Power Through Process

Somatic Breathwork for Trauma Healing: How It Works

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 21:00:01 GMT

You have probably heard the word breathwork before. Maybe you have tried it, or scrolled past a video of someone breathing in a particular pattern and wondered what it was actually doing. Somatic breathwork is a specific form of breathwork used in trauma healing, and it operates differently from general relaxation breathing or meditation-based breath practices. This post covers what it is, how it works in the context of trauma, what a session involves, and what to consider before you try it.

In case you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese, a relational therapist supporting women of color through trauma healing and nervous system recovery. At Power Through Process, breath is one of several body-based tools I use to help clients access and release what has been stored in the body. You can learn more about the full approach through somatic therapy services .

What somatic breathwork is and how it works

Breathwork, in its broadest sense, refers to any intentional practice of regulating or directing the breath. Box breathing, diaphragmatic breathing, and pranayama from yoga traditions all fall under this category. These practices can reduce acute stress, lower heart rate, and support focus. They work primarily through the parasympathetic nervous system, activating the body's rest and digest response.

Somatic breathwork does this and goes further. The word somatic comes from the Greek word soma, meaning body. Somatic practices are designed to work with the body's stored responses to stress and trauma, not only its present-moment physiological state. Where general breathwork might help you feel calmer in the moment, somatic breathwork is used to access and process material that the body has been holding over time.

How somatic breathwork differs from regular breathwork

The primary difference is therapeutic intent and clinical context. General breathwork is often practiced independently, through apps, videos, or group classes, with the goal of stress reduction or relaxation. Somatic breathwork is typically facilitated by a trained practitioner who tracks the client's physical and emotional responses throughout the session and adjusts the pace and approach accordingly.

In a somatic context, the breath is used as a tool for accessing the nervous system's stored patterns. A trained facilitator watches for signs of activation or shutdown, supports the client in staying within their window of tolerance, and helps them complete stress responses that were previously interrupted or suppressed. This level of attunement is what makes somatic breathwork distinct from self-directed breathing exercises.

What the body does during a somatic breathwork session

Breathing patterns have a direct effect on the autonomic nervous system. Slow, extended exhales activate the parasympathetic branch, signaling safety to the body. Certain rhythmic breathing patterns can increase oxygen flow, shift the body's chemistry, and alter the state of the nervous system in ways that make stored material more accessible.

During a somatic breathwork session, clients sometimes experience physical sensations they did not anticipate. Tingling in the hands or face, spontaneous movement, waves of emotion, or a sudden deep release of breath are common. These responses are not manufactured. They are the body's natural reactions to a shift in nervous system state. A skilled facilitator holds the space for these responses without pushing toward or away from them.

How somatic breathwork supports trauma healing

Trauma is not stored as a narrative. It is stored as a physiological pattern. When a threatening experience occurs and the body's stress response is not fully completed, the incomplete response remains in the nervous system as a kind of unfinished charge. This is why people with trauma histories often experience physical symptoms, hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, or numbness that persists long after the original event.

Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing, observed that animals in the wild complete their stress responses through physical discharge, shaking, movement, and breath, and then return to baseline. Humans, particularly those living in environments that require ongoing suppression of fear, grief, or anger, often interrupt this completion process. The charge stays in the body.

Somatic breathwork creates conditions in which the body can return to and complete those interrupted responses. The breath acts as a bridge between the conscious mind and the body's stored patterns. By shifting the breath intentionally and with therapeutic support, clients can access material that verbal processing alone does not reach.

Nervous system regulation and stored stress

Chronic stress dysregulates the autonomic nervous system over time. Women who have lived in sustained high-stress environments, whether from work, relational harm, racial stress, or generational patterns of survival, often develop a nervous system that defaults to hyperactivation or shutdown. Neither state is conducive to healing, connection, or rest.

Somatic breathwork works directly with the nervous system's state. Specific breathing patterns can shift the body out of sympathetic activation and into a more regulated state, creating a window in which deeper processing becomes possible. Over repeated sessions, this can contribute to a more stable baseline, where the nervous system no longer defaults to its most protective settings as the first response to everyday stress.

Emotional processing and trauma release

For many women, emotions have been suppressed for so long that they no longer feel fully accessible. The capacity to feel grief, anger, or fear without being overwhelmed by it is something the nervous system learns through safe, repeated experience. Somatic breathwork can support this process by creating a regulated state in which emotions can surface and move through the body without triggering a shutdown response.

Releases during somatic breathwork sessions can take many forms. Crying, shaking, spontaneous vocalization, or simply a wave of warmth and relief are all common. These are not performances or signs of crisis. They are the body completing what it previously had to hold in place. The facilitator's role is to support this process without directing it toward a particular outcome.

For women of color specifically, this work carries additional context. The body has often been a site of surveillance, judgment, and forced composure. Reclaiming the body as a place where emotional expression is safe and supported is part of the healing, not a side effect of it.

What a somatic breathwork session looks like

Sessions typically begin with an intake or check-in conversation. The facilitator asks about your current state, any recent stress or significant events, and what you are hoping to work with. This is not a formality. It shapes how the session is paced and what the facilitator tracks throughout.

You will usually be lying down or seated comfortably. The facilitator guides you into a specific breathing pattern and then stays present with you as you move through the session. They may offer verbal guidance, gentle grounding touch if that has been agreed upon, or simply hold the space quietly while tracking your responses.

Sessions typically last between 45 minutes and 90 minutes, including the integration period at the end. Integration is not optional. It is the part of the session where the nervous system begins to settle and the experience becomes incorporated rather than just felt. Leaving a session without adequate integration time can leave the nervous system in an unsettled state.

Can you do somatic breathwork on your own?

Some somatic breathwork techniques can be practiced independently. Extended exhale breathing, diaphragmatic breathing, and certain grounding breath practices are safe for most people to use outside of a clinical setting. These are useful tools for nervous system regulation in everyday life.

Deeper somatic breathwork, particularly practices designed to access trauma material, are not recommended for solo practice without prior clinical work with a trained facilitator. Accessing stored trauma without adequate support and containment can be destabilizing rather than healing. The relational component of the work, having a skilled person present to track and support your responses, is not incidental. It is part of what makes the process safe and effective.

If you are new to somatic work, beginning with a trained practitioner and learning the foundational skills in a supported context is the safer starting point. From there, your facilitator can guide you toward practices that are appropriate for independent use between sessions.

What to know before you try somatic breathwork

Somatic breathwork is not appropriate for everyone in every circumstance. People with certain cardiovascular conditions, respiratory conditions, a history of psychosis, or who are in acute crisis should consult with a medical or mental health professional before trying somatic breathwork. A qualified facilitator will conduct an intake assessment to identify any contraindications before beginning.

When looking for a somatic breathwork practitioner, ask about their training, their approach to trauma, and how they handle activation or distress during sessions. A well-trained facilitator will have clear answers to these questions and will conduct a thorough intake before your first session.

Somatic breathwork works alongside other forms of care. For women managing conditions that require psychiatric monitoring or medication, somatic work is a complement to that care, not a standalone treatment.

Ready to work with your breath and your body

Somatic breathwork is one tool within a broader body-based approach to trauma healing. When it is well-facilitated and appropriately paced, it can support the nervous system in completing what it has been holding and create conditions for deeper regulation and emotional access over time.

If you are looking for somatic therapy in Los Angeles, California , book your consultation today.

Body-Based Therapy: What It Is and How It Works

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:30:00 GMT

You already know something is off. You can feel it in the tightness across your shoulders that never fully releases, the way your chest contracts when you have to speak up, the exhaustion that sleep does not fix. You have talked about it. Maybe in therapy, maybe with friends, maybe in your own head on the drive home from work. And still, something stays stuck.

Body-based therapy is built around a physiological reality: your nervous system stores what your mind cannot fully process. Until you work with the body directly, some of what you are carrying will stay exactly where it is. This is not a failure of willpower or self-awareness. It is how the nervous system works.

This guide covers what body-based therapy is, how it differs from traditional talk therapy, what the research shows, and what to expect when you begin.

In case you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese, a relational therapist supporting women of color who are done surviving and ready to live fully. At Power Through Process, I work at the intersection of body-based healing, trauma recovery, and cultural grounding. The women I work with are not just carrying personal stress. They are carrying generations of it. You can learn more about the approach at somatic therapy .

What your body is doing when you are stressed or overwhelmed

Your nervous system is designed to protect you. The autonomic nervous system operates below conscious thought, and it does not distinguish between a work deadline and a physical threat. Both register as danger. Both trigger a protective response. When that response activates repeatedly over months and years without resolution, the nervous system stops returning to a regulated baseline. It stays on alert.

Dr. Stephen Porges developed polyvagal theory to describe the body's hierarchy of responses. At the top is social engagement, the state in which you feel safe, connected, and present. Below that is fight or flight, the mobilized state activated by perceived threat. Below that is shutdown, a collapsed, frozen state the body enters when fight or flight feels futile. Many women living with chronic stress cycle between fight or flight and shutdown without consistent access to the social engagement state at all. That means the capacity to feel genuinely safe, to rest, to connect, to be present is not laziness or emotional unavailability. It is a nervous system that has been doing its job under sustained pressure for too long.

Bessel van der Kolk's research established that unprocessed trauma is stored somatically. The cognitive record of an event and the body's stored response to that event are not the same thing. You can understand something intellectually and still carry it physically. That distinction is the foundation of body-based therapy.

The physical signs that your body is holding unprocessed stress

Chronic jaw clenching. Shallow breathing that never quite reaches the belly. Shoulders that climb toward the ears without you noticing. Gut issues that come and go without a clear medical cause. A persistent sense of fatigue that a full night of sleep does not resolve. Emotional numbness that shows up as going through the motions without feeling much of anything. Hypervigilance, the low-level scanning of every room, every conversation, every tone of voice for signs of what might go wrong.

These are not random symptoms. They are the body's intelligent responses to years of accumulated stress, suppression, and survival. They are signals. If you have been told your labs are fine but you still do not feel fine, your body is not wrong. It is communicating. Body-based therapy is built around learning to understand that communication rather than override it.

What body-based therapy is and how it differs from talk therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, works from the top down. It identifies thought patterns, examines the beliefs underneath them, and works to replace distorted thinking with more accurate or functional alternatives. It is well-researched and effective for a wide range of conditions. It operates primarily at the cognitive level, engaging the part of the brain responsible for language, reasoning, and conscious thought.

Body-based therapy works from the bottom up. Rather than beginning with what you think about an experience, it begins with what your body does in response to it. Breath. Posture. Muscle tension. The sensation in your chest when a particular memory surfaces. The way your jaw tightens before you speak in a difficult conversation. These physical responses are treated as data, not side effects to be managed while the real work happens in words.

For trauma stored in the body, bottom-up approaches reach what top-down methods cannot access through language alone. This is not a critique of talk therapy. It is a description of where the two approaches work differently. Many women benefit from both, used together or in sequence depending on what they need at a given stage of their healing.

What happens in a body-based therapy session

A session might include breath awareness, body scanning, tracking physical sensations as they shift during conversation, gentle movement, grounding exercises, or titrated trauma processing. Titrated means slow, measured, and paced according to your window of tolerance. Somatic work does not push you toward catharsis. It builds the capacity to stay present with difficult material without becoming overwhelmed by it.

In my practice, the cultural context is not a background consideration. For many women of color, the body has been a site of surveillance, harm, judgment, and forced performance for most of their lives. Reclaiming the body as a place of safety and self-knowledge carries weight that extends beyond personal healing. The work is personal and political at the same time.

Body-based therapy is not massage. It is not a breathing class. It does not require you to narrate traumatic events in detail. What it does require is a willingness to slow down and notice what is happening inside you, which for many women is the hardest thing they have ever been asked to do.

Does body-based therapy work

Somatic Experiencing, developed by Peter Levine, is one of the most researched body-based modalities. Research across somatic approaches consistently shows reductions in PTSD symptoms, improvements in emotional regulation, and decreases in physiological stress markers. Harvard Health and Psychology Today both feature body-based therapy as a recognized clinical modality, reflecting a shift in how mainstream institutions understand trauma treatment.

One gap worth naming directly: research on somatic therapy with women of color specifically remains limited. Most studies draw on majority-white samples, which means the evidence base does not fully reflect the populations who often carry the greatest cumulative load of stress and trauma. This is one reason that culturally grounded practice matters. A modality can be effective and still require cultural adaptation to serve specific communities well.

Women exploring somatic therapy for the first time often describe the entry point as more accessible than they expected. The first shift many people notice is not dramatic. It is quieter. A breath that goes slightly deeper than usual. A moment of stillness that does not immediately fill with the next task. These small shifts are the nervous system beginning to reorganize.

What clients experience in the process

The most common description is a shift from talking about feelings to feeling them, and being able to move through them rather than around them. For women who have spent years being articulate about their pain without it changing, this distinction matters. Understanding why you feel a certain way and actually processing the feeling are two separate things.

Physical releases emerge organically as the work progresses. A spontaneous deep breath in the middle of a session. Warmth spreading through the chest. Tears that feel like relief rather than breakdown. These are not performances. They are the body completing stress responses that were interrupted or suppressed before they could finish.

Over time, clients report an increased capacity to tolerate discomfort without shutting down, greater access to rest and genuine joy, and reduced reactivity in relationships and high-pressure situations. The exhaustion does not disappear overnight. But it begins to have a different quality. Instead of carrying it, you start to set it down in increments.

Who body-based therapy is designed for

Body-based therapy is a strong fit for women who have done significant mental and emotional work but still feel stuck in their bodies. Women who can explain their patterns clearly and still find themselves repeating them. Women for whom insight has not translated into the felt experience of change.

It is also well-suited for people carrying chronic stress, burnout, or emotional exhaustion that is not tied to a single identifiable traumatic event. Cumulative stress, the kind that builds across years of overgiving, self-silencing, and never quite stopping, can dysregulate the nervous system just as significantly as acute trauma. The body does not require a single catastrophic event to become stuck in survival mode.

Women of color navigating racial stress, code-switching, and the sustained cultural expectation to perform strength and competence without complaint carry a particular kind of load. The pressure to appear unaffected is itself a chronic stressor. Body-based therapy provides a space where that performance is not required and where the body's responses to that pressure are treated as legitimate rather than excessive.

Body-based therapy works alongside psychiatric care when needed. For women managing conditions that require medication or psychiatric monitoring, somatic work is a complement to that care, not a replacement for it.

What to expect when you begin body-based therapy

The first sessions focus on establishing safety and building a felt sense of the therapeutic relationship. There is no expectation that you will move into deep trauma work immediately. The pace of somatic therapy is set by your nervous system's capacity, not by a predetermined timeline.

You will be invited to notice sensations in your body as they arise during conversation. Where do you feel tension? Where do you feel ease? What shifts when you say something that carries weight? These are not trick questions. They are the starting point for learning to read your own internal signals.

Emotional responses may arise that feel unexpected, a wave of grief during a conversation that seemed calm, or a sudden lightness after releasing something that has been held for years. These responses are not signs that something has gone wrong. They are signs the body is beginning to move what it has been holding in place.

Between sessions, you may notice increased body awareness, more access to emotions that previously felt out of reach, or temporary discomfort as your nervous system recalibrates. This is a normal part of the process. The nervous system does not reorganize in a straight line. There are sessions that feel like breakthroughs and sessions that feel quiet and slow. Both are part of the work.

You do not need to arrive knowing how to do somatic therapy. You do not need to be good at it. Your body already knows how to respond when given a safe and consistent environment in which to do so.

Your body has been waiting for you to listen

You have been carrying a great deal for a long time. Pushing through, showing up, keeping it together. Underneath all of that, your body has been asking you to slow down and come back to yourself.

Are you ready? I offer somatic therapy in Los Angeles, California. Book your consultation today.

Somatic Movement Therapy: What It Is, Who It Helps, and How to Find the Right Therapist for You

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:15:05 GMT

Movement is one of the oldest forms of healing we have. Long before therapy had a name, before research had language for what the nervous system holds, humans moved to grieve, to celebrate, to release what words could not carry. Somewhere along the way, many of us lost access to that. We learned to sit still, stay composed, and keep it together. We learned to manage our bodies rather than listen to them. And the things we could not express kept accumulating, quietly, in the tissue and the breath and the bone.

I am Chelsey Reese, and at Power Through Process I support women, particularly women of color, in coming back home to themselves through body-based healing. You can learn more about somatic therapy at Power Through Process.

What is somatic movement therapy?

Somatic movement therapy is a body-centered healing approach that uses intentional, mindful movement as a primary tool for accessing and releasing stored stress, trauma, and emotional patterns held in the nervous system. Rather than talking about what has happened, somatic movement therapy works directly with how experience lives in the body: in the way you hold your shoulders, the way you brace before speaking, the impulses to move that you learned to suppress long ago.

Somatic movement therapy builds on that foundation by recognizing that the body is not just a vehicle for the mind. It is an active participant in emotional experience, memory, and healing. Every emotion has a physical correlate. Every survival pattern has a postural signature. And every pattern that was learned in the body can, with the right support, be unlearned there too.

Is somatic movement therapy the same as somatic therapy?

Somatic therapy is a broad umbrella term for any therapeutic approach that incorporates the body into the healing process. It includes modalities like somatic experiencing, EMDR, sensorimotor psychotherapy, breathwork, and body-based mindfulness practices. Movement may be part of somatic therapy, but it is not always the primary focus.

Somatic movement therapy is more specific. It is a branch within the somatic therapy framework that places movement at the center of the work. Rather than movement being one tool among many, it is the primary language of the session. This might look like tracking the impulse to reach or pull away, following a spontaneous gesture to its natural completion, or using intentional, structured movement sequences to discharge stored activation in the nervous system.

Think of it this way: all somatic movement therapy is somatic therapy, but not all somatic therapy is somatic movement therapy. If you have a history that feels most alive in the body through physical sensation and movement rather than through verbal processing, somatic movement therapy may be particularly well suited to you.

What types of somatic movement therapy exist?

Authentic movement

Authentic movement was developed by Mary Starks Whitehouse in the 1950s, drawing on her background in dance and her study of Jungian psychology. At its core, it is one of the simplest and most radical somatic practices available: you close your eyes, you follow whatever impulses arise in the body, and someone who has been trained to witness without judgment holds the space for you. There is no right way to move. There is no performance, no evaluation, no external direction. The only instruction is to follow what comes from within.

What makes authentic movement therapeutically powerful is not the movement itself but the quality of the witnessing. Many women who come to somatic work have spent their entire lives moving in response to others' needs, others' expectations, others' comfort. Authentic movement inverts that completely. For the duration of the practice, the only authority is your own body. The witness is there not to guide or correct but to receive, to hold the experience of seeing you fully without agenda. Over time, that experience of being witnessed without judgment begins to shift something deep in how you relate to yourself.

In a therapeutic context, authentic movement is often used to access material that verbal processing cannot reach. Pre-verbal experiences, deeply held emotional patterns, and the impulses that were suppressed so early and so consistently that they have lost their conscious form all have a way of surfacing through movement when the conditions are safe enough. Sessions are typically followed by a period of reflection where both the mover and the witness share their experience, creating a bridge between the somatic and the verbal that supports integration. For women who have always felt most themselves when moving, and most constrained when asked to sit still and explain, authentic movement can feel like finally being given permission to speak in your native language.

Dance movement therapy

Dance movement therapy has its roots in the work of Marian Chace, a dancer and therapist who began using movement with psychiatric patients in the 1940s and found that it reached people in ways that traditional talk-based approaches could not. Today it is a recognized clinical modality practiced by licensed therapists with graduate-level training in both psychotherapy and movement analysis. The American Dance Therapy Association sets the standards for training and credentialing, and the field has a substantive body of research supporting its effectiveness across a wide range of populations and conditions.

What distinguishes dance movement therapy from other movement practices is the integration of clinical psychotherapy with movement analysis. A dance movement therapist is not simply facilitating movement. They are trained to read the body: to observe posture, gesture, rhythm, use of space, and quality of movement as clinical data that informs the therapeutic work. They understand how a collapsed chest communicates something different from an open one, how the rhythm of someone's movement in the first session can shift dramatically over months of work, and how the body's expressive vocabulary often tells the truth about someone's emotional experience long before words do.

Sessions can take many forms. Some involve free movement exploration where the client moves however feels natural while the therapist observes and occasionally mirrors or responds. Others involve more structured exercises: movement that tracks a specific emotion, that explores the physical shape of a memory, or that uses rhythm and breath to shift nervous system state. For women of color navigating the particular exhaustion of code-switching, containing, and performing composure in spaces that demand it, dance movement therapy offers something genuinely liberating: a therapeutic space where the body's full expressive range is not only allowed but actively engaged as part of the healing process.

Somatic experiencing with movement

Somatic experiencing was developed by Dr. Peter Levine over several decades of clinical work and research into how animals and humans respond differently to threat. His central observation was this: animals who survive predator encounters do not develop trauma. They shake, tremble, and discharge the activation of the threat response through movement, and then return to baseline as if nothing happened. The stress cycle completes. Humans, by contrast, learn to suppress that discharge. We freeze instead of trembling. We hold still instead of shaking. We override the body's impulse to move in the name of composure, and the energy that was meant to complete the cycle stays locked in the nervous system.

In its movement-integrated form, somatic experiencing works directly with those incomplete cycles. A session might begin with your therapist inviting you to notice a sensation: a tightness in the chest, a heaviness in the shoulders, a constriction in the throat. As you stay with that sensation, an impulse might arise: to push something away, to curl inward, to reach toward something, to shake. Rather than suppressing that impulse as you may have done thousands of times before, you follow it. Slowly, consciously, with full attention. And as the movement completes, something in the nervous system registers the completion of a cycle that may have been waiting years to finish.

The movements in somatic experiencing are often surprisingly small. A slight turn of the head. A hand that opens slowly. A breath that finally reaches the belly. The subtlety is not a limitation. It is the precision of the work. Somatic experiencing with movement is particularly well suited for women carrying trauma that feels too overwhelming to approach through verbal processing, for those whose bodies carry chronic activation or shutdown that has not shifted with other therapeutic approaches, and for those who sense that something important is held in the body's impulses and needs only the right conditions to finally move through.

Body mind centering

Body mind centering was developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen beginning in the 1970s, drawing on her background in occupational therapy, neurodevelopmental technique, dance, and her own extensive somatic research. It is one of the most anatomically and physiologically detailed somatic approaches available, working with the body's specific systems: the skeletal, muscular, organ, endocrine, nervous, fluid, and cellular systems as distinct sites of experience and healing. The premise is that each system of the body has its own quality of movement, its own intelligence, and its own relationship to psychological and emotional experience.

One of the most distinctive aspects of body mind centering is its engagement with developmental movement, the movement sequences that humans move through from conception through early childhood. These sequences, including spinal movement, homologous pushing and reaching, and cross-lateral crawling patterns, lay the neurological foundation for how we organize ourselves in space, how we relate to others, and how we respond to stress. When early developmental experiences were disrupted, as they often are in environments of chronic stress, neglect, or instability, those foundational patterns may not have fully integrated. Body mind centering works with those patterns directly, using gentle guided movement and touch to support their completion and integration at a neurological level.

For women carrying early developmental trauma or pre-verbal experience, body mind centering offers a quality of depth that is difficult to access through verbal or narrative approaches. The work does not require you to have a story about what happened. It requires only that you bring your body and your willingness to be curious about what it holds. Sessions are slow, attentive, and often profoundly orienting. Many women describe the experience as feeling deeply met at a level they had not known was available in a therapeutic context. That quality of being met, in the body, without needing to explain or narrate, is itself a form of healing for those who learned early that their inner experience was not safe to show.

Continuum movement

Continuum movement was developed by Emilie Conrad beginning in the 1960s, informed by her experience as a dancer, her years living in Haiti where she was immersed in movement practices rooted in African tradition, and her own research into the relationship between fluid dynamics and biological healing. Her central insight was that the human body is fundamentally a fluid system: approximately seventy percent water, organized around fluid movement at every level from the cellular to the systemic. And that the rigidity, contraction, and held patterns that chronic stress and trauma create are, at their most basic level, a loss of fluidity.

Continuum movement works to restore that fluidity through breath, sound, and movement that follows the body's natural, wavelike rhythms rather than imposing a predetermined form. Sessions often involve specific breath sequences designed to create internal movement through the body's fluid systems, vocal sounds that resonate through the tissues, and movement that is slow, exploratory, and responsive to what arises from within. There is no performance and no choreography. The practice is oriented entirely toward what the body itself generates when given space to move according to its own intelligence.

What continuum movement offers that is distinctive among somatic approaches is its capacity to work with experience that is deeply pre-verbal, held not in memory or narrative but in the body's most fundamental organizational patterns. For women who feel a kind of chronic rigidity, not just emotional but physical, a sense of being braced at a level that goes deeper than muscle tension, continuum movement can access and begin to dissolve that holding in ways that are both surprising and profound. Many practitioners describe a quality of aliveness and fluidity following sessions that they struggle to find words for. That struggle is, in some ways, the point: continuum movement works below the level where language lives, and the healing it supports carries the same quality. It is felt before it is understood, and it is integrated long before it can be explained.

How do these approaches compare

Your body already knows how to move toward healing

For women of color, cultural competency is not optional. Your therapist should understand how race, systemic stress, and intergenerational trauma shape the body's experience, and they should be able to hold that context without requiring you to educate them. I offer somatic therapy in Los Angeles rooted in somatic and movement-based approaches for women of color who are ready to come home to themselves.

Is Somatic Therapy Evidence Based? What the Science Actually Says

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:30:00 GMT

The short answer is yes. Somatic therapy is evidence based. But the longer answer is more interesting, because the research behind it touches on some of the most significant shifts in how neuroscience, psychology, and trauma science understand the human body and nervous system. And for women of color who have spent years being told their exhaustion is just stress, their physical symptoms are just anxiety, and their pain is just in their heads, that science is not just academic. It is validating in a way that goes bone deep.

I am Chelsey Reese, and at Power Through Process I work with women who are ready to stop surviving and start healing at the level where they actually live. If you want to understand more about my approach, you can explore my somatic therapy approach.

The science behind somatic therapy rests on three interconnected frameworks: polyvagal theory, implicit memory, and neuroplasticity. Together, they explain not just why the body holds trauma, but why working with the body is often the most direct path toward releasing it.

Polyvagal theory: understanding safety, connection, and the nervous system

Polyvagal theory was developed by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges, and it fundamentally changed how clinicians understand the relationship between safety and healing. At its core, the theory describes how the autonomic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that operates below conscious thought, is constantly scanning the environment for cues of safety or threat. Porges called this process neuroception: your body's automatic, unconscious assessment of whether the world around you is safe enough to relax into.

The autonomic nervous system operates in three primary states. When you feel safe and connected, you are in the ventral vagal state: regulated, present, able to engage with others and with yourself. When threat is detected, the system shifts into sympathetic activation, the fight or flight response, characterized by anxiety, hypervigilance, and a body that is mobilized and braced. When the threat feels inescapable or overwhelming, the system drops into dorsal vagal shutdown: the freeze, the collapse, the numbness, the going through the motions of life without really inhabiting it.

For women who grew up in environments where safety was conditional, where expressing emotions had consequences, where strength meant suppression, the nervous system does what it is designed to do: it adapts. It learns to default to sympathetic activation or dorsal shutdown because those states kept you protected. The problem is that the nervous system does not automatically update when the environment changes. You can be decades removed from the original conditions and still be running the same protective patterns in your body.

This is why insight alone does not move the needle. The ventral vagal state, the state required for genuine presence, connection, and healing, cannot be accessed through thinking. It has to be accessed through the body, through breath, through the slow and careful practice of teaching your nervous system that safety is actually available now. That is precisely what somatic therapy does, and polyvagal theory gives us the neurological map for why it works.

Implicit memory: emotions and memories live in the body

The second framework is implicit memory, and it answers one of the most common questions I hear: why do I keep reacting in ways I do not consciously choose?

Memory is not a single system. Explicit memory is the kind you can consciously recall: the narrative, the details, the story of what happened. Implicit memory is different. It is the body's memory: the emotional responses, the survival reflexes, the physical patterns that were encoded below conscious awareness and get activated without your permission. Implicit memory does not announce itself. It shows up as the stomach that knots before you speak up in a meeting. The shoulders that rise when someone raises their voice. The impulse to shrink, to smile, to make yourself smaller in rooms where you feel unsafe.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk's research made this visible in a way that changed the field. His brain imaging studies showed that when trauma survivors were triggered, the parts of the brain responsible for language and narrative processing went quiet, while the subcortical survival structures lit up. The person was no longer in the present moment. They were in their body, in the response, in the past. This is the neurological basis for why talking about trauma has limits: when the prefrontal cortex goes offline during activation, language becomes inaccessible. The experience is not being processed through words. It is being processed through sensation.

Van der Kolk's conclusion, laid out in The Body Keeps the Scor e, was that effective trauma treatment must engage the body directly. Not because the mind does not matter, but because the body is where the memory lives. Somatic therapy works with implicit memory by helping you track and process what is held in sensation, posture, and physical response, at the level where it is actually stored.

For women of color, this framework carries particular weight. The hypervigilance, the self-protective collapse, the chronic muscle tension, the inability to rest: these are not personality traits. They are implicit memories, shaped by personal experience, by cultural conditioning, and by intergenerational patterns passed down through bodies that had to survive things that were never fully healed. Resmaa Menakem, therapist and author of My Grandmother's Hands , writes about this directly: racialized trauma is not only psychological. It lives in the body as somatic memory, transmitted across generations through the nervous system adaptations of those who came before us. His work brings the science of implicit memory into direct conversation with the lived experience of Black women and women of color, and it is essential reading for anyone doing this work.

Neuroplasticity: the brain and body can learn new patterns

If polyvagal theory explains how the nervous system gets stuck, and implicit memory explains where trauma is stored, neuroplasticity is the science of why healing is possible at all.

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. The brain is not fixed. It is responsive, and it changes based on what it repeatedly experiences. This is the biological foundation for every form of therapeutic change, including somatic therapy.

Brain mapping studies have shown that the parts of the brain most significantly affected by trauma are the prefrontal cortex, the insula, and the anterior cingulate cortex. In brains that have been exposed to significant trauma, these centers show reduced activation. They are quieter than they should be. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational thought, perspective, and self-regulation, goes offline more easily. The insula, which processes interoceptive signals from the body, becomes less reliable. The anterior cingulate, which helps integrate body sensation with emotional awareness, loses connectivity.

Here is what makes this particularly significant: the neural pathways leading to these brain centers are predominantly afferent. That means the signal travels from the body to the brain, not the other way around. The body is talking to the brain far more than the brain is talking to the body. This is not a metaphor. It is anatomy.

What this means in practice is profound. When we engage the body through interoception, which means paying mindful, nonjudgmental attention to internal physical sensations, we are directly stimulating the neural pathways that lead to those quieter brain centers. We are, quite literally, rewiring them. Studies on somatic and mindfulness based practices have shown that consistent interoceptive practice causes measurable changes in the insula and prefrontal cortex: those brain centers begin to light up again. The capacity for self-regulation, emotional awareness, and present-moment presence is not lost. It is waiting to be reactivated through the body.

This is the neurological argument for somatic therapy in its most direct form. If trauma quiets the brain centers responsible for regulation and integration, and if those centers are predominantly activated by signals from the body, then the most direct path to healing runs through the body. Not around it.

What the clinical research shows

Beyond the theoretical frameworks, the clinical outcomes research on somatic modalities is substantive and continues to grow.

EMDR, which incorporates somatic awareness through bilateral stimulation and body tracking, is recognized as an evidence-based treatment for PTSD by the World Health Organization .

Research on breathwork has demonstrated measurable reductions in cortisol, improvements in heart rate variability, and shifts from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system activation. Research on body scan practices has shown reductions in anxiety, depression, and chronic pain alongside improvements in interoceptive awareness and emotional regulation.

The evidence does not claim that somatic therapy works for everyone in every situation. It demonstrates that body-centered approaches produce real, measurable changes in the nervous system, in trauma symptoms, and in overall wellbeing, particularly for those for whom talk therapy alone has not been sufficient.

Your body is not overreacting. It is responding.

The science is clear, and it says what many of us have felt for a long time: the body is not separate from healing. It is where healing has to happen. The tension, the hypervigilance, the inability to rest, the chronic symptoms that do not resolve no matter how much you understand them intellectually: these are not signs that something is permanently wrong with you. They are signs that your nervous system has been doing its job under extraordinarily difficult conditions, and that it is ready, with the right support, to learn something new.

You do not have to keep carrying this alone. If you are ready to explore what somatic therapy can open up for you, I am here. Learn more about working together through somatic therapy in Los Angeles .

What is a somatic therapist? A checklist for women of color to find the right one

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 03:15:35 GMT

There was a time when I thought I just needed to work harder at healing. I was doing the therapy, reading the books, journaling every morning and still, something wasn't moving. The anxiety was still there. The tension in my chest. The way I'd go quiet in rooms where I deserved to take up space. I understood my patterns. I just couldn't seem to change them.

Growing up as a woman of color, I didn't always feel like I had space to be fully seen or understood. Anxiety followed me long before I had a name for it, shaping the way I moved through the world, holding back, overanalyzing, struggling to feel at ease in my own skin. For a long time I believed that was simply who I was.

What I came to understand is that those patterns weren't personal shortcomings. They were survival responses, rooted in intergenerational trauma, systemic stress, and everything I had learned about who I was allowed to be.

Healing shifted when I stopped trying to think my way out and started working with my body instead. Through somatic healing and nervous system practices, I learned to regulate my responses, express my needs without guilt, and reconnect with a version of myself I hadn't realized I'd drifted from. That is the work I now do with others, and it begins with understanding what a somatic therapist actually is and how to find one who is genuinely right for you.

If you want to know more about my background and approach, you're welcome to explore my somatic therapy approach.

What is a somatic therapist?

A somatic therapist is a licensed mental health professional who incorporates body-centered approaches into their clinical work. The word somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body, and that is exactly where this work is anchored. Rather than focusing solely on thoughts and verbal processing, a somatic therapist pays attention to what is happening in the body: the breath patterns, the physical tension, the postural shifts, the sensations that arise when something emotionally significant is present.

Somatic therapists typically hold a foundational mental health license as a licensed clinical social worker, licensed professional counselor, licensed marriage and family therapist, or psychologist, and carry additional training in one or more somatic modalities. These might include somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, EMDR, or somatic attachment therapy. The specific approach varies by practitioner, but the unifying principle is consistent: the body is not separate from the healing process. It is central to it.

What distinguishes a somatic therapist from a general therapist is not only the techniques they use but the lens through which they understand healing. A somatic therapist understands that trauma and chronic stress leave physical imprints in the nervous system, in the muscles, in the patterns of breath and posture that become so habitual we stop noticing them. And they know how to work with those imprints directly, at the level where they actually live.

What does a somatic therapist do?

In practice, a somatic therapist guides you in developing awareness of your body's signals and using that awareness as a pathway into healing. Sessions look different from traditional talk therapy, not dramatically so, but meaningfully so.

Where a traditional therapist might primarily ask what you think or feel about something, a somatic therapist will also ask what you notice in your body. Where does that land physically? What happens in your chest when you say that? Is there an impulse to move, to pull away, to hold your breath? These questions are not diversions from the therapeutic work. They are therapeutic work, because the body's responses are often more honest and more direct than the stories we construct around our experience.

A somatic therapist will also work with regulation, helping your nervous system find its way back to a state of relative safety when it becomes activated during a session. This might involve breathing practices, grounding techniques, gentle movement, or simply slowing down and tracking sensation with curiosity. They will pace the work carefully, never pushing your system beyond what it can hold, because sustainable healing happens at the edge of activation, not by being flooded by it.

Over time, a skilled somatic therapist helps you build body literacy: the ability to read your own internal signals, recognize when your nervous system is shifting, and access the tools to return to yourself. That capacity does not stay in the therapy room. It becomes part of how you move through the world.

The difference between a somatic therapist and a somatic coach

This distinction matters and is worth being clear about. A somatic therapist is a licensed mental health professional, trained and credentialed to work with trauma, mental health diagnoses, and complex emotional histories within a regulated clinical framework. They carry professional liability, follow ethical codes, and are accountable to licensing boards.

A somatic coach is not a licensed clinician. Coaching can be valuable for personal growth and goal setting, but it does not carry the clinical training or ethical accountability required to work safely with trauma. If you are carrying significant trauma, a history of mental health challenges, or complex emotional patterns, working with a licensed somatic therapist is the appropriate level of care.

When searching for support, pay attention to credentials. Look for licensure alongside somatic training. Both matter.

Who benefits most from working with a somatic therapist?

Somatic therapy is particularly well suited for women of color who have found that talk therapy alone has not been enough: those who understand their patterns intellectually but still feel stuck in their bodies. It is also deeply valuable for those carrying complex or intergenerational trauma, chronic stress, or the particular weight that comes from navigating systems and spaces that were not built with them in mind.

You might find yourself here if any of the following feels familiar.

You were raised in an environment where strength meant survival. Expressing emotions did not feel safe, so you learned to handle things alone and keep moving, no matter how depleted you felt.
You have spent years silencing your own needs to keep the peace, and now expressing what you actually want feels loaded with guilt. You worry that asking for too much will make you seem like too much.
You are the person everyone turns to, but when it is your turn to ask for support, you freeze. The vulnerability of needing something feels more threatening than continuing to give without receiving.
You carry chronic tension in your shoulders, jaw, and chest that you have always attributed to stress, without realizing how much of it is connected to years of emotional suppression and self-silencing.

If you read that list and felt recognized, I want you to know that is actually a good sign. It means the patterns are visible now, and what is visible can be worked with. That recognition is not a diagnosis. It is the beginning of something.

How the healing process unfolds

One of the most common questions I hear is: What does this actually look like over time? Here is how I think about the journey with the women I work with.

Step 1: Awareness and understanding

Together we begin to explore how chronic stress, self-silencing, and the patterns you inherited are showing up in your body and your daily life. You start to develop language for what you have been feeling without words, and you begin to reconnect with the inner voice that learned to stay quiet for a very long time.

Step 2: Nervous system regulation and embodiment

Once you have a clearer picture of your patterns, the work moves into the body. You learn practical somatic tools for calming your nervous system, releasing stored tension, and creating a felt sense of safety from within.

Step 3: Boundaries, self-trust, and emotional expression

This is where the work becomes most visible in your life. With a more regulated nervous system and a deeper connection to your body's signals, you begin practicing what it feels like to take up space, express your needs clearly, and set limits without the spiral of guilt that used to follow. You start showing up for yourself in ways that feel genuinely aligned, not performed.

This is not a linear process, and it does not have a fixed endpoint. It is integration. And the longer you practice, the more natural it becomes.

A checklist to help you find the right somatic therapist

Finding the right somatic therapist takes specific discernment. Use this checklist when evaluating whether someone is the right fit for you.

They hold a valid mental health license in your state. Somatic training alone is not sufficient. You want someone who is both clinically licensed and somatically trained.

They have specific training in a recognized somatic modality. Ask directly: what somatic training have you completed? Be cautious of practitioners who use the word somatic without being able to name specific methodology.

They work at your pace, not theirs. A skilled somatic therapist will never push you to process more than your system can hold. If you ever feel pressured to go faster than feels safe, that is important information.

They bring a culturally informed lens. For women of color, this is not optional. Your therapist should understand how race, culture, systemic stress, and intergenerational trauma shape the body's experience and be able to hold your full context.

You feel safe enough to be honest with them. You do not need to feel completely comfortable immediately. But you should feel a basic sense that this person sees you and respects you. Trust your body's response in that first conversation.

They explain what they are doing and why. A good somatic therapist is transparent about their approach, checks in with you regularly, and makes space for you to ask questions or decline anything that does not feel right. You are always in your choice.

They have their own embodied practice. The most effective somatic therapists continue to do their own somatic work. You can often sense this in the first session: a therapist who is regulated themselves helps your nervous system regulate too.

Questions worth asking before your first session

A consultation call is one of the most useful tools you have. Here are questions that can help you find the right fit.

What somatic modalities do you use, and what specific training do you have in them?
What does a typical session with you look like from start to finish?
How do you approach working with trauma, and how do you ensure the pace feels safe for the client?
Do you have experience working with women of color, and how does that experience inform your practice?
How will we know together if the work is helping?

Pay attention not just to the answers, but to how they land in your body. Do you feel more at ease or more guarded? More seen or more categorized? Your nervous system's response in that conversation is already valid data, and learning to trust it is already part of the work.

You deserve a therapist who sees all of you

Finding the right somatic therapist is an act of self-respect. It is a decision that your healing matters, not just the presenting symptoms, but the full depth of who you are, what you carry, and what you deserve to feel in your own body.

You deserve a therapist who understands that your nervous system has been doing its best. Who knows that your exhaustion is not weakness. Who can hold the complexity of your experience without reducing it to a checklist or a diagnosis.

If you are in Los Angeles or across California, I would love to be part of that journey. Start here: somatic therapy in Los Angeles .

What is somatic therapy and why so many women of color are using it to heal trauma and chronic stress

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 03:07:01 GMT

You've done the work: the journaling, the therapy, the self-help books, and you understand your patterns better than most people ever will. But your body hasn't gotten the memo. Your shoulders are still tight. Your jaw still clenches. Your chest still closes when you try to speak your truth. Something is still being held, and talking about it hasn't been enough to let it go.

That something has a name. And somatic therapy is one of the most powerful frameworks for finally reaching it.

I'm Chelsey Reese, and at Power Through Process I work with women of color, who are ready to stop surviving and start actually living in their bodies. If you want to know more about who I am and what guides this work, you can visit my somatic therapy service.

What is somatic therapy?

The word somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body. Somatic therapy is a body-centered approach to healing that works with the physical, felt experience of stress, trauma, and emotional pain, not just the thoughts and memories around it.

Most traditional therapy works top-down. You talk about what happened, identify thought patterns, build insight and coping strategies. That work matters. But for many people, especially those carrying complex, layered, or intergenerational trauma, insight alone doesn't move the body. You can understand exactly why you brace yourself before difficult conversations and still feel your chest lock every single time. You can know you are safe and have a nervous system that doesn't believe it.

Somatic therapy works bottom-up. It starts with the body, with breath, sensation, posture, and movement, and uses those physical signals as the entry point for healing. The premise is straightforward: trauma and chronic stress don't just leave psychological imprints. They leave physical ones. Tension patterns, shallow breathing, hypervigilance, numbness, a chronic inability to rest, these are not personality traits. They are the nervous system's adaptations to experiences it never fully processed. Somatic therapy creates the conditions for that processing to finally happen, at the level where it actually lives.

Why is somatic therapy having a moment right now?

Somatic therapy is not new. Body-centered healing has existed across indigenous and holistic traditions for centuries, traditions that always understood the body, mind, and spirit as inseparable. What is relatively new is the Western scientific framework catching up to what those traditions knew.

The publication of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk's research and his book The Body Keeps the Score brought somatic concepts into mainstream conversation in a way that was hard to ignore. Dr. Peter Levine's work on somatic experiencing gave clinicians a structured, researched method for working with trauma through the body. Neuroscience research on the autonomic nervous system, polyvagal theory, and the science of nervous system regulation has made it increasingly clear that talking alone is not always enough.

At the same time, a generation of women, particularly women of color, has begun naming what they've always felt: that the stress they carry is not just emotional or psychological. It lives in the body. It shows up in chronic illness, autoimmune conditions, digestive issues, fatigue, and a persistent inability to feel at rest. The cultural moment around burnout, people-pleasing, and generational trauma has created a hunger for healing approaches that actually address the root, and somatic therapy answers that hunger in a way that resonates deeply.

How do I know if I actually need it?

You might be wondering if somatic therapy is really for you, or if what you're experiencing is just stress, something you should be able to manage on your own.

Somatic therapy is worth exploring if you recognize yourself in any of the following. You've been in therapy before and gained real insight, but the physical experience of stress hasn't shifted. You feel disconnected from your body, like you're living from the neck up, observing your life rather than inhabiting it. You struggle to rest even when you have the time, because slowing down feels unsafe or uncomfortable. You experience chronic physical symptoms: tension, fatigue, digestive issues, headaches, that don't have a clear medical explanation. You find yourself in emotional patterns you understand intellectually but can't seem to change. You feel like you've been in survival mode for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to just be.

None of these experiences require a dramatic trauma history. Many of the women I work with don't identify with the word trauma at first. What they identify with is exhaustion. Disconnection. The quiet, persistent sense that something important has been lost. That's enough. That's more than enough to begin.

Signs and symptoms your body may be asking for somatic therapy

The body speaks in sensations, not sentences. Learning to recognize its language is one of the first steps in somatic healing. These are some of the most common physical and emotional signals that the nervous system is carrying more than it can comfortably hold.

Physically, you might notice chronic muscle tension. You might experience frequent headaches, digestive issues, or a tight feeling in your throat when you want to speak. You might feel physically exhausted even after adequate sleep, or notice that your body stays tense in situations that are objectively safe. You might have a low tolerance for physical touch, or conversely, a numbing or disconnection from physical sensation altogether.

Emotionally, stored stress often shows up as irritability that feels disproportionate to the situation, difficulty feeling genuine joy or pleasure, anxiety that doesn't have a clear source, or a pervasive flatness, going through the motions without feeling fully present. Many women also describe a sense of being on high alert without knowing why, or feeling like they are constantly waiting for something to go wrong.

Behaviorally, it might look like chronic overgiving, difficulty saying no, avoiding conflict at the cost of your own needs, or keeping yourself constantly busy because stillness feels threatening. These patterns are not character flaws. They are the nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. And they can change.

What does somatic therapy look like?

Most people come to their first somatic therapy session expecting something unusual, elaborate breathing exercises, movement sequences, something that feels dramatically different from sitting and talking. The reality is both simpler and more profound than that.

A session typically begins with settling. Your therapist will help your nervous system orientate to the space, noticing your breath, feeling the weight of your body in the chair, looking around the room and simply taking it in. This isn't small talk. It is work. Orienting the nervous system to present-moment safety is the foundation everything else builds on.

From there, the session might involve tracking sensation as you speak, noticing what happens in your body when you mention a particular person, memory, or situation. Your therapist might invite you to stay with a sensation rather than immediately analyzing it. They might guide you through a breathing practice, a grounding exercise, or a gentle movement. They will be paying close attention to the signals your body is sending, the shift in your breath, the tension in your hands, the moment your shoulders drop, because those signals are as meaningful as anything you say out loud.

What a somatic session will not involve is pressure to process more than your system can hold. Somatic therapy works with a principle called titration, approaching difficult material in the smallest possible doses, just enough to touch the edge of a sensation without being overwhelmed by it. The slowness is not a sign of lack of progress. It is the most respectful, effective way to work with a nervous system that has been in protection mode for a long time.

How many sessions does it take?

The goal of somatic therapy is not to cure you of your past or arrive at a place where stress no longer exists. The goal is integration, helping your nervous system develop a wider range of responses, so that when difficulty arises, you have more capacity to move through it without being overwhelmed or shut down. That capacity builds over time, through consistent practice, the way any skill deepens with repetition.

Many women of color begin to notice subtle shifts within the first few sessions, a breath that comes more easily, a moment of genuine rest, a physical sensation of release. Deeper patterns, especially those rooted in early experience or intergenerational stress, take longer to shift. This is not a failure of the process. It is the nature of working with the nervous system, which changes slowly, carefully, and sustainably.

What most clients discover is that somatic therapy doesn't feel like a treatment they're enduring until they're done. It begins to feel like a relationship with their own body, one they want to keep tending. The sessions become less about crisis management and more about ongoing integration, depth, and the kind of self-knowing that changes how you move through the world.

How will I notice the benefits? What will change in my life?

You might notice that you recover from stress more quickly than you used to, that after a difficult conversation or a hard day, you can find your way back to yourself without it taking days. You might notice that you sleep more deeply, that your body feels less braced in the morning. You might find yourself pausing before reacting in situations that used to trigger an automatic response because there's more space between the stimulus and your answer.

Over time, the benefits go deeper. Women of color who have been doing somatic work often describe a fundamental shift in their relationship with their own body: moving from a place of disconnection or even hostility toward something softer, more trusting. They describe being able to feel pleasure and joy more fully, because the same nervous system capacity that was keeping them defended against pain was also keeping them defended against aliveness. As the defenses soften, everything becomes more available, the difficult and the beautiful alike.

Perhaps most significantly, many women describe a change in how they relate to their own needs. The chronic overgiving softens. The inability to rest begins to ease. Saying no becomes possible in a way it never was before because their body finally stopped bracing for the consequences of being themselves.

How can I start integrating somatic practices into my daily life?

Somatic healing doesn't have to stay in the therapy room. In fact, one of the most important aspects of this work is developing daily practices that support your nervous system between sessions, small, consistent habits that build the body's capacity for regulation over time.

Extended exhale breathing is one of the simplest and most effective daily practices available. Inhale for a count of four, exhale for a count of eight. Do this for five cycles in the morning before you get out of bed, or whenever you feel your system starting to spike. The longer exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system and tells your body it's safe to slow down.

Body check-ins throughout the day are another powerful practice. Two or three times a day, pause for thirty seconds and simply notice: where am I holding tension right now? What is my breath doing?

Intentional walking, grounding through the feet, and gentle self-touch practices like havening can all be woven into a daily routine in ways that take five minutes or less. The goal is not to add another thing to your to-do list.

The goal is to begin treating your body as something worth checking in with, regularly, gently, without agenda.

If you want to learn more practice I invite you to read 5 somatic therapy exercises you can use between sessions to regulate your nervous system

Do I need to work with a specialist?

For daily practices and general nervous system support, no, many somatic exercises are safe and beneficial for independent use. The practices described above are accessible entry points that anyone can begin exploring on their own.

For deeper healing work, particularly if you are carrying significant trauma, complex PTSD, or a history of adverse experiences, working with a trained somatic therapist makes a meaningful difference. Having a skilled practitioner present means someone is tracking your nervous system responses in real time, helping you stay regulated when something intense surfaces, and pacing the work in a way that is safe for your specific system. The therapeutic relationship itself is part of what makes deep somatic work possible.

A good somatic therapist will never push you beyond what your nervous system can hold. They will work with you, not on you. And they will help you build the internal resources and body awareness that eventually make independent practice richer and more effective.

Your body has been waiting for you to come back

If you're ready to begin, I'm here. Learn more about working together through somatic therapy in Los Angeles .The work starts whenever you're ready, and your body will tell you when that is.

Somatic Therapy Examples: What Each Technique Actually Does in Your Body

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 02:33:11 GMT

If you've ever walked into a room and immediately felt your shoulders rise toward your ears, or found yourself holding your breath without realizing it, that's your body talking. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do: protect you. The problem is, when protection becomes the default, when survival mode becomes the baseline, your body stops feeling like home.

Somatic therapy is body-based healing. Instead of only working through your thoughts and story, it works through sensation, breath, movement, and the physical patterns your nervous system has learned over time.

In case you're new here, I'm Chelsey Reese, and I work with women, particularly women of color, who are exhausted from carrying too much for too long. My practice, Power Through Process, is rooted in the belief that healing isn't about fixing something broken, it's about coming back to what was always whole. If you want to know more about who I am and what guides my work, you can visit my somatic-based wellness services . And if you're ready to explore working together, you can learn more about somatic therapy and what it looks like in my practice.

Below, I'm walking you through the most important somatic therapy examples. Whether you're curious, skeptical, or quietly ready for something different, this is for you.

What makes somatic therapy different from other approaches

Most traditional therapy works top-down, you talk about what happened, you identify thought patterns, you build coping strategies. And that matters. But for many people, especially those carrying generational trauma, chronic stress, or years of emotional suppression, talking about it only goes so far. You can understand your trauma intellectually and still feel it living in your chest every morning.

Somatic therapy works bottom-up. It starts with the body: with breath, sensation, posture, and movement, and uses those physical signals as the entry point for healing. When the nervous system learns safety through the body, the mind follows. This isn't a replacement for other forms of therapy. It's an expansion of what healing can look like when we stop leaving the body out of the conversation.

Somatic experiencing: following sensation instead of the story

Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, somatic experiencing is one of the most well-researched somatic therapy examples available today. The core idea is this: when animals in the wild experience a threat, their bodies discharge the stress response through shaking, movement, or breath, and then they return to baseline. Humans interrupt that process. We freeze, suppress, push through. And the energy that was meant to move through us gets stored instead.

Somatic experiencing works by helping you gently complete those incomplete stress responses, not by reliving the trauma, but by tracking what's happening in your body right now.

What somatic experiencing looks like in a real session

In a somatic experiencing session, your therapist isn't focused on the details of what happened to you. They're focused on what's happening in your body as you sit in the room. They might ask: where do you notice tension right now? What happens in your chest when you think about that? Is there an impulse to move, to pull away, to breathe deeper?

The work is slow and intentional. You're not being asked to dive into the hardest memories. You're being invited to notice (with curiosity, not judgment) what your body is already communicating. Over time, that noticing creates space. And space is where healing lives.

How it helps the body complete a stress response it never finished

When a stress response gets interrupted, when you freeze instead of fight, or when you push through instead of feeling, the energy doesn't disappear. It stays in the body as chronic tension, hypervigilance, or numbness.

Somatic experiencing gently reactivates that incomplete cycle in a safe, titrated way and guides the nervous system toward completion. The result isn't dramatic. It often feels like a deep exhale. Like something that was wound tight finally releasing. Like coming home to a body you've been away from for a long time.

Breathwork: resetting the nervous system from the inside out

Your breath is one of the only autonomic nervous system functions you can consciously control. That makes it one of the most powerful tools in somatic therapy. When you're in survival mode, anxious, overwhelmed, shut down, your breathing changes. It becomes shallow, rapid, held. And that pattern reinforces the nervous system's sense of threat. When you consciously shift your breath, you send a different signal. You tell your body: it's safe to slow down.

How breath patterns reflect stored stress

Many people who carry chronic stress have developed habitual breath patterns that keep their nervous systems on high alert without realizing it. Shallow chest breathing, breath-holding before speaking, sighing as a release valve, these aren't personality traits. They're nervous system adaptations. In somatic therapy, your therapist helps you become aware of your breath patterns not to judge them, but to understand what they're communicating and to gently shift them when it's safe to do so.

What a breathwork practice looks like in somatic therapy

Breathwork in a somatic context isn't about performing a breathing exercise perfectly. It's about using breath as a bridge back into the body. A therapist might guide you through a slow exhale to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-digest state. They might invite you to breathe into the part of your body that feels tight or closed off. They might use breath to help you stay present when a sensation becomes intense. It's always paced to where you are, never pushed beyond what your nervous system can hold.

Body scanning: learning the language your body is already speaking

A body scan is exactly what it sounds like: a slow, deliberate movement of awareness through different parts of the body, noticing what's there without trying to change it. It sounds simple. And in the best way, it is. But for someone who has spent years disconnected from their body, someone who learned early that emotions weren't safe to feel, a body scan can be surprisingly profound.

The difference between a body scan in therapy and a generic meditation

You've probably seen body scan meditations on apps or in wellness content. Those are valuable. But a body scan in somatic therapy is different because it's held within a therapeutic relationship. Your therapist is there to help you stay regulated if something intense surfaces. They're tracking your responses, asking thoughtful questions, and guiding you to stay with sensation rather than immediately analyzing or escaping it. The therapeutic container makes it possible to go deeper than you could alone.

Grounding techniques: coming back when your nervous system pulls you away

Grounding is one of the most accessible somatic therapy examples, and also one of the most immediately useful. When anxiety spikes, when you dissociate, when your mind races into the future or gets pulled into the past, grounding techniques bring you back to the present moment through physical sensation. They remind your nervous system that right now, in this body, in this moment, you are safe.

Sensory grounding and physical anchoring

Sensory grounding works by engaging the five senses to interrupt a stress response and orient the nervous system to the present. Feeling the weight of your feet on the floor. Noticing five things you can see in the room. Holding something cold or textured in your hands. These aren't distractions, they're anchors. They give your nervous system something real and present to orient toward, which interrupts the threat response loop and creates just enough space to breathe.

Examples of grounding practices used in somatic sessions

In a somatic therapy session, grounding might look like your therapist asking you to press your feet firmly into the floor and notice what that feels like. It might involve placing a hand on your heart or your belly and tracking the warmth. It might mean slowing down, looking around the room, and naming what you see out loud. These practices sound small. But for a nervous system that has been running on high alert for years, small is exactly what's needed, a gentle signal, not a dramatic shift.

Movement and shaking: what the body does when it finally feels safe

Shaking is the nervous system's natural mechanism for discharging excess activation, the stored energy of a stress response that is never fully completed. When you suppress the urge to shake, tremble, or cry, you keep that energy locked in the body. Somatic therapy creates the safety for that energy to move. A therapist trained in somatic work understands this and won't try to stop it or reassure you out of it. They'll hold space for it, because they know what it means: your body is doing exactly what it needs to do.

Titration and pendulation: working with trauma without being overwhelmed by it

What is titration?

Titration, borrowed from chemistry, means working with trauma in the smallest possible doses, just enough to touch the edge of a difficult sensation without being overwhelmed by it. In a session, this might look like approaching a painful memory briefly, noticing what arises in the body, and then pausing before it becomes too much. It's the opposite of the "no pain, no gain" model of trauma processing. It's precise, careful, and deeply respectful of your nervous system's limits. The slowness is not a sign of lack of progress. It is the progress.

What is pendulation?

Pendulation is the practice of moving back and forth between a difficult sensation and a resource, something that feels safe, grounded, or pleasant in the body. Your therapist might guide you to notice the tension in your chest, and then bring your awareness to the feeling of your feet on the ground, and then back to the chest, and back to the ground. This oscillation teaches the nervous system that it can visit hard places and return to safety. It builds resilience not by avoiding difficulty, but by practicing the return.

Simple somatic exercises you can try on your own

A 5-minute body scan you can do anywhere

Find a comfortable position, seated or lying down. Close your eyes if that feels safe, or soften your gaze downward. Start at the top of your head and slowly move your awareness down through your body: your face, your jaw, your throat, your shoulders, your chest, your belly, your hips, your legs, your feet. You're not trying to change anything. You're just noticing. Is there tightness? Warmth? Numbness? Heaviness? Stay with each area for a breath or two before moving on. When you reach your feet, take three slow exhales and open your eyes. That's it. Five minutes of listening can shift more than you expect.

A grounding reset for when anxiety spikes

When anxiety pulls you out of the present moment, use your senses to come back. Look around and name five things you can see. Press your feet flat into the floor and feel the ground beneath you. Pick up something textured, a fabric, a stone, a cup, and focus on the sensation in your hands. Take one slow breath in through your nose, and a longer exhale through your mouth. Repeat twice. You're not pushing the anxiety away. You're giving your nervous system something present and physical to orient toward.

Explore more exercises at 5 somatic therapy exercises you can use between sessions to regulate your nervous system .

Your body has been talking to you for a long time

The tightness, the exhaustion, the disconnection are signals asking to be heard. Somatic therapy is a way of finally listening, not with judgment, but with curiosity and care.

If you're ready to explore what healing looks like when the body leads, I'm here. Learn more about working together through somatic therapy in Los Angeles or reach out to schedule a consultation. You've been strong for a long time. It's okay to let your body rest.

5 somatic therapy exercises you can use between sessions to regulate your nervous system

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 02:07:00 GMT

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn't go away with sleep. You wake up already braced for the day. Your shoulders are tight before you've even checked your phone. Your mind is moving faster than your body can keep up with, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, you've lost the thread back to yourself. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone, and you're not broken. Your nervous system has been working overtime to keep you safe, and what it needs now isn't more pushing through. It needs practice coming back down.

Somatic therapy exercises are one of the most accessible ways to support that process. They don't require a therapist in the room. They don't require a special space or a perfect moment. They require your body, your breath, and a few minutes of intentional attention. As someone who works with women navigating chronic stress, stored trauma, and the particular weight of carrying too much for too long, these are the practices I return to again and again , both in session and between them.

In case you're new here , I'm Chelsey Reese, and I support women, especially women of color, in coming back home to themselves through body-based healing. If you want to understand more about my approach, you can visit my somatic-based wellness services . To explore working together, learn more about somatic therapy at Power Through Process.

Below are five somatic therapy exercises you can start using today, between sessions, in the middle of a hard day, or whenever your body is asking you to slow down and listen.

Do somatic exercises work?

Before we get into the exercises themselves, I want to address this question honestly , because it's one I hear often, and it deserves a real answer.

Yes. Somatic exercises work. But not the way we're used to thinking about "working." They don't produce dramatic, immediate transformation. What they do is create small, consistent shifts in how your nervous system responds to stress over time. Think of it like physical therapy for your nervous system. One session of stretching doesn't undo years of tension. But practiced regularly, the body begins to remember a different baseline.

The research supports this. Somatic approaches have been shown to reduce symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and chronic stress by working directly with the autonomic nervous system , the part of your body that regulates your stress response below conscious thought. When you practice somatic exercises consistently, you're not just calming yourself in the moment. You're teaching your nervous system that safety is available. That rest is possible. That you don't have to stay braced forever.

For women who have spent years in survival mode , emotionally suppressed, chronically overextended, disconnected from their own needs , that teaching is not small. It's everything.

Can I do somatic healing on my own?

Somatic healing is most powerful within a therapeutic relationship. Having a trained therapist present means someone is tracking your nervous system responses, helping you stay regulated when something intense surfaces, and guiding the work at a pace that's safe for your system. That container is real, and it makes a difference.

That said , yes, you can practice somatic exercises on your own, and doing so is genuinely valuable. The exercises in this post are designed to be safe for independent practice. They are not trauma processing. They are nervous system support. Think of them as the daily habits that keep your system more regulated between sessions, the same way stretching supports your body between workouts.

If you find that any of these exercises bring up intense emotions or memories, that's not a sign to push through , it's a signal to slow down, return to something grounding, and bring it to your next session. Your body's wisdom includes knowing when it needs support.

Exercise 1: Extended exhale breathing

This is the exercise I recommend first to almost everyone, because it works immediately and it works through biology. The exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system , the branch responsible for rest, digestion, and recovery. When your exhale is longer than your inhale, you are literally signaling to your body that the threat has passed and it's safe to slow down.

Here's how to practice it. Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of four. Exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of eight. If eight feels too long, start with six , the ratio matters more than the number. Repeat for five to ten cycles. You don't need to force relaxation or control what you feel. Just let the breath do its work and notice what shifts.

This exercise is particularly useful when you're feeling flooded , overwhelmed, anxious, or like your thoughts are moving faster than you can catch them. It's also useful when you feel shut down or numb, because it gently reactivates sensation without pushing too hard. You can do it sitting at your desk, in your car before walking into a hard meeting, or lying in bed when sleep won't come. Two minutes is enough to feel a difference. Ten minutes changes the tone of your whole nervous system.

Exercise 2: Grounding through the feet

When anxiety pulls you out of the present moment , into the future, into the past, into the spiral , your feet are one of the fastest ways back. This exercise uses the physical weight and pressure of your body against the ground to interrupt a stress response and orient your nervous system to where you actually are: here, now, safe.

Sit in a chair with both feet flat on the floor. Press them down firmly , not tensed, but grounded. Notice the pressure. Notice the temperature of the floor through your shoes or your skin. Slowly start to notice the weight of your body in the chair. Feel where you make contact , your legs, your back, your seat. Take one slow breath and look around the room. Name five things you can see out loud or in your mind. Then bring your attention back to your feet and take three more slow exhales.

This is what somatic therapists call orienting , giving your nervous system concrete, present-moment information to organize around. When your system is dysregulated, it's often because it's responding to something that isn't happening right now. Grounding gives it something real to hold onto. The relief is often immediate, even if subtle. And subtle is enough.

Exercise 3: The body scan

A body scan is one of the foundational somatic therapy exercises because it builds the most essential skill in somatic healing: the ability to notice what's happening in your body without immediately trying to fix, escape, or judge it. For many of us , especially those who have learned that emotions weren't safe to feel , this skill has to be practiced. It doesn't come automatically. But it comes.

Find a comfortable position, seated or lying down. Close your eyes if that feels safe, or soften your gaze toward the floor. Begin at the top of your head and slowly move your awareness downward , your forehead, your jaw, your throat, your shoulders, your chest, your belly, your lower back, your hips, your thighs, your calves, your feet. At each area, pause for one or two breaths and simply notice. Is there tension? Warmth? Tightness? Ease? Numbness? You're not trying to change anything. You're listening.

What you're looking for over time is body literacy , the ability to read your own internal signals before they escalate into full stress responses. The jaw that tightens before you know you're anxious. The chest that closes before you know you're hurt. The belly that knots before you know you're scared. These sensations are your body's language. The body scan teaches you to hear it early, when there's still room to respond rather than react.

Exercise 4: Shaking and intentional movement

This one tends to get the most skeptical looks , and I understand why. We're not used to thinking of shaking as healing. We're used to suppressing it, pushing it down, apologizing for it. But shaking is one of the nervous system's most natural mechanisms for discharging stored stress energy. Animals do it instinctively after a threat passes. Humans have learned to override it. Somatic therapy invites us to stop overriding.

You can practice this intentionally. Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Soften your knees slightly so they have a gentle bend. Begin to bounce lightly , just enough to let your body start to vibrate. Let the movement travel up through your legs, your hips, your belly, your chest. You're not forcing a shake. You're creating the conditions for one. Stay with it for two to three minutes, breathing naturally. When you stop, stand still and notice what you feel. Warmth, tingling, a sense of release, or even a spontaneous exhale , those are signs of discharge.

If spontaneous shaking arises during this exercise or any other somatic practice, let it happen. Don't grip it, don't amplify it , just let it move through. It won't last forever. And when it completes, your nervous system will be lighter for it.

Exercise 5: Havening touch

Havening is a somatic technique that uses gentle, repetitive self-touch to generate delta waves in the brain , the same waves associated with deep sleep and emotional processing. It's been studied for its effects on anxiety, trauma, and stress, and it's one of the most immediately soothing somatic exercises available for at-home practice.

Here's how it works. Using both hands, stroke slowly down your upper arms from shoulder to elbow, as if you're brushing something gently off your skin. Then bring your palms to your face and stroke slowly from your forehead down over your eyes and cheeks. Finally, place your hands on your collarbones and stroke outward toward your shoulders. Repeat this sequence slowly, two or three times through, while taking slow breaths. Some people add a gentle humming or a calming phrase , something simple like "I am here, I am safe."

The combination of touch, rhythm, and breath creates a powerful signal of safety in the nervous system. It's particularly useful when you're feeling emotionally flooded, overstimulated, or untethered. For women who have spent years disconnected from their bodies, this kind of gentle, intentional self-touch can also be a practice in learning to treat your own body with care , which is its own form of healing.

Is walking a somatic exercise?

Yes , when it's done with intention. Walking is one of the most natural bilateral movements the body makes, meaning it activates both sides of the body and brain in an alternating rhythm. That bilateral stimulation has a regulating effect on the nervous system, which is part of why a walk can feel so clarifying when your mind is overwhelmed.

The difference between a regular walk and a somatic walk is attention. Instead of walking while scrolling, listening to a podcast, or mentally rehearsing your to-do list, a somatic walk asks you to slow down and notice. Feel the ground under each foot. Notice the rhythm of your breath. Observe what you see, hear, and smell without labeling or analyzing. Let your arms swing naturally. Let your jaw soften. Let your shoulders drop.

Even ten minutes of this kind of intentional, body-present walking can shift your nervous system state. It's not a replacement for somatic therapy, but it is a somatic practice , one that's available to you every day, as many times as you need it.

Your body already knows how to heal

Everything in this post is pointing toward the same truth: your body is not the problem. It has been doing its best to protect you, sometimes for decades, and it carries the evidence of everything you've survived. Somatic therapy exercises are a way of working with that body , not against it. Of meeting it where it is, with patience and curiosity, and gently teaching it that safety is available now.

If you're ready to go deeper , to do this work within a held, therapeutic relationship , I'm here. I offer somatic therapy in Los Angeles rooted in somatic and body-based healing.

Confidence in Early Adulthood: Growth, Challenges, and Opportunities

Mon, 04 May 2026 16:00:15 GMT

Finding Your Footing When Everything Feels New

The Challenge: Anxiety and Self-Doubt

Many young adults struggle with social anxiety and low confidence. These challenges show up in ways that deeply affect their success:

Academically : difficulty speaking up in class or fully engaging in learning.
Socially : hesitation to form connections, join groups, or cultivate belonging.
Developmentally : avoidance of new experiences that foster autonomy and identity.

When anxiety leads to avoidance, students miss out on the very opportunities that help build mastery, belonging, and confidence. For parents, caregivers, educators, and youth leaders, it can be hard to know how to encourage growth without adding pressure.

Why Psychoeducation Helps

One powerful way to bridge this gap is through psychoeducation, offering young people tools, context, and language to understand what they’re going through. For analytically oriented or hesitant students, this often feels safer than diving into raw emotional work.

Key messages include:

Emerging adulthood is unique : uncertainty and exploration are part of the process.
Confidence is a skill, not a personality trait : it grows with practice.
Anxiety is normal, but manageable : it doesn’t have to dictate behavior.

When students, parents, and educators all have access to this knowledge, it creates shared understanding and reduces shame around the struggles of early adulthood.

From Avoidance to Action

Growth happens in the stretch zone , that space between comfort and overwhelm. The role of educators, caregivers, and mentors is to help students identify what feels like a meaningful “stretch.”

Some strategies that work well include:

Values Lens : Encourage them to choose activities that align with personal values like curiosity, creativity, or connection.
Experiment Mindset : Frame new experiences as “curiosity experiments” instead of high-stakes tests of identity.
Micro-Steps : Break social goals into small, doable steps (e.g., attending one club as an observer, asking a single question in class).
Reflective Integration : Pair psychoeducation with reflection prompts to help students connect theory to lived experience.

When adults are equipped with these tools, they can encourage exploration while respecting each young person’s pace.

Supportive Language Matters

Sometimes, the most powerful shift comes from how we talk about this stage of life:

“This stage of life is supposed to feel uncertain; it’s a time for experimenting with identity, relationships, and independence. Confidence doesn’t grow by waiting until you’re ready. It grows by practicing, step by step.”

Educators, parents, and mentors can use this kind of language to validate what young adults are going through while also nudging them toward growth.

Why Schools, Families, and Community Orgs Should Care

Supporting confidence-building during early adulthood has ripple effects far beyond campus life. Students who learn to take small risks, tolerate uncertainty, and lean into their values are more likely to:

Persist academically and socially.
Build resilience and adaptability.
Enter adulthood with a stronger sense of identity and belonging.

Equally important, when parents, caregivers, educators, and youth leaders gain tools for support, they can reinforce these lessons at home, in classrooms, and in community spaces, creating an ecosystem of encouragement.

How I Can Help

As a therapist and educator specializing in holistic mental health, I design psychoeducational workshops and experiential sessions that help students:

Normalize uncertainty and self-doubt.
Learn practical strategies to navigate anxiety.
Build confidence through micro-experiments aligned with their values.

And equip parents, caregivers, educators, and youth leaders with insights and tools to:

Better understand the unique challenges of early adulthood.
Support confidence-building without pushing students into overwhelm.
Use developmentally supportive language that fosters belonging and resilience.
Create environments that encourage growth and exploration.

By working with both our youth and the adults around them, we build a stronger network of support that makes confidence-building a shared effort, not an individual burden.

If you’re a leader, educator, or caregiver interested in equipping young adults with tools for confidence and resilience, I’d love to connect.

Early adulthood, roughly ages 18 to 25, is one of the most exciting and uncertain stages of life. It’s a time marked by identity exploration, independence, new social circles, and the first taste of real-world responsibility. For many students, this period unfolds in college or through other pathways to adulthood, serving as a “practice ground” for the skills they’ll need beyond school.

But the journey isn’t always smooth.

Want to help young adults build real confidence?

Let’s collaborate, reach out below to discuss a workshop or presentation for your group or organization.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

How sound healing works: how vibration helps your nervous system release tension and return to balance

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 23:00:05 GMT

Sound healing often enters your life at a very specific moment. Not when you are curious, but when rest no longer comes naturally. Your body feels tired, yet your nervous system stays alert. Your mind slows down, but something inside you remains tight, braced, or on edge.

This experience is common for people who have spent years functioning in high responsibility, emotional awareness, and constant responsiveness. Your nervous system learned to stay prepared. Even when nothing is wrong, it does not fully stand down.

Sound healing does not ask you to change this pattern through effort. It meets your body exactly where it is and offers it something different to respond to.

In case you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese. I support women of color who have learned to carry a lot while staying composed and capable. My work focuses on helping the nervous system soften safely and consistently. You can learn more about my approach as a relational & somatic therapist or explore embodied practices through our sound baths services .

What sound healing actually is and what it is not

Sound healing is a therapeutic approach that uses vibration, frequency, and rhythm to support nervous system regulation. It is not about positive thinking, visualization, or forcing relaxation. It does not require belief, effort, or mental focus.

Instead, sound healing works through sensory input. Your body receives sound as physical information. Long before language existed, sound helped humans assess safety. Rhythm and tone told the nervous system whether it was safe to soften or necessary to stay alert.

Sound healing works because it speaks directly to this ancient system. You do not have to understand it for it to work. Your body already knows how to respond.

Why your body responds to sound before your mind does

Your nervous system is designed to respond to vibration automatically. Sound reaches you faster than thought. It moves through tissue, fluid, and fascia, communicating with your body at a level beneath cognition.

When steady sound enters your system, muscles receive it as a cue to soften. Breath begins to slow without instruction. Internal bracing loses its purpose. This is not something you decide. It is something your body does when it senses stability.

This is why sound healing can feel effective even when your mind is restless, skeptical, or distracted. Regulation begins in the body, not the mind.

Healing sound frequency chart

Before we go deeper into how sound healing works inside the body, it can be helpful to ground this experience visually. In the next image, you will see the healing sound frequency chart, which breaks down how different tones interact with your body. It offers a simple visual map showing why certain sounds feel grounding, why others create emotional openings, and how vibration supports your nervous system. This chart helps you make sense of the internal shifts you feel when sound begins to move through your system.

Source: 2026 Blisspot

How does sound healing work: vibration reorganizes tension inside your body

Sound healing works by engaging the body through vibration rather than instruction. Your nervous system responds to rhythm and frequency automatically, without needing effort, belief, or conscious focus. When steady sound enters your system, it provides an external structure that your body can orient to.

Tension inside the body is often the result of unfinished stress responses. When your system was unable to fully react or recover, it learned to hold. Vibration offers a way out of that holding. As your nervous system entrains to consistent sound, muscles begin to soften, breath expands, and internal pressure reorganizes.

This reorganization does not happen all at once. It unfolds gradually as your body recognizes safety. Sound does not force release. It creates the conditions where release becomes possible. Your system lets go of what it no longer needs when it feels supported enough to do so.

The role of crystal bowls and gongs in sound healing

Different instruments affect the body in different ways. Sound healing is intentional, not random. Each instrument offers a specific quality of vibration that interacts with the nervous system uniquely.

Crystal bowls produce clear, steady tones that support stabilization and clarity. They help the nervous system settle into a predictable rhythm, which supports emotional regulation and internal spaciousness.

Gongs produce layered sound waves that reach deeper holding patterns. Their complexity helps disrupt long standing tension and invites the body into reorganization rather than collapse. Together, these instruments create balance between grounding and release.

Sound healing and emotional release without overwhelm

Emotions often surface during sound healing not because sound causes them, but because safety allows them. When the nervous system downshifts, it no longer needs to suppress emotional material.

Sound healing does not push emotions out. It creates enough internal stability for feelings to move through without becoming overwhelming. Emotional responses are regulated, not explosive.

Common experiences include gentle tears, emotional clarity, relief, or a sense of lightness. These responses signal integration, not loss of control.

Sound bath meditation benefits over time

Sound bath meditation benefits extend beyond the session itself. With consistency, your nervous system learns a new baseline for safety and rest.

Over time, people often experience deeper sleep, reduced reactivity, less chronic tension, and improved emotional regulation. These shifts happen gradually and sustainably.

Sound healing teaches your body that calm is not temporary or conditional. It becomes familiar.

Sound bath sessions near me: What to expect during a sound healing session in Los Angeles and Atlanta

A sound healing session in Los Angeles is designed to offer nervous system relief within a city that rarely slows down. From the moment you arrive, the environment is intentionally quieter, softer, and more grounded than the world outside. This contrast is part of the work. Your body immediately senses a shift.

Sessions typically take place in calm, contained spaces that prioritize safety and comfort. You are invited to lie down, supported by props, and settle into stillness without expectation. There is no requirement to focus, perform, or clear your mind. The pace is slow on purpose, allowing your nervous system time to recognize that it does not need to stay alert.

As sound begins, instruments are played with care and attunement. In a city where stimulation is constant, this guided containment allows your body to release control gradually. You may notice your breath deepening, muscles softening, or your thoughts becoming less urgent. Everything unfolds at a pace your system can tolerate.

When the session ends, there is space to transition slowly back into the external world. This gentle reentry matters in Los Angeles, where the contrast between stillness and stimulation can be stark. You leave grounded enough to carry the effects of rest back into the city with you.

How your body integrates sound after the session ends

Sound healing continues working after the sound fades. Your nervous system integrates gradually as you move through your day.

You may notice slower reactions to stress, increased body awareness, and a greater sense of internal steadiness. Integration is quiet and cumulative.

Let sound become a place where your body can finally rest

Sound healing is not about fixing you. It is about giving your nervous system something stable enough to respond to. When your body feels supported, it remembers how to soften.

You deserve spaces where rest does not require effort and where your body is allowed to exhale through sound baths services .

What is a sound bath meditation? Benefits, what to expect, and how it supports nervous system healing

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 22:30:00 GMT

Sound bath meditation for the woman who needs a moment where her mind finally quiets

Sound bath meditation often becomes meaningful in the moment when you realize you cannot quiet your mind on your own. You know you need rest, yet your thoughts continue racing even after the day is over. Your body feels tired, but your nervous system stays alert, as if it cannot fully stand down.

This experience is common for women who carry responsibility, emotional awareness, and constant mental engagement. Noise does not end when the room goes quiet. It continues internally. You crave a pause that feels real and a kind of quiet that reaches deeper than your thinking mind.

If you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese, and I support women of color who are tired of carrying excessive tension, noise, and emotional pressure in their bodies. My work offers grounding experiences that help your mind slow down and your body feel safe again. If you want to understand what guides my work, you can explore my page as a relational & somatic therapist . And if this topic speaks to something inside you, you can also discover our restorative offerings through our sound baths services .

How does bath meditation work?

Your body responds to sound before your mind has time to interpret it. Sound bath meditation works by communicating directly with your nervous system, bypassing the mental loops that often keep you stuck in overthinking. Low tones and steady rhythms reach places words cannot touch.

Sound creates a sense of orientation and safety inside your body. As vibration enters your system, your nervous system begins to downshift without effort. This is why sound bath meditation benefits often appear even when you are not trying to relax.

Slower, deeper breathing
Softened muscles and jaw
Reduced mental noise
A steadier heartbeat

What happens during a sound bath meditation

During a sound bath meditation, you lie down comfortably and allow sound to move around and through you. There is no requirement to focus, visualize, or control your experience. You simply receive.

In guided sound bath sessions, instruments are played with intention and pacing that support safety and regulation. The experience is gentle and contained. Your body is invited to rest, not pushed into release.

Sound bath sessions near me, and what makes Los Angeles & Atlanta a unique place to receive sound work

Searching for sound bath sessions near me often occurs when your body needs more support than self-guided rest can provide. You may feel overstimulated, emotionally complete, or unable to settle independently. This search is about safety and containment, not convenience.

In Los Angeles, sound bath sessions offer a powerful counterbalance to a fast-paced, high-output environment. The contrast between external stimulation and intentional stillness allows your nervous system to soften more deeply. When sound is offered with care, your body senses permission to rest.

At Power Through Process, sound bath sessions in Los Angeles and Atlanta are designed as nervous system care, not performance. Each session offers a grounded container where you are supported through sound rather than asked to manage your own rest. You can explore these offerings through our sound bath services .

Sound bath meditation benefits when your body is tired of trying to relax

The benefits of sound bath meditation extend far beyond surface calm. They support your nervous system in releasing chronic alertness and returning to a baseline of ease. Unlike practices that require concentration, sound allows your body to receive without effort.

As sound moves through your system, breathing slows, and muscles soften. Mental noise quiets without force. Over time, your body learns that rest does not require vigilance or control.

Sound bath meditation benefits often include deeper sleep, emotional clarity, reduced physical tension, and a greater sense of internal safety that carries into daily life.

Your body processes sound long after the session ends

Does sound bath work beyond the session? Yes. Your nervous system continues integrating sound after the experience ends. The effects unfold quietly over time.

• Deeper sleep
• Emotional openness
• Reduced reactivity
• Steady, sustained energy

The emotional relief that emerges when your body finally quiets

When your body calms first, your emotions follow. Sound bath meditation supports emotional settling by reducing the need for internal guarding. As the nervous system slows, emotional intensity softens naturally.

Emotional shifts often include:

Softened defensiveness
Eased overthinking
Heightened presence
Lowered urgency

Sound bath meditation supports long-term nervous system healing

Sound bath meditation benefits become more pronounced with repetition. Your nervous system heals through consistency, softness, and safety. Sound offers all three.

Over time, your body learns that slowing down is not a threat. Rest becomes familiar. Regulation becomes accessible rather than rare.

Different instruments shift your body in different ways

What is sound bath meditation without understanding the role of sound itself? Each instrument carries a distinct quality that interacts with the body differently. Bowls, chimes, drums, and voice tones each invite a unique response.

Some sounds ground you, others soften emotional edges, and others encourage expansion or rest. Together, they create a layered experience that allows different parts of you to unwind safely and gradually.

Building a relationship with rest when you are used to pushing through

Learning to rest can feel uncomfortable when urgency has been your default. Sound bath meditation gently interrupts this pattern without confrontation.

Urgency
Guilt
Overthinking
Hyper Responsibility

Sound teaches your body that slowing down is safe.

Letting sound reconnect you with feelings you have stored away

Does sound bath work emotionally? Yes. Sound creates permission for emotions to surface without pressure. When your body feels safe, feelings rise naturally.

Some emotions return quietly. Others bring clarity. Sound holds them without requiring explanation or control.

Your nervous system deserves a place where it can rest without effort

Sound bath meditation offers a space where your mind softens, your breath slows, and your body remembers ease. You deserve a place where sound carries you back home to yourself through our sound bath services in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

Are You Breathing Wrong? How Shallow Breathing Keeps Stress in Your Body

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:00:14 GMT

Quick Test: Chest vs. Diaphragm Breathing

Want to know if you engage in deep or shallow breathing? Here’s a quick test.

Sit or lie down comfortably.
Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly (just below the ribs).
Take a normal breath in (don’t force it).

If the chest hand rises more, you’re mostly chest breathing.
If the belly hand rises more, you’re engaging the diaphragm.
Ideally, you’ll see a gentle belly rise first, then a little chest expansion second.

�� Do this for 3–5 breaths. It gives you quick awareness of your default pattern.

What type of habits and stress cause shallow breathing over diaphragmatic breathing?

Chronic stress, trauma, and cultural conditioning can contribute to a reliance on alternative muscles (chest, neck, shoulders, etc.) for breathing. Lifestyle, posture, stress, and emotional holding patterns can all contribute to this shift.

For example:

Cultural messages like “stand tall” or “suck in your stomach” can reinforce holding in the stomach for appearance or posture, limiting the diaphragm’s movement.
Modern lifestyle for school aged children and adults involves sitting at a desk or in a vehicle. Sitting for long periods can shorten the hip flexors and tighten the diaphragm.
Even subtle stressors can activate the sympathetic nervous system, which cues faster, chest-centered breathing.
Postural stress: sitting hunched at a desk, driving for long periods, or standing with the belly “sucked in.”
Environmental stress: background noise, constant notifications, fluorescent lighting, or crowded spaces.
Emotional micro-stressors: running late, worrying about your to-do list, minor conflicts, or feeling unseen in a conversation.
Sensory overload: scrolling through social media, switching between tabs, or multitasking without pause.
Physiological stress: dehydration, low blood sugar, shallow sleep, or too much caffeine.
Social stress: subtle code-switching, microaggressions, or pressure to perform/present in certain ways.

These stressors always trigger a full fight-or-flight response, but they layer over time , keeping the nervous system slightly activated. Stress disrupts our breathing mechanisms as the breath responds automatically: getting faster, moving higher into the chest, and recruiting neck/shoulder muscles instead of letting the diaphragm expand fully.

�� That’s why even a few intentional grounding breaths during the day can help *reset* and remind the body it’s safe.

What's the long term impact of chest breathing?

Chest-dominant breathing can increase tension in the shoulders/neck, reduce oxygen exchange, and keep the nervous system in a subtle activated stress state (via the sympathetic nervous system).

Under sympathetic activation, breathing gets faster and shallower (chest breathing). This can actually reduce CO₂ levels in the blood making it harder for oxygen to be released from the blood into our bodies muscle tissue.

Stress can make the body feel oxygen-starved even when oxygen is available, which can signal to the body that we’re under threat, tricking the body into feeling unsafe and under-resourced.

�� That’s why slow, diaphragmatic breathing is so regulating: it balances oxygen + CO₂, calms the nervous system, and signals safety.

Daily “Micro-Practice Menu” (30–60 seconds each)

Here are 5 quick resets you can sprinkle into your day after emails, between meetings, or even while waiting in line.

1. 3-3-3 Grounding Breath

Inhale through your nose for 3 counts, letting your belly expand.
Hold for 3 counts.
Exhale slowly through the nose or mouth for 3 counts.
Repeat for 3 rounds.

2. Shoulder Drop Reset

Inhale deeply into your belly.
As you exhale, consciously drop your shoulders away from your ears.
Repeat 2–3 times. (Great if you’ve been at a computer.)

3. Hand-to-Heart Check-in

Place one hand over your heart, one over your belly.
Inhale into the belly, then let the breath rise into the chest under your top hand.
Exhale slowly, softening the jaw.
Do 2–3 rounds.

4. Sigh of Relief

Inhale normally.
Exhale with an audible sigh, like a gentle “haaah.”
Repeat 2–3 times to release tension quickly.

5. Box Breath (for focus)Inhale for 4 counts.

Hold for 4 counts.
Exhale for 4 counts.
Hold for 4 counts.
Repeat 2–3 rounds.

�� These little resets send micro-messages of safety to your nervous system. You can set timers to remind you to engage in these mini moments of grounding and layer the practices into what you’re already doing.

Lastly, if you struggle with accessing diaphragm breathing, know that with awareness and practice (like breathwork, yoga, or somatic exercises), we can re-train the body to restore diaphragmatic breathing at any stage of life. By noticing your breath and practicing these mini-resets, you can gradually restore diaphragmatic breathing, calm your nervous system, and feel more grounded throughout your day. Which one of these practices can you try today?

Ever notice yourself holding your breath when you’re stressed? Most adults spend their days breathing shallowly, without even realizing it. Did you know that when we are born as babies we are diaphragmatic breathers, due to the diaphragm being the most efficient breathing muscle? Over time habits and stress change our patterns of breathing and many adults breathe in a way that focus on expanding the chest, this is called chest or shallow breathing.

Ready to explore mindful breath practices that free your body from stress?

I’ll help you slow down, tune in, and find steadiness through the wisdom of your own breath.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

Somatic release therapy and the mind-body connection for healing

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 22:15:00 GMT

Somatic release therapy often becomes relevant when you feel something stirring inside you that you cannot explain. In the first quiet seconds, somatic release therapy does not feel like relief. It feels like movement. A flutter in your chest. A warmth rising. A subtle trembling that feels both unfamiliar and deeply known.

There may be no clear memory associated with how you feel. No obvious story. Yet your body begins to signal that something long contained is asking to move. This is not a collapse or depletion. It is the moment your body stops compressing what it has been carrying and begins to bring it toward the surface.

In case you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese, and I support women of color who notice these internal shifts and want to understand what their bodies are ready to release. My work offers a calm, grounded space where your body can soften and let go at its own pace. If you want to learn more about what guides my work, you can explore my approach as a relational & somatic therapist . And if this topic resonates, you can also explore deeper embodied work through somatic therapy .

Stored stress does not disappear. It waits. And then it asks to be released.

Somatic release therapy is grounded in a simple truth. Your body remembers what your mind learns to move past. Stress that never had space to resolve does not vanish. It settles quietly into muscles, breath, and nervous system patterns.

Over time, emotional experiences that were never fully processed become physical residue. The body holds them not as stories, but as sensations. This is often why stress resurfaces later without a clear cause. Your body is not malfunctioning. It is communicating.

Common sensations that signal the body is trying to release include

Pressure or heat building internally
Tightness that shifts or pulses
Spontaneous sighing or yawning
Gentle shaking or trembling
Emotional waves without a clear trigger

What is somatic release therapy, and what does it do inside your body

Somatic release therapy is a body-based approach that supports your nervous system in letting go of stress that was never fully processed at the time it occurred. Instead of working primarily through words or analysis, it focuses on how experiences are held in your body as sensation, tension, and physiological response.

At its core, somatic release therapy helps your body complete stress responses that were interrupted or suppressed. When your system was unable to react, rest, or recover fully, that energy was stored. This work creates the conditions for that stored stress to move, soften, and release without forcing emotional intensity.

Inside your body, this process often looks subtle. Muscles gradually relax. Breath becomes fuller. Sensations begin to flow instead of feeling stuck or compressed. Emotional understanding may follow, but the primary shift happens in the body first. Your system no longer has to stay prepared for something that has already passed.

Somatic release therapy works by restoring communication between your body and your sense of safety.

When your nervous system feels supported, release happens naturally, at a pace your body can tolerate and integrate.

How somatic release interrupts the pattern of holding

When the body releases stored stress, it no longer needs to remain braced or anticipatory.

Common shifts include

More expansive breathing
Reduced muscle tension
Less internal bracing
Increased presence and ease

Your body stops preparing for something that already ended.

What a release session may feel like in real time

How you feel after somatic release varies from person to person. Release is not forced. It happens when your body feels safe enough to let go.

During a session, people may experience

Warmth spreading through the body
Gentle shaking or movement
Spontaneous tears without distress
A sense of grounding or lightness
Emotional clarity without overwhelm

These experiences are supported through somatic therapy in a paced, contained manner.

Simple release practices you can try on your own

Self-guided release practices create small openings rather than big emotional events.

Gentle practices include

Slow breath waves through the body
Micro-shaking in the legs or arms
Grounding through the feet
Hand to chest connection
Vocal toning or gentle sound

Small somatic movements create openings that thinking cannot.

Creating safety inside your body so release can happen

What actually is somatic therapy at its core? Safety. Your body lets go only when it feels it will not be punished for speaking.

Slowness matters and permission matters. When safety is present, release does not need to be forced. Your body already knows what to do. Somatic release therapy offers a gentle way to return to your body’s natural rhythm. Your body has carried enough. You deserve support that allows you to soften into a life that feels safe.
Begin your healing with somatic therapy in Los Angeles

Somatic counseling for women in Los Angeles who’ve spent years putting everyone else first

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:15:02 GMT

Somatic counseling often begins the moment you realize your life has been organized around other people’s needs. You know how to show up, hold space, anticipate, and care. Yet in quiet moments, something feels missing. You are present for everyone else, but not fully present with yourself.

This is not about failure or burnout. It is about identity. About noticing that the woman who gives so much no longer feels familiar inside her own body. Somatic counseling offers a way to reconnect with yourself without needing to abandon the people you love.

In case you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese, and I support women of color who have spent years centering everyone else while slowly losing touch with their own internal world. My work invites the body back into the conversation so you can feel grounded, whole, and present again. You can learn more about my approach as a relational & somatic therapist and explore embodied support through somatic therapy .

What is somatic counseling (and how does it help women reconnect to themselves)?

Somatic counseling is a body-based approach that focuses on how your experiences live in your nervous system, not just in your thoughts. Instead of asking you to analyze your life, it helps you notice what is happening inside your body in real time.

For women who have spent years prioritizing others, reconnection often does not happen through insight alone. It occurs through sensation. By noticing your breath, your posture, and the subtle ways your body has learned to orient toward others.

Somatic counseling helps gently rebuild this relationship. It teaches your body that it is safe to take up space again, to have needs, and to be included in your own life. Over time, this creates presence, clarity, and self-trust.

Why a lifetime of prioritizing others rewires your body

Caring for others is not just a role. It becomes a bodily orientation. Your nervous system learns to stay outwardly focused, scanning for cues, needs, and expectations beyond you.

Over time, caregiving becomes instinctive. Your body responds before you think. You feel responsible for emotional balance and stability even when no one asks you to. This is not a flaw. It is an adaptation.

Your body may learn patterns such as

Emotional scanning and anticipation
Holding tension in readiness
Self-minimizing to preserve the connection
Constant monitoring of others’ reactions

How being the dependable one reshapes your internal world

Living as the dependable one shapes how you relate to yourself. You become skilled at regulating quickly, moving on, and staying composed. Your emotions are managed efficiently so they do not disrupt anyone else.

You learned to stabilize others even when it destabilized you internally. Over time, this reshapes your inner world.

Common shifts include

Suppressing your own reactions
Recovering emotionally at an unnatural pace
Managing others’ feelings as a priority
Shrinking discomfort instead of addressing it

Somatic counseling brings awareness to these patterns without judgment.

When caring becomes instinct, and your own needs become invisible

After years of being the one who shows up, self-neglect no longer feels like a choice. It becomes automatic. Your body learns that your needs can wait and that attention must stay outward to preserve belonging.

You may struggle to identify what you want or need. Not because you are disconnected, but because your body learned that noticing yourself was secondary.

Somatic counseling does not force self-focus. It rebuilds safety around noticing yourself again, slowly and respectfully.

The bodily cost of shaping yourself around other people

Your body reflects the expectations placed on you. Over time, this shows up as constriction rather than crisis. Sensations become muted. Awareness narrows.

Common somatic expressions include

Shallow or restricted breathing
Tightness in the chest or throat
Reduced internal awareness
Emotional flattening
Chronic muscular tension

A somatic therapist understands these signals as communication, not dysfunction.

How somatic counseling helps you return to yourself

Returning to yourself does not mean becoming less caring. It means no longer disappearing inside your roles. Somatic counseling supports this return by helping your body feel safe enough to stay with itself.

As your nervous system regulates, subtle changes appear. You pause before reacting. You sense when something is too much. You recognize your limits without needing to justify them.

Somatic counseling restores access to your internal cues, guiding your life from the inside rather than managing it from the outside.

What does a somatic therapist actually do?

A somatic therapist listens beyond words. They track breath, posture, pauses, and nervous system responses as you speak. These cues guide the pace and depth of the work.

Rather than pushing for emotional release, a somatic therapist prioritizes safety and regulation. They help you notice sensations, track shifts, and stay present without becoming overwhelmed.

The role of a somatic therapist is not to fix you. It is to support your body in remembering how to feel, respond, and rest again. Explore somatic therapy in Los Angeles.

Somatic counseling techniques that rebuild your inner home

Somatic counseling uses grounded practices that rebuild trust between your body and your identity. These methods are slow by design.

Common techniques include

Interoceptive tracking
Slow breath syncing
Gentle micro-movements
Boundary sensing through sensation
Emotional pacing for safety

You have cared for everyone else long enough. Now it is your turn to come home.

Your body has waited years for you. You are allowed to return to yourself with care, gentleness, and support through so matic therapy in Los Angeles

Somatic therapy: what happens when you start listening to your body

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 22:00:01 GMT

Somatic Therapy often begins when listening finally feels safer than pushing through. In the first quiet moments of noticing your body instead of overriding it, Somatic Healing Therapy shifts from an idea into an experience your nervous system has been waiting for.

You may have spent years managing stress through logic, discipline, and strength. Yet your body keeps responding in ways your mind cannot fully control. Tight breath. Subtle tension. Emotional fatigue that does not lift. This is where listening becomes the turning point.

I am Chelsey Reese, and I support women of color who have learned to survive by staying capable, composed, and emotionally contained. My work centers the body as a place of truth, safety, and reconnection. You can learn more about my approach as a relational & somatic therapist or explore body-based support through som atic therapy.

What is somatic therapy and how does it work?

Somatic Therapy is a body-based approach that works with sensation, breath, and nervous system response rather than relying only on conversation. Instead of analyzing your experiences, it focuses on how those experiences live in your body right now.

While talk therapy helps you understand your story, somatic therapy supports your body in feeling safe enough to release what it has been holding. Healing happens through awareness and regulation, not force.

Why the body holds what the mind forgets

Your body learns through experience. Long before you had words, your nervous system adapted to keep you safe. Those adaptations can remain active even when circumstances change. Somatic Therapy helps the body update these patterns rather than override them.

What happens when you start listening to your body

The early phase of Somatic Therapy often feels subtle. Nothing dramatic happens, yet everything begins to shift underneath the surface.

You may notice moments of awareness where there used to be disconnection. Sensations become clearer. Reactions slow down. Your body begins to participate in your healing instead of being managed.

Your breath begins to shift on its own

Many people notice their breath deepening without effort. The body releases tension it no longer needs to hold. This is often the first sign of regulation returning.

Your body reveals where it’s been holding tension

As awareness grows, areas of tightness become clearer. Jaw, shoulders, chest, stomach. These sensations are not problems. They are information.

Emotions rise when it finally feels safe

When the body senses safety, emotions may surface gently. This is not overwhelm. It is release happening at a pace your nervous system can tolerate.

What happens inside a somatic healing therapy session

Somatic Therapy sessions are slow, intentional, and deeply attuned to your body’s cues. There is no pressure to perform, explain, or relive your past.

Sessions focus on what is happening now rather than retelling everything that happened then.

What your therapist is tracking beyond words

Your therapist tracks breath, posture, nervous system responses, and subtle shifts in sensation. These signals guide the pace of the session.

Gentle techniques that help your body communicate

Somatic therapy techniques may include grounding, breath awareness, gentle movement, and tracking sensation. These tools help your body express what words cannot.

How safety allows release to happen naturally

Release is not forced. It happens when the body feels supported and safe enough to let go. Regulation comes first. Release follows.

The benefits of somatic healing therapy

Over time, Somatic Therapy creates changes that extend beyond sessions and into daily life. Clients often describe feeling more present, less reactive, and more connected to themselves.

Emotional regulation and deeper rest

As the nervous system regulates, emotional swings soften. Sleep improves. Rest begins to feel restorative rather than elusive.

Releasing survival patterns that no longer serve you

People pleasing, hypervigilance, and chronic overfunctioning lose their grip as the body no longer needs them for protection.

Reconnecting with self-trust and calm

When your body becomes a source of information rather than a source of tension, self-trust grows. Calm becomes accessible instead of effortful.

Is somatic therapy evidence-based?

Somatic Therapy is supported by growing research on the nervous system and trauma. Studies on body-oriented approaches show consistent early evidence that working with the body can reduce trauma-related symptoms and improve overall well-being.

Research continues to highlight what many clients experience firsthand. Healing becomes more sustainable when the body is included rather than bypassed.

Living differently through somatic healing therapy

Somatic Therapy is not about fixing yourself. It is about restoring your body’s natural capacity for regulation, connection, and ease.

As you learn to listen instead of override, life begins to feel less like something you manage and more like something you inhabit. If your body is signaling a different approach, you can begin with somatic therapy in Los Angeles

How somatic trauma therapy frees what your mind cannot forget

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 06:00:31 GMT

When your body speaks the truth you have been trying to ignore

Somatic Trauma Therapy often becomes relevant long before you consciously search for it. You wake up already tired, and your chest feels heavy before the day even begins. This is often the moment when Somatic Trauma Therapy shifts from a general idea into something your body quietly longs for.

You tell yourself to keep going. You remind yourself that you are capable, strong, and resilient. Yet your body keeps telling the truth your mind has tried to move past. Your shoulders tense. Your breath shortens. Your throat tightens when you want to speak.

In case you are new here, I am Chelsey Reese, and I support women of color who have spent years carrying the emotional weight of everyone around them while slowly disconnecting from their own needs. My work centers on your body, your truth, and your lived experience. If you want to understand who we are and what guides this work, you can explore my approach as a relational & somatic therapist . If this topic speaks to something inside you, you can also explore more profound body-based healing through somatic trauma therapy .

Your body holds the memories your mind tries to move past

What does somatic mean, and why does your body remember

To understand Somatic Trauma Therapy, it helps first to understand what "somatic" means. Somatic refers to the body and lived experience as felt, not just remembered. Your body reacts before your thoughts can catch up.

Somatic work for trauma recognizes that your nervous system stores experiences as sensation. Even when your mind knows the danger has passed, your body may still respond as if it has not.

Research on body-oriented approaches continues to grow. A review of somatic therapies looked at dozens of studies and found consistent early evidence that working with the body can reduce trauma-related symptoms and support overall well-being. This helps explain why healing often happens when the body is included, not just the mind.

Sensation as a form of memory
Survival states such as fight, flight, freeze, or collapse
Body signals that communicate safety or threat
Patterns shaped by lived experience rather than logic

The quiet physical signs of trauma you have learned to dismiss

How somatic release therapy reveals what you normalized

Somatic release therapy often begins with noticing what you have learned to ignore. Many people learned early that slowing down or feeling deeply was not safe, so the body adapted by holding tension quietly.

Common somatic indicators include:

Tightness in the throat or jaw
Knots or discomfort in the stomach
Chronic hypervigilance
Emotional numbness or shutdown
Persistent exhaustion

The churning in your stomach is your body protecting you in the only way it knows how.

Why your nervous system cannot be reasoned out of its pain

What is somatic therapy, and why is insight alone not enough

Somatic Trauma Therapy recognizes that cognitive insight and physiological safety are not the same. You can understand your story and still feel your body reacting as if danger is present.

Your nervous system learned these responses through experience, not logic. This is why talking about trauma does not always release it from the body.

How unresolved emotions become physical patterns

Somatic work for trauma and stored survival responses

Somatic work for trauma shows how emotional suppression becomes a physical habit. Each time you silenced yourself to keep the peace, your body learned to brace.

These patterns often show up as:

Shallow or restricted breathing
Collapsed posture
Chronic alertness even during rest
Your body remembers every moment you had to be strong when you needed care.

Healing begins when your body is invited into the conversation

Why somatic trauma therapy creates absolute safety

Somatic Trauma Therapy invites your body into healing instead of asking it to be overridden. When sensation is met with curiosity rather than judgment, your nervous system begins to soften.

Healing begins when you stop overriding your body and start listening to its signals.

Somatic therapy techniques that help your body release what it has held

Somatic release therapy in practice

Somatic therapy techniques support the body in completing responses it never had space to finish. These practices restore regulation rather than forcing catharsis.

Breathwork that supports nervous system regulation
Grounding practices that anchor you in the present
Gentle movement to release stored tension
Body scans that build awareness
Co-regulation that allows safety to be felt in connection

You can explore this work more deeply through somatic trauma therapy.

Learning to hear your body without judging yourself

What does somatic mean when applied to compassion

Your body is not dramatic. It is honest. Somatic work for trauma helps you meet sensation with compassion rather than criticism.

As judgment softens, your body no longer needs to shout to be heard.

Releasing patterns of overgiving and finally choosing yourself

How somatic trauma therapy supports people pleasers

Somatic Trauma Therapy often reveals how people pleasing lives in the body as a survival response.

Common patterns include
Saying yes when your body says no
Carrying responsibility that was never yours
Staying hyper alert to others’ needs
Ignoring exhaustion until burnout
As safety returns, these patterns begin to loosen.

If your body is asking for relief, it is time to listen

Begin your healing with somatic therapy in Los Angeles

How Attachment Styles Develop — And How to Heal Insecure Attachment

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:18:36 GMT

A gentle introduction to attachment styles, relational patterns, and the path toward secure connection.

Attachment styles shape how we experience closeness, conflict, safety, and emotional intimacy in relationships. Many of the patterns we struggle with as adults—overthinking texts, avoiding vulnerability, people-pleasing, or fearing abandonment—can often be traced back to our earliest relationships.

This post explores how attachment styles develop, how insecure attachment shows up in adulthood, and practical, compassionate steps toward healing and secure attachment.

How Attachment Styles Develop

Attachment styles form during our earliest relationships, most often with caregivers. Attachment is fundamentally about survival—it helps us get our needs met and stay connected to those we depend on.

A clear example of this is how a baby instinctively cries to communicate an unmet need, such as hunger, discomfort, or the need for closeness. When caregivers respond consistently, attuned, and emotionally available, a child learns:

My needs matter
I am safe to express myself
Others can be trusted

This forms the foundation of secure attachment .

When caregivers are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, intrusive, or unpredictable, a child may develop an insecure attachment style . Over time, this can lead to deeply held beliefs such as:

“My needs are too much.”
“If I express myself, people will leave.”
“I have to earn love or stay small to stay connected.”

Because attachment is relational, a parent or caregiver’s own attachment style often influences how they show up—meaning these patterns can be passed down intergenerationally . Children then grow into adults who may unconsciously seek out relationships that reinforce familiar attachment dynamics, even when those dynamics are painful.

What Happens When Attachment Patterns Go Unexamined

Without awareness, insecure attachment styles tend to repeat themselves.

For example, someone with an anxious attachment style may have learned early on that care or affection could be withdrawn at any moment. To protect the relationship, they learned to:

Suppress their emotions
Anticipate others’ moods
Avoid expressing needs or boundaries

As an adult, this person may continue ignoring their feelings when a partner does something that feels hurtful. And if they do finally speak up, they may find themselves in relationships where their concerns are dismissed or met with anger—reinforcing the belief that speaking up is unsafe.

This isn’t because they are doing something wrong. It’s because the nervous system is wired to seek familiar attachment experiences , even when they no longer serve us.

Can Insecure Attachment Be Healed?

Yes—but healing insecure attachment is not about “fixing” yourself. It’s about creating new relational experiences that challenge old beliefs and help your nervous system learn safety in connection.

Healing happens through what therapists call reparative or corrective relationships —relationships where your needs are acknowledged, your emotions are welcomed, and your boundaries are respected.

Four Tips to Begin Healing Insecure Attachment

1. Recognize Where Your Beliefs Came From

The first step is acknowledging how your early relationships shaped your view of yourself and others. This isn’t about blaming caregivers—it’s about understanding the context in which your attachment patterns developed.

Awareness creates choice.

2. Gently Challenge Old Narratives

As adults, we can remind ourselves:

Not everyone will relate to me the way my caregivers did.

This reminder alone doesn’t rewire attachment, but it opens the door to new possibilities and interrupts the assumption that past dynamics are inevitable.

3. Seek Out Emotionally Safe, Attuned Relationships

Healing insecure attachment requires relational safety. This may look like:

Choosing partners or friends who are emotionally responsive
Noticing how your body feels around certain people
Allowing yourself to move more slowly in relationships

It's critical to understand you cannot heal attachment wounds in environments that continue to reinforce them.

4. Practice Showing Up Differently (Even When It’s Hard)

This is often the most challenging—and most transformative—part.

Healing may involve:

Expressing needs in real time
Naming discomfort instead of suppressing it
Setting boundaries without over-explaining

For someone with anxious attachment, this might mean risking honesty instead of self-silencing. Over time, when needs are met rather than punished, new beliefs begin to form:

“My needs are important.”
“I can express myself and still be loved.”

You cannot heal attachment wounds in environments that continue to reinforce them.

Why Change Can Feel So Hard

It’s important to name that showing up differently requires courage .

Trying to shift patterns that once protected you can activate fear, stress, or resistance. Parts of you may warn:

Don’t rock the boat.
This isn’t safe.
You could lose the relationship.

These parts aren’t the problem—they developed to keep you connected and safe.

Healing insecure attachment isn’t about forcing yourself into discomfort. It’s about building capacity , resourcing your nervous system, and trusting that what’s on the other side of the discomfort—greater security, authenticity, and connection—is worth it.

Moving Toward Secure Attachment

Secure attachment isn’t perfection. It’s the ability to repair, communicate, and remain connected—even when things feel messy.

If you’re on this path, you’re not behind. You’re responding to patterns that once made sense—and now you’re choosing something more aligned.

Want Support Healing Attachment Patterns?

If you’re interested in exploring attachment styles, nervous system regulation, and relational healing in a supportive space, I offer therapy and somatic-based support designed to help you move toward greater emotional safety and secure connection.

You can book a free connection call with me to learn more.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

How to Move Forward When Not Everyone in the Relationship Is Willing to Repair

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 15:00:20 GMT

Honoring your heart’s ache while learning to listen to your body’s wisdom .

There’s nothing more disorienting than reaching for connection with someone you care about. Only to realize they’re not reaching back. Whether it’s a romantic partner, a close friend, or a family member, it can feel deeply painful when you’re the one willing to mend the cracks, but the other person has checked out, shut down, or walked away.

This moment, when you’re left holding the pieces, is tender, complicated, and incredibly human.

Acknowledging the Hurt: Grieving the Repair That Won’t Come

Before moving forward, it’s important to make space for grief. Not just the grief of the relationship itself, but the grief of what could have been if both people were willing to do the work.

Maybe you imagined long talks, therapy sessions, or simply a heartfelt apology. Maybe you waited for a text that never came. It’s okay to mourn the future you were hoping for. You don’t have to rush your healing.

Reminder: Acceptance doesn’t mean approval. You can accept that someone isn’t ready to repair without condoning their behavior or denying your own needs.

Understanding Why Some People Avoid Repair

Not everyone has the emotional tools or willingness to repair ruptures. This doesn’t mean they didn’t care.

Sometimes, people:

Lack the self-awareness to recognize the harm
Avoid conflict due to fear or trauma
Struggle with accountability or vulnerability
Believe silence is safer than confrontation

This isn’t an excuse. But understanding can offer a kind of softening, especially when anger threatens to harden your heart.

The Work of Repair Doesn’t Go to Waste

It’s heartbreaking when the relationship itself can’t be saved, but your willingness to reflect, reach out, and take accountability isn’t wasted.

Your capacity to repair is part of your relational integrity. It speaks to your values. And it will shape how you show up in future relationships: with clearer boundaries, deeper wisdom, and more grounded self-trust.

How to Move Forward Without the Repair

Here are a few steps that might support you in navigating this tender place:

1. Validate Your Experience

You’re not being “too much” for wanting repair. You’re not “weak” for feeling hurt. You’re human. Let yourself name what you needed and didn’t get.

2. Release the Fantasy of Closure

Sometimes the closure we crave won’t come from the other person. But we can still create our own closure through ritual, reflection, or a final boundary-setting moment that centers your truth.

3. Set Loving Boundaries

Boundaries aren’t punishments; they’re grief-honoring. They let you say: This mattered. I’m protecting what’s left of my heart while I heal.

4. Tend to the Parts That Blame Themselves

When repair doesn’t happen, we often turn inward: Was it my fault? Should I have tried harder? Offer compassion to the younger part of you who just wanted connection. You did the best you could with what you knew.

5. Reclaim Your Energy

The loop of replaying, rehashing, and waiting can drain your emotional reserves. Redirect your energy into places that do nourish you: art, nature, movement, spiritual practice, community care.

You Deserve Relationships That Heal, Not Harm

You deserve mutual repair. You deserve care that doesn't leave you guessing. And you deserve to move forward, not with resentment, but with radical self-honoring.

Even when repair isn’t mutual, your healing still is. You get to move forward. You get to grow. You get to let go with grace.

A soft place to land for anyone navigating a breakup, the end of a friendship, family estrangement, or other unresolved relational ruptures.

Want to talk through a relationship rupture or explore your patterns in connection?

I offer supportive therapy for individuals navigating relational grief, boundary repair, and self-trust.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

Does Asking for What You Need Make It Less Meaningful?

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 15:00:04 GMT

A Reframe on Needs, Care, and Communication in Relationships

It’s a common and vulnerable question: If I have to ask for it, does it even count?

Whether it’s asking for words of affirmation, more quality time, or better communication, it can feel disheartening to speak our needs aloud, especially when we wish our partner, friend, or family member would “just know.”

But here’s the truth:

Needing to ask for what you need doesn’t mean someone cares less. It means you’re giving them the chance to care more intentionally.

The Myth of Mind-Reading

Many of us hold onto the romanticized idea that love means knowing what someone else needs without having to be told. But no matter how intuitive someone may be, no one can read minds.

Expecting others to intuit our needs sets them up to fail and often leaves us feeling disappointed.

Healthy relationships rely on clear communication, not clairvoyance.

What Asking Actually Means

Asking for what you need is not a sign of weakness or insecurity... it’s a sign of self-awareness and relational courage.

It says:

I know myself.
I want us to do better.
I believe our relationship is worth tending to.

In fact, when someone listens, responds, and follows through after we express a need, it can be even more meaningful than if it happened without asking. Why? Because it’s intentional .

When Asking Becomes Repetitive

That said, needing to ask for the same thing over and over... especially when it relates to core needs or basic respect, can be a sign that something deeper is missing.

You might begin to ask:

Are my needs being heard but not honored?
Is there capacity or willingness to meet me in this?
Am I staying in hope that someone will become someone they’re not?

Repeated unmet needs can point to a mismatch in values, emotional availability, or relational effort.

Reflective Prompts

If you’ve been grappling with this question, consider:

What do I need, and why does it matter to me?
How does the other person respond when I share this need?
Am I feeling dismissed, heard, or met halfway?
Is this a pattern that’s creating resentment or emotional burnout?

Want to learn more about navigating communication in relationships?

You deserve to ask for what you need and to be met with care and effort.

Being brave enough to ask gives people the opportunity to rise, to show you their capacity for love, respect, and reciprocity.

If they can’t or won’t meet you there, that’s not your failure... it’s clarity.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

When the World Feels Too Heavy: Nervous System Reflections + Resources for Realignment

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 12:00:03 GMT

Understanding your response to global overwhelm and finding your way back to center.

From climate change to humanitarian crises, it can feel like the world is spiraling out of control. Maybe you’ve found yourself feeling angry, helpless, or totally disconnected. If that’s you, I want you to know — you’re not alone. There is a collective grief felt all around the world.

In this post I'll be sharing some insight into what might be happening with the nervous system and invite reflection on how these things may be showing up for you and what can be done about it.

How the Nervous System Responds to Crisis

The way we feel or how we respond to external chaos falls somewhere along the scale of shut down to activation.

There's no right or wrong to whatever you're feeling right now. Our bodies are designed to protect us. That’s why when crisis hits, we might collapse, freeze, fight, or flee. These states aren’t bad — they’re biological. The problem is when we get stuck there.

Get curious about where you might fall along this scale currently or under certain circumstances.

As humans we have a wide range of emotions and responses all engineered to help us feel safe. Safety and survival are the ultimate primordial needs for living beings. And when those needs are threatened, survival becomes the focus and it can seem like nothing else matters. Things that usually matter a lot can fade into the background: connection, creativity, sleep, nourishment, joy, etc.

Guided Reflection on What Gets Lost in Chaos

We don't even have to imagine what a world with sleep deprived, creatively blocked people would look like. Many of us are living it or witnessing it.

Take some time to journal or briefly pause to check in about how this may be showing up for you?

What areas of your life tend to fall out of focus for you when things get chaotic?
What do you tend to do to help you feel safe?
Are there people, places, or things that support you?

A Personal Note on Cultivating Safety

Only when you feel safe and connected can your nervous system settle into what we call the Ventral Vagal response. This is where healing, growth, social engagement, and sustainability thrive.

Personally I've been practicing mindfulness around areas of my life I tend to let fall behind. I'm working on tending deeply to my most basic needs so I can function with more ease. I've been engaged in protests, spreading awareness and staying informed while continuously checking in with my capacity and also acknowledging rest as another form of resistance. I've been anchoring into people, spaces, and practices where my nervous system feels grounded and calm. And I've been leaning into gratitude for even small moments of joy and fun, savoring what I can in a constantly shifting world.

Messages of Hope

Is there the possibility for healing and collective care, even in the chaos? I believe so. Nothing in this world is permanent and I think we are seeing the rise of some profound shifts. As disempowering as it can feel at times,

the more we tend to our own well-being, the more capacity we have to show up — for change, for justice, and for each other.

Crisis often triggers radical innovation, coordination, and change. People are questioning and deconstructing long standing systems that don't serve the greater collective. The value in community building and space holding is growing. We have to do the work of taking care of ourselves and each another to get to the Ventral Vagal (Safety & Connection) window. This is where we will be able to imagine and create a better more sustainable future for ourselves.

Practical Tips for Nervous System Care

Want to practice these tools in community?

I'll be hosting a virtual space for community dialogue, journaling, and meditation on Thursday, September 25 at 5:30PM PDT/8:30PM EDT. This event is free and open to all.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

Black owned yoga studios & meditation resources in Los Angeles

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 23:34:54 GMT

Black owned yoga studios & meditation resources in Los angeles

Black Mental Health is often overlooked and underserved due to a lack of culturally sensitive and representative resources. And while the number of black healthcare and wellness practitioners is increasing, most tend to be women, leaving a gap in services for black men looking to engage in wellness spaces where they are not the minority. If you are in the Los Angeles area (or planning to visit soon) check out these black-owned and black-led wellness spaces offering yoga, meditation, and other community wellness programming.

The Tree Yoga Cooperative

The Tree Yoga Cooperative ("The Tree") is a Black and Brown owned yoga studio and wellness hub in South Central Los Angeles. The Tree offers a wide range of studio classes and workshops throughout the week. Ja Cole ( @10thletter ) is one of the four co-founders and was the co-facilitator for my own yoga teacher training program at The Tree. On Saturdays he leads a Meditation class (8:30am) and teaches Soul Flow , and RnB and Hip Hop yoga class (9:30am). You can use my referral link and enter promo code: REFERRAL to attend your first class at The Tree for free!

Hands In The Soil

Hands In The Soil is a community organization fulfilling a mission of connecting mind, body, and nature. Founder, Yancy "Yogee" Comins ( @yancy.is.wellthy ), hosted a weekly wellness lounge for Men of Color called Check-in & Chill . The last one took place in December 2023 and I am hoping this offering continues. Currently Yancy hosts movement based yoga practices @thepostclimbing in Pasadena on Tuesdays 5:30pm and Fridays 10am, and @LincolnParkLB in Long Beach on Saturdays 9:15am.

Health is Wealth Yoga

Founded by Derrion ( @kinginspirit ) and based in Long Beach, CA, Health is Wealth Yoga is cultivating abundance through breath. Derrion teaches a Wind Down Wednesday, a donation based yoga class, on Wednesdays 7-8pm at Green Pines Creative (@ thegpc.space )in Long Beach.

Walk Good LA

Walk Good LA ( @walkgoodla ) formed during the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd. What started off as protest against police brutality has transformed into a Black and Brown led community wellness organization. Walk Good LA is based in LA and hosts various wellness programs such as BreatheGood, RunGood, and HikeGood.

Black Being LA

Black Being LA is all about black liberation. They are a non-profit wellbeing studio located in Inglewood, CA prioritizing the wellbeing of Black People. Currently they hold an evening meditation every Wednesday at 7pm and have a host of other studio classes offered both virtually and in person throughout the week.

Body Art Noir

Body Art Noir is a newly opened studio in Inglewood, CA. They value inclusivity and are culturally affirming, providing a variety of yoga and meditation classes such as heated Vinyasa, restorative yoga, prenatal yoga, and meditation classes.

What to Expect in a Somatic Therapy Session: How Body-Oriented Therapy Supports Stress Relief, Healing, and Nervous System Regulation

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 12:34:46 GMT

For high achievers, deep feelers, and those learning to slow down.

What Is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic comes from the root word “Soma” which directly translates to “body” in the Greek language. Somatic therapy is a holistic and body-oriented therapy focused on integrating the Soma or whole body into an individuals awareness to move towards healing . It emphasizes mind-body connection and encompasses a wide range of techniques such as grounding, breathwork, and movement. This article will discuss key principles of the work, explore common themes and real life examples that come up in sessions, and answer frequently asked questions about somatic therapy.

What is the goal of somatic therapy?
What does somatic therapy help with?
What are the key principles of somatic therapy?
What does a somatic therapy session look like?

The goal of somatic therapy is to help individuals build awareness of their internal world including ways that the body relates to emotions and lived experiences. Through guided practices of exploration and nervous system regulation, somatic therapists support individuals in releasing physical tension, stress, and trauma that gets stored in the body.

Somatic Therapy Helps With:

Functional freeze / burnout
Difficulty resting or relaxing
Chronic overthinking or people-pleasing
Reconnecting with your desires, voice, and boundaries
Making space for joy and self-trust

Somatic therapy supports emotional healing by gently tuning into bodily sensations, breath, movement, and nervous system patterns. Rather than focusing only on thoughts, somatic therapy invites you to listen to what your body is trying to tell you—especially when it comes to stress, overwhelm, and old survival strategies.

Seven Body Wisdom Principles

Somatic therapy helps you reconnect with your body as a source of wisdom, not just something to manage or control. Somatic psychotherapist, Manuela Mischke-Reeds, beautifully frames somatic work through the Seven Body Wisdom Principles :

The body responds to its direct environment.
The body learns and remembers.
The body is flexible and changing.
The body experiences are transient.
The body has innate capacity for repair and healing.
The body wisdom comes forth in a climate of kindness and compassion.
The body is an important place for healing and transformation.

A Typical Session Might Include:

Check-in: We begin with a few minutes of talking about how you’re arriving—emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Grounding Practice: This might include breathwork, orienting (looking around the room), or feeling your feet on the floor to help settle your nervous system.
Body Awareness: You’ll be invited to notice sensations (tightness, heaviness, restlessness, etc.) and reflect on what they may be connected to emotionally or experientially.
Somatic Interventions: Depending on your comfort and capacity, we may explore:
Breathwork
Gentle movement
Self-touch (like hand over heart or belly)
Tracking nervous system responses
Imagery or resourcing practices (drawing on safe, supportive memories or images)
Reflection & Integration: We’ll process what came up, and identify how you might practice this awareness or regulation outside of session.

Personalized & Consent-Driven

Explaining exactly what to expect in a somatic therapy session can be challenging because there's no one size fits all approach .
Somatic therapy is experiential and tailored moment to moment to each individual's unique nervous system.
Where other modalities might offer a linear roadmap of what to do and when to do it, somatic work flows differently. And for some, that idea of slowing down can feel abstract or even threatening.
In somatic therapy we move at your pace and only explore what feels safe and doable in the moment.

A Real-Life Example

You might come into session feeling anxious and overextended. As we slow down together, you're prompted to explore where anxiety and overextension exists in the body. You then begin to notice a tightness in your chest and a clenching in your jaw. We pause to breathe and allow the body to move and adjust in whatever ways feel supportive.

Next, we explore what those sensation might be trying to communicate. We may engage in dialogue directly with those sensations via verbal communication, letter writing, visualization, or even a creative art exercise. Perhaps we reflect on areas of your life where these sensations are most and least present.

Overtime you realize your feelings are connected to the pressure you feel to always “be on.” We might explore where this pressure stems from and what it would feel like to give yourself permission to rest. We won't just talk about rest but we'll bring in regulation tools that support that shift. We actually practice cultivating rest in real time so your body gets familiar with viewing rest as resourceful.

Common Themes in Somatic Work

While understanding barriers to rest is a common theme in somatic therapy it's not the only one. Some people find somatic therapy helpful in letting go of control , amplifying your voice, building meaningful connection or setting healthy boundaries .

If you’ve ever felt stuck in survival mode, feeling activated, or disconnected from your own needs and wants, somatic therapy offers a pathway to rebuild that connection from the inside out.

Reconnect with Your Body. Rediscover Your Power.

You are not too much. Your body is not a problem to fix. It’s a story that deserves to be heard, with compassion and care. If you're curious about how this work might support you, I invite you to schedule a free introductory call. Let’s explore what slowing down and coming home to yourself could look like.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

What’s Blocking Your Rest? 4 Hidden Patterns That Make It Hard to Slow Down

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 18:00:02 GMT

Four common rest-blocking patterns rooted in trauma, overgiving, and survival mode, and how to gently reconnect with ease in your body.

For so many women of color, rest doesn’t come easy. Not because we don’t want it, but because somewhere along the way, we were taught that rest had to be earned. That we had to take care of everyone else first. That being strong meant pushing through, even when our bodies begged us to slow down. But the truth is:

✨ Rest isn’t laziness.

✨ Rest is resistance.

✨ Rest is reclamation.

✨ Rest is remembering that your worth isn’t tied to your output.

If you’ve ever found yourself exhausted yet unable to stop moving, or lying down only to feel your mind start racing, you’re not alone. There are often deeper reasons (unseen emotional patterns, internalized survival strategies, or nervous system imprints) that make rest feel unsafe, unfamiliar, or even guilt-inducing. In this post, we’ll explore four common patterns that block rest, and offer gentle, somatic-centered ways to begin releasing them. Because you deserve to feel at ease in your body and at peace in your life.

Each of these reflects a rest-blocking pattern, rooted in internalized expectations or survival responses:

These patterns don’t come out of nowhere—they’re often shaped by trauma, culture, and systems that have taught women of color that stillness is unsafe, selfish, or unearned. Research from trauma experts, somatic therapists, and Black feminist scholars all echo this truth: rest isn’t just a lifestyle shift... rest is a radical act of healing, and a sacred reclaiming of what was lost.

�� You Deserve to Rest

If rest has felt out of reach for you, know this: it’s not because you’re lazy, broken, or not trying hard enough.

The struggle to rest is often a sign of something deeper—something protective your body or mind learned to do to help you survive. But survival isn’t the whole story. You’re allowed to soften. You’re allowed to shift. You’re allowed to choose a new way forward.

Whether you’re unlearning hyper-independence, releasing guilt, facing long-held emotions, or setting boundaries with care — remember that rest is a right, not a reward.

Ready to explore what rest can actually feel like in your body?

Download the Somatic Guide for Nervous System Regulation to access three gentle body-based practices that help you slow down, reset your nervous system, and come home to yourself. Let this be the beginning of a softer, slower, more self-honoring season.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

Leaning Into Life’s Unknowns and Choosing Without Certainty

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 18:00:05 GMT

When There’s No Easy Answer & Every Option Feels Risky

What if there’s regret either way?

When we face big decisions in life, about relationships, career, family, or the direction we want to take, there’s often a quiet (or loud) hope that we can find the “right” answer. The one path that will protect us from regret, loss, or discomfort. The brain is a predictability machine that craves certainty and seeks knowledge.

But life doesn’t always offer guarantees or clarity. Sometimes, we have to come to accept that either choice may carry its own version of grief or uncertainty. Either choice comes with a cost. That realization can feel like a kind of heartbreak, but it can also feel like an invitation.

An invitation to shift from trying to outsmart regret…

To release our need to get the perfect outcome...

To learning how to lean into grace and compassion no matter the situation.

When we try to control every outcome, we live in a scarcity mindset: one that fixates on risk, loss, and the worst-case scenario. It keeps us planning for an imagined future, while holding back from living in the present and listening to our deepest desires.

Discomfort doesn’t always mean something is wrong or that it's not the right choice. Ever heard of growing pains? Sometimes, discomfort is a sign we’re growing.

Growing through discomfort means making peace with what’s outside of our control, while anchoring into what's within our reach: our inner resources and resilience, our support systems, our safety nets, our capacity to choose again.

The more we practice trusting ourselves to navigate what arises, the more we begin to live from a place of abundance… not because the path is clear, but because we’ve remembered we are not powerless. We have the ability to do hard things.

✨ You don’t need perfect certainty to move toward a meaningful life. You only need enough self-trust to take the next step.

And if you don’t fully trust yourself yet… that’s okay too.

Start with a willingness to be curious.

Start with one brave step and build from there.

Questions to Consider When Things Feel Uncertain

If you’re in a season of uncertainty or navigating a decision that feels heavy, take a moment to pause. What part of you is seeking protection? And what part longs for possibility? What might you miss out on if you wait for complete certainty? These are questions worth sitting with. And if you’d liked to explore this more in a therapeutic space, I’m here to support.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

When Boundaries Feel Like a Threat: Understanding Power & Control in Relationships

Tue, 20 May 2025 22:10:38 GMT

Recognize red flags, restore safety, and communicate your needs with clarity and care

In relationships, disagreements are inevitable, but recognizing controlling behavior in relationships early can help you maintain healthy boundaries and safety. Its not about avoiding disagreements all together, but instead focusing on how we navigate them. Sometimes, what seems like a difference of opinion can actually be a red flag... especially when it involves power, control, or the disregard of personal boundaries.

What is controlling behavior?

As described in an article on PsychCentral , controlling behavior can look a lot of different ways, ranging from subtle signs of coercion and influence, to more direct and threatening attempts to exert power over someone else.

Let's take a situation, for example, where one partner decides who the other can or cannot follow on social media. At face value, this might seem like a simple request or even a display of how much they care. But when we look deeper, it can signal something more troubling... an imbalance of power or a need to control the other person’s connections, choices, and autonomy.

If you’ve ever found yourself feeling like you're “walking on eggshells,” having to get permission for your friendships, or being made to feel guilty for asserting your needs, it may be time to reflect on the power dynamics in your relation.

Common Power & Control Red Flags

While setting boundaries is healthy, controlling behavior disguised as “just asking” can be a form of emotional manipulation . This often shows up subtly, such as:

Demanding access to your phone or accounts
Telling you who you can or can’t talk to
Guilt-tripping you when you express needs or emotions
Threatening to withdraw love, attention, or the relationship if you don’t comply
Claiming that their controlling behavior is how they show they care

These patterns erode trust and autonomy, and over time, can signal a toxic or emotionally unsafe dynamic.

When “Care” Becomes Control

One of the most subtle and confusing ways power and control show up in relationships is when someone claims that their controlling behavior is a sign of how much they care. You might hear things like:

“I just worry about you — that’s why I need to know where you are all the time.”
“I’m only asking you to cut off that friendship because I love you.”
“If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be this upset.”

These statements may sound loving on the surface, but true care honors your autonomy . It doesn’t cross your boundaries, isolate you from others, or make you feel small.

�� Care that violates your boundaries is not care. It’s control.

If someone consistently uses their love as a reason to limit your freedom, that’s a red flag worth paying attention to. Healthy relationships are built on trust, mutual respect, and the ability to navigate discomfort without resorting to coercion.

How to Communicate your Boundaries Assertively

In contrast, assertive and compassionate communication invites mutual respect and understanding... even when there’s tension. Here are a few steps you can practice to help shift the dynamic:

Step 1: Name the behavior, not the person.

☞ “I felt really uncomfortable when went through my phone.”

Step 2: Express your feelings and needs clearly.

☞ “Trust is really important to me, and I want to be in a relationship where we can respect each others privacy.”

Step 3: Set a boundary and name the outcome.

☞ “If that trust isn’t there, I’m not sure this relationship can work.”

Step 4: Hold space for nuance and direction.

☞ “I understand this may feel hard for you, and I still need to be with someone who respects my autonomy. Is this something you can accept?”

You Deserve Safe, Respectful Love

Power struggles often show up when one person feels threatened by the other’s independence. But healthy love doesn’t require control... it invites choice, trust, and accountability. You can be understanding and assertive. Compassionate and have boundaries.

If someone consistently reacts to your boundaries with defensiveness, manipulation, or control? That’s not just a “communication issue.” It may be a sign of something deeper that needs to be addressed.

Ready to build healthier relationships with yourself and others?

If you’re noticing any of these patterns in your relationship, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to navigate it alone. Therapy can help you reconnect with your values, rebuild your boundaries, and find clarity about your relational needs. If you're ready to take the next steps, let's explore working together during a free connection call.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

Let Go of People-Pleasing and Set Boundaries with Confidence

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 23:54:00 GMT

Break free from guilt, speak your truth, and create space for authentic connection.

“What if they think I’m selfish?”

“Will they be upset with me?”

“I don’t want to let them down.”

If these thoughts sound familiar, you’re not alone. People-pleasing often disguises itself as kindness, care, or responsibility for others, but at its core, it can be a response to discomfort of someone else’s disappointment, frustration, or disapproval. Setting boundaries means confronting this discomfort, especially feelings of guilt, and learning to sit with it rather than letting it dictate our actions

Why Does People-Pleasing Feel So Hard to Let Go Of?

At its root, people-pleasing is a learned behavior often shaped by early experiences where we felt safer, more accepted, or more valued when we prioritized others over ourselves. Over time, this pattern becomes automatic:

We take responsibility for other people’s emotions
We avoid conflict too keep the peace (often at the expense of our own needs)
We feel guilt when we set a boundary (even if that boundary is necessary)

But here’s the truth: letting go of people-pleasing does not mean becoming uncaring or selfish. It means recognizing that you are not responsible for how others feel.

The Role of Guilt in Boundary-Setting

Many people struggle to set boundaries because guilt gets in the way. Guilt makes us feel like we’re doing something wrong even when we’re simply protecting our time, energy, or emotional well-being.

Letting go of people-pleasing means:

Releasing the need to control how others react.
Allowing people to be responsible for their own emotions.
Building tolerance for distressing feelings, like guilt or fear of letting someone down.

If you’ve set a boundary before and it wasn’t received well, you may have internalized the belief that “boundaries hurt people” or “I should have handled it differently.” But boundary setting isn’t about controlling someone else’s reaction... it’s about honoring your own well-being.

Practicing Boundaries & Sitting with Discomfort

Rather than avoiding guilt, the goal is to get comfortable with it. Recognize guilt as a natural response rather than a sign that you’re doing something wrong. Try these reframing strategies to help navigate guilt when setting boundaries:

Acknowledge the guilt without letting it control your actions. Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t have said no,” try: “I feel guilty, but that doesn’t mean I did something wrong.”
Use a grounding mantra. When you feel pulled to take on someone else’s emotions, remind yourself: “I recognize your hurt without attaching myself to it. Your emotions are not mine to carry.”
Tune into your body’s response. Guilt often shows up physically as tightness in the chest, a pit in the stomach, or tension in the shoulders. Engaging in somatic practices (like deep breathing, stretching, or EFT tapping ) can help regulate these sensations rather than reacting impulsively to ease discomfort.
Investigate what the guilt is protecting. If you feel guilty after setting a boundary, ask yourself:

Am I making their disappointment mean something about me?
Do I believe I’m only valuable when I meet others’ needs?
Am I afraid this boundary will lead to rejection?

These reflections can reveal hidden fears that keep you stuck in people-pleasing cycles.

The Rewarding Side of Boundaries

The truth is you're going to feel discomfort no matter what. The difference is, when you feel discomfort because you don't honor your needs, those needs continue to go unmet and you may experience long term effects on your mental health, physical health, and on your relationships as a result. On the other hand, discomfort caused by doing something that is right for you and helps you get your needs met, is temporary and can be managed through emotional regulation. When you learn how to sit with the discomfort of guilt and challenge internalized fears and messages, you unlock the more rewarding side of boundary-setting , where you experience:

Inner peace instead of resentment.
Emotional freedom instead of over-responsibility.
Stronger relationships based on mutual respect rather than obligation.

A lot of times we think of boundaries as walls that separate and divide, but the truth is boundaries don’t push away the people who genuinely care, they create space for healthier connections, with both yourself and others.

So the next time guilt creeps in, take a breath. Let it be there, but don’t let it make the decisions. You are allowed to take up space, say no, change your mind, and prioritize your well-being.

Ready to build healthier relationships with yourself and others?

If you're navigating people-pleasing, struggling to set boundaries, or working through the impact of relationship trauma, therapy can be a supportive way to process and create meaningful change. Submit an inquiry to explore how therapy, somatic practices, and mindful boundary-setting can help you step into a more empowered and peaceful version of yourself.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA

Beyond Resolutions: Ways to Honor Your Needs in a Shifting World

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 23:05:14 GMT

Here are some ways to honor your needs in a shifting world

What a wild ride its been as this first month of 2025 comes to an end. The world is changing in so many ways and it can be hard to keep up. From extreme changes in climates and wildfire devestation, to global humanitarian crisis and media censorship, all compounded on top of information overload it's no wonder many are feeling on edge. In a recent threads posts , sociologist Jennifer Walter, writes about how this intentional push towards overhwhelm contributes to reduced civic engagement and democratic oversite, leaving people feeling disengaged and paralyzed.

If you've felt the heaviness of the world and a sense of powerlessness against the rapid changes happening, you're not alone. On top of it all the new year comes with expectations for goal setting and productivity that often feels out of reach and create rigid pressures that don't allow you to honor your needs. Here are some ways to honor your needs in a shifting world.

Regulate Your Nervous System Daily

Instead of focusing on external goals, tune into how your body feels and what it needs. Practices like breathwork, somatic movement, sound healing, or grounding exercises help you stay present and adaptable in uncertain times.

Embrace Rhythms over Resolutions

Instead of forcing strict resolutions, develop flexible rhythms that support your well-being. Whether its a slow morning routine, weekly rest days, or seasonal check-ins with yourself (ladies look into cycle tracking to get in tune with your natural rhythms).

Redefine Productivity & Success

Success is more than our external accomplishments and productivity at the expense of our wellbeing isn't very productive in the end. Allow yourself to measure success by how aligned, rested, and fulfilled you feel rather than external achievements.

Cultivating Intentional Relationships

Prioritize relationships that nourish and support you. Seek out spaces where you feel seen and valued, and practice communicating your needs with confidence.

Set Energetic & Emotional Boundaries

Protect your mental health by limiting exposure to overstimulation news, social media, and draining conversations. Make space for joy, rest, and activities that replenish you.

Focus on Micro-Acts of Care

Self-care doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming. Small, daily choices like taking a deep breath before responding to stress, stepping outside for sunlight, or making time for creative expression can be more transformative than you think.

Engage in Collective Care

We need community now more than ever: to organize for change, get resources, and feel supported. Find ways to connect with and support your community, whether through mutual aid, local events, or simply checking in on loved ones. Feeling connected helps counteract the isolation that global uncertainty can bring.

Q&A

Want support in integrating mindful practices into your daily life?

Let's explore how we can work together to help you reconnect and recenter.

RELATIONAL AND SOMATIC THERAPIST IN LA