Slowing down and tuning in. Rather than jumping straight into analysis, somatic therapy invites you to pause, breathe, and notice what's present in your body before anything else.
Tracking sensation. Your practitioner might ask things like "Where do you notice that in your body?" or "What happens in your chest when you say that?" The idea is to become a curious, compassionate observer of your own physical experience.
Working with the nervous system. If your system is activated (anxious, flooded, overwhelmed) or collapsed (numb, shut down, disconnected), somatic approaches offer ways to gently regulate, finding more safety, capacity, and groundedness.
Movement and breath. Some somatic approaches incorporate gentle movement, breath awareness, or physical discharge to help the body complete stress responses that were interrupted.
Integration. Making sense of what came up, not just cognitively, but in terms of how it feels to have moved through it.
What Can Somatic Therapy Help With?
Somatic therapy is used to support a wide range of experiences, including:
Trauma and PTSD, particularly when memories feel "stuck" or embodied rather than cognitive
Anxiety and chronic stress, helping the nervous system find regulation rather than just managing symptoms
Depression and emotional numbness, reconnecting with aliveness and felt sense
Chronic pain and tension, exploring the emotional and relational dimensions of physical symptoms
Burnout, learning to listen to what the body is communicating before it escalates
Relationship and attachment patterns, understanding how early experiences shape how we feel and respond in connection
Grief and loss, creating space for the body's natural grief process
Different Types of Somatic Therapy
There are several well-known somatic modalities, each with its own emphasis:
Somatic Experiencing (SE), developed by Peter Levine, SE focuses on completing interrupted stress and trauma responses in the nervous system.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, integrates attachment theory, cognitive approaches, and body awareness to work with trauma and relationship patterns.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), while not purely somatic, EMDR includes body-based elements and is highly effective for trauma processing.
Compassionate Inquiry, developed by Dr Gabor Maté, this is a psychotherapeutic approach that combines deep listening, body awareness, and compassionate questioning to explore the roots of emotional pain and disconnection. It's one of the modalities I use in my sessions with clients.
Energy healing modalities, practices like energy alchemy and energy healing work with the body's energetic field to support emotional and physical release, often in ways that complement and deepen somatic work.
Is Somatic Therapy Right for You?
You might feel drawn to somatic therapy if:
You've done talk therapy but feel like something is still stuck
You tend to intellectualise your emotions but struggle to feel them
You experience a lot of physical tension, fatigue, or chronic symptoms without a clear medical cause
You feel disconnected from your body, or unsafe in it
You're dealing with anxiety, trauma, or patterns that feel bigger than your conscious mind
You're curious about a more holistic, integrated approach to healing
Somatic therapy isn't a quick fix, and it isn't always comfortable. Moving toward sensation rather than away from it takes courage. But for many people, it opens a door that other approaches couldn't.
Working With Me: Somatic and Energy Healing in Ericeira, Portugal
In my sessions, I draw on somatic awareness, Compassionate Inquiry, and energy healing to support clients in reconnecting with themselves at a deeper level, below the story, below the logic, into the felt sense of what's alive in the body.
I work with clients in person in Ericeira, Portugal and online with clients around the world.
If you're curious about whether this kind of work might be right for you, I'd love to connect. Book a free discovery call here.
Jessi Galvin is a certified Compassionate Inquiry practitioner and energy healer based in Ericeira, Portugal. She supports clients with trauma, anxiety, emotional healing, and spiritual growth through one-to-one sessions and retreats.
