Somatic Therapy

Non-clinical body centered therapy for community oriented individuals who want to re-connect to their bodies and find resolution from trauma formed patterns, so they can feel into, engage with, and create the life they want with the people they love.

Hello friend.

I’m wondering if you’re starting to notice that precious time has past, leaving you with a foggy recollection of the glimmering moments that held you throughout the cycles of the year.

Perhaps you’ve started to notice your nervous system is more and more effected by the emotions and experiences of the people in your community and beyond.

Maybe you once felt like you had an endless well of wisdom to provide to your people, and lately you’ve noticed yourself coming up short with a “helpful” solution.

When is the last time you slowed down enough to notice your own needs?

I know how deeply we want to support our community so we can feel a sense of belonging, but avoiding the call for personal care leaves us burnt out and dried up - which is a help to no-one. 

The wild thing is, I know you’ve collected many effective solutions and approaches, but you aren’t practicing what you preach, rather building an archive of information that sits on a shelf in your brain to provide to other people (I’ve got the same files, tbh).

It’s time to take a sip of your own sweet medicine and start replenishing your well of resources.

So you can FEEL a sense of ease in your body and purpose.

So you can remember who you are beyond your work.

It’s time to start the doing, being, and receiving parts of healing.

Over extending is under feeling.

For many of us, caring for others began very early in life and continued as our role into adulthood. The tendency to look to others first, left our own needs for care de-centered and neglected.

It turns out that an overextension away from self is an intelligent coping strategy for safety access and resource security when our environment did not provide such basic needs.

While our orientation to our loved ones and community is also very much heart centered, it can also result in ongoing self abandonment and inevitably - burn out.

Now more than ever, we need deeply resourced individuals supporting our communities with sustained efforts aimed at longevity.

We need to connect to body in order feel what hasn’t been felt, so that we can integrate the overwhelming sensations and build a wider capacity that allows us to continue on our path and without losing our vitality.

This is where somatic work comes in.

We practice together.

In collaboration, we build practices that develop a deeper connection to body, and establish a stronger foundation that allows you to move through the world in a more centered and connected way.

As someone who has been a helper for nearly my entire life, this is the care I take.

I work with somatic practitioners who watch and reflect the patterns that I miss in my own body, provide compassionate feedback, and provide practices centered in choice.

This has made me a well-resourced practitioner that knows my needs, preferences, boundaries, and patterns that come up within a community environment.

“Rachel is an expert listener, space holder, and guide into the wonderful world of somatics. Her patience, guidance and support is second to none. 10/10 : Would highly recommend.”

-Drew D.

Here’s what I bring to the table.

  • Grounded Support

    I provide down to earth guidance rooted in Somatic Experiencing methods, throughout all of my offerings, which is especially helpful when it comes to dipping into experiences that haven’t been felt in a while.

  • Mirrored Experience

    As someone who might share your experiences and values, I offer a compassionate mirror up to you, reflecting patterns and cycles you may not have previously noticed.

  • Personal Practice

    I prioritize helping you develop a routine that will carry you long after our work together with many tools, techniques, and resources including bodywork, therapeutic movement, and personalized rituals.

This offering is interwoven with many points of quality support including:

  • Our work begins with a 60 minute intake session that reviews your goals and establishes a plan for our sessions ahead.

    Here we can get to know each other and determine if this work is a good fit for you.

    Note: You are not obligated to continue sessions after the initial meeting.

  • We meet at least twice a month in a virtual 60 minute video call format.

    While it is up to the individual to determine continuation of care, it is recommended to commit to at least 6 months of sessions.

    After 6 months you’ll have a solid framework for somatic skills that can support a personal practice or ongoing sessions.

  • As we work through the foundations of a somatic practice, we will co-create a care plan that can be utilized as a map in your every day life.

  • I will provide as many tools, techniques, sources of information and care providers as I am aware of throughout our time together.

    My hopes are that you receive as much care as possible during and after our time together.

Session Pricing Options

  • Standard Rate

    Pay $240 a month or $120 a session, if you can pay the middle way, but not more.

  • Supported Rate

    Pay $200 a month or $100 a session, if you need a bit of financial support to access this offering.

  • Supporting Rate

    Pay $280 a month or $140 a session, if you can pay for more without worry.

Ready to listen to the subtle language of your body, dive deep and make changes?

Schedule your initial session today.

Somatic Practice Pillars

  • We begin our work together by building a system of support for the work ahead.

    ꩜ Resource building, naming the good stuff in life and noticing what stories come along

    ꩜ Learning the ways to describe the vast experience of sensations

    ꩜ Noticing the every day points of connection with the natural world

    ꩜ Developing the felt sense surrounding the concept of choice and agency

    ꩜ Naming personal preferences and asking for needs (and wants) to be met

    ꩜ Building a connection to center and establishing personal boundaries

  • Once we have a sense of stability, our sessions continue by exploring challenges head on.

    ꩜ Applied practices using all of the insight, tools, and techniques learned in earlier sessions - only now we start to invite the bigger feelings to the table

    ꩜ Processing the more difficult experiences and patterns that are still held in your body through posture and movement

    ꩜ Creating personalized practices that are created to fit your experience and goals - this can be as simple as drawing exercises to something a bit more complex as a movement routine

  • Moving forward we can dive even deeper by working with patterns and subtle responses.

    ꩜ Uncoupling practices intended to explore the fine-tune details of nervous system safety responses

    ꩜ Physiological resolution of past events - this looks like inviting the body to find shapes and movements that were wanted, but not accessed in a time of threat

    ꩜ Tracking the subtle moments of response to perceived threat in order to map patterns, which will inform your care plan that can be carried forward into daily living

TLDR

In our time together we’ll get curious about the subtle language of the body through the following somatic themes:

🌈 Personal Resourcing

🪴 Needs and Preferences

🧱 Boundaries and Space

꩜ Patterns of Survival &

🗺 The Map of Your Nervous System

Why these particular themes?

Each one provides a doorway into your current experience, bypassing the stories and narratives that may be a bit to sticky to work through.

Here, we get straight to the point and go through the body to find the clearest answers.

In each session we slow time waaaay down, apply a theme and notice what comes up.

Heads up, it’s A LOT more than the topic.

For example, when we are applying a boundary exercise we are not only noticing where your boundary bubble is, we also pay very close attention to sensations that arise, imagery coming to mind, behaviors taking action, emotions moving through, old stories for meaning, and coupled relationship with that boundary.

This means in just one exercise, we can dive deep and directly into where your nervous system is in that moment, answer the body’s request for action, process old patterns, feel forgotten emotions, sift through hidden memories, create new meaning, and integrate your whole experience.

And that’s just one theme.

Private clients have shared experiencing an increased sense of belonging along with the ability to ground and find peace during anxious moments with others.

FAQs

  • The root of the word “somatic” is “soma”, which translates to “body”. So, one could say that a somatic experience is of the body, or a bodily experience.

    When someone is describing their work as “somatic” like myself, they are describing the orientation of their approach. For example, somatic work is not a top down, or mind centered approach.

    Somatic work focuses on current experience of sensation, feeling, emotion, visualization, and meaning.

  • I think this answer varies for each person depending on the moment in their life and their inherent values.

    As humans we process our experiences and trauma with both a top-down (cognition) and bottom-up (sensory motor) pathways.

    In our culture, top-down is prioritized in therapeutic modalities leaving bottom-up in need of nourishment.

    I will say, just like any other transformational method you will get a lot out of this work if you are willing to put forth honest effort.

    Practice and repetition make change.

    I’ve included a link to an informative video that speaks about Somatic Experiencing, body based approach concepts, and includes a demonstration at the end - it’s worth a watch!

    Head to video: HERE

  • I want to first be very clear and say that I am not a licensed mental health professional.

    I am a trauma informed somatic practitioner with extensive education in modalities focused on bottom-up processing.

    While somatic therapy is a great compliment to psychotherapy, it does not replace clinical attention.

    For people experiencing acute crisis, seeking diagnosis, and/or medicinal therapies - clinical treatment can be valuable.

    This offering is not that.

    This offering is aimed at non-clinical trauma resolution which combines methods and concepts from my education and training in Somatic Experiencing, bodywork, psychology, sociology, mindfulness, and therapeutic movement.

“What I appreciate most, is how Rachel listened to me and felt empathy and not judgment. We didn’t have the exact career experience but she she understood where I was coming from. It really helped me trust and express myself in a genuine manner.”

-Blaire H.

This offering serves those who:

  • want to build greater capacity to hold space for big emotions without being mutually activated with others

  • want to re-connect to their intuition which enables them to find meaningful and appropriate solutions in relationship

  • desire deeper connection with natural rhythms and wellbeing throughout the seasons

  • want to find another way to approaching healing that doesn’t solely rely on recovery of the mind

Schedule your initial session today.