"Soma" means body. Somatic therapy focuses on body oriented therapy practices to support healing. Somatic therapy can be used to develop sensation and body awareness; learn how to support the individual's nervous system and fight/flight response; and process traumatic experiences that are stored in the body.

Somatic practices can include:

- Mindfulness, visualization, grounding, and sensation awareness work.

Somatic therapy modalities that I pull from to support your healing may include:

- Somatic Experiencing (SE): founded by Peter Levine, PhD, and aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies and nervous systems.

- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: founded by Pat Ogden, PhD, and focuses on the “somatic narrative” (the body’s gesture, posture, facial expressions, eye movement, sensations) to empower the body’s healing capabilities.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy focuses on embedded relational mindfulness, which is a type of integrated mindfulness that occurs moment to moment between the therapist and the client. This type of directed mindfulness allows for purposeful guidance towards the client’s internal system.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) explores how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected. CBT focuses on understanding your thought pattern and how it plays a role in how you behave and the decisions you make. This modality looks at interaction between one's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. CBT can help you understand how these three factors affect your beliefs about yourself. CBT is very goal-oriented, focuses on problem solving and implementing change, and can be very structured.

Psychodynamic therapy explores how your unconscious beliefs, values, relationships, and past childhood experiences shape your identity. This type of therapy tends to be longer because it digs deep into your past. By gaining a better understanding of how these unconscious factors play a role in your mental health, you will gain more awareness, which supports change.