Somatic Therapy | Yoga and Sound Baths in Baldwin Hills | CA
Generational strength is a gift, and it is also a weight. The women who come to Power Through Process often carry both the resilience that was handed down to them and the cost that resilience extracted from the women who came before. Somatic therapy, yoga, and sound healing offer a practice that honors what that strength made possible while creating space to set down what no longer needs to be carried. This is not about undoing the inheritance. It is about finally having a choice about what to keep.
Baldwin Hills sits above the basin, its homes along Stocker St and the streets winding near the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook offering an elevation that is both geographic and historic. This community, one of the most significant centers of Black upper-middle-class life in California, borders Leimert Park to the south and the Crenshaw corridor to the east. Jefferson Park and the area surrounding La Brea Ave to the north connect it to West Adams, while the view from the overlook stretches across the entire basin toward the Pacific. Women here navigate the specific complexity of having arrived, of carrying visible success alongside invisible exhaustion.
The women who seek somatic therapy in Baldwin Hills are often aware of the inheritance they carry. They know about generational trauma. They can name the patterns. What brings them to this work is the recognition that knowing has not been sufficient, that the body is still running old programs regardless of how clearly the mind has understood them. My practice works at the level where those programs actually live, in the nervous system, in the breath, in the body's accumulated memory.
How it works
01
Start where you are—not where you think you “should” be
Intellectual understanding of a pattern is not the same as releasing it. The body carries its own memory, one that does not update simply because the mind has gained new information. Somatic therapy starts by attending to that body memory directly. Where does this show up as sensation? What does the body do when this pattern is activated? Working at that level creates change that reaches further than insight alone.
02
No scripts. Just what your body needs
The first conversation is unhurried. There is no expectation that someone arrives knowing what to say or how to name what they are experiencing. What matters is the quality of what is present, the sense that something needs attention. From there, we find a direction together that feels honest and workable.
03
Where science meets soul
The shifts produced by somatic therapy, sound healing, and yoga become part of the body's new baseline rather than insights that fade over time. Clients find that they begin to recognize their own patterns earlier, respond with more choice, and allow themselves to receive support in ways that once felt impossible. The work accumulates.
Explore my therapy services and specializations
For women who have been strong for a long time, the body often holds a kind of tiredness that goes deeper than fatigue. It is the tiredness of decades of vigilance, of holding it together so completely that the idea of not holding it together feels like a kind of collapse. Somatic therapy works with that tiredness without requiring anyone to fall apart. It finds the places where the body has been bracing and creates conditions for them to release. Over the course of this work, clients begin to develop what might be called an internal compass, a growing capacity to know what they feel, trust that knowing, and act from it. The emotional disconnection that so many high-functioning women describe as their normal begins to dissolve. What replaces it is a quality of presence that is both more honest and more sustainable. Sessions are virtual and accessible from any private space, meeting clients in their lives rather than requiring them to add another place to go.
Strength that has been held in the body for a long time requires a specific kind of release, one that honors the function it served while creating space for something softer. Yoga and sound baths work with the nervous system's own rhythms rather than overriding them, offering an experience of deep settling that the body often does not know how to access on its own anymore. Sound healing sessions work with vibrational resonance that supports the body in releasing activation without requiring effort or intention. Yoga sessions offer slow, breath-centered movement that teaches the body to experience its own edges as information rather than threat. Together, these practices create a quality of rest that goes beyond physical relaxation. These offerings welcome women who are experiencing them for the first time and women who have maintained bodywork practices for years. The entry point is always what the body needs in this particular moment.
The women who come to relational Gestalt therapy have often been the ones who hold their families, friendships, and workplaces together. They know every person in their orbit's needs. They anticipate, smooth, and manage. What they have less experience with is being known in return. Relational Gestalt therapy creates the conditions to experience what it feels like to be genuinely met. This work attends to the relationship in the room as a live practice of what is possible. How does it feel to express a need without immediately mitigating it? What happens in the body when attention is offered without an agenda attached? These are not abstract questions. They are explored in the actual moment of the session, through the actual relationship with the practitioner. The learning that happens here tends to transfer. Clients begin to notice where in their other relationships they have been making themselves smaller, and they begin to have more access to choosing something different.
A nervous system that has been shaped by generations of stress does not simply recalibrate because the external circumstances have improved. The body continues to respond to the conditions it was trained for, even when those conditions are no longer the full reality. Nervous system regulation work addresses this directly, creating new experiences of safety that gradually become the new baseline. Sessions build what is sometimes described as a window of tolerance, a wider band of experience within which clients can feel activated without being overwhelmed, and resting without feeling unsafe. The body begins to have more range. Stress becomes something that moves through rather than something that accumulates. For women whose bodies have been trained by both personal and inherited stress, this work operates at the level where both kinds of conditioning live. The individual experience and the generational one are held together.
Intergenerational trauma is one of the most underrecognized burdens that Black women carry. It is not always traceable to a single event. More often, it lives in the body as a kind of readiness, an orientation toward threat that was adaptive once and has become habitual. Somatic trauma therapy holds space for the complexity of that, for the personal and the ancestral both. This work does not require putting words to everything. Some of what the body holds resists language. Sessions create space for those nonverbal dimensions to surface and be met with care. Clients often find that what resolves through this work includes things they did not know they were carrying. The pace is always the client's own. Nothing is rushed toward resolution. The body is trusted to move at the speed it needs, and that trust itself becomes part of the healing.
Anxiety in high-achieving communities often goes unnamed because it does not look like stereotypical anxiety. It looks like preparation, like thoroughness, like never being quite finished. But it lives in the body the same way: the hypervigilance, the sleep disruption, the physical tension that accumulates before any situation that requires performance. Sound meditation reaches that version of anxiety at its source. During sound meditation sessions, the vibrational quality of healing instruments creates a kind of auditory container that supports the nervous system in letting its guard down. Clients frequently describe the experience as unlike anything they have tried before because it does not depend on the mind's cooperation. The body simply responds. This work is available virtually and accessible to women who have never meditated alongside those with established practices. What it requires is only a willingness to receive.
In communities like Baldwin Hills, where Black achievement is visible and celebrated, the pressure to embody that achievement without cracks can be particularly intense. The expectation to represent, to carry the legacy, to be the proof of what is possible. Therapy for Black women in my practice acknowledges the honor in that role and also the cost. My work is explicitly anti-oppressive and decolonizing, which means it does not treat the challenges Black women face as personal failings or as problems to be optimized away. They are placed in their full cultural and historical context and held with the intelligence they deserve. This is a space that does not require translation or performance. What arrives here arrives whole, and it is met with full attention.
For women whose bodies have been instruments of achievement and endurance, somatic yoga offers something genuinely countercultural: the practice of moving slowly, without purpose, guided entirely by inner sensation rather than external standard. It is disorienting at first and then deeply nourishing. Sessions invite clients to bring the same quality of attention to their bodies that they bring to their most important work. What is present here? What is the body asking for? What wants to be released? The practice builds over time into a form of ongoing self-knowledge that has little to do with the traditional outcomes of yoga. Women who come to this practice often describe it as the first time they have felt genuinely at home in their bodies, not performing for them or managing them but actually inhabiting them.
Black couples in Baldwin Hills carry the legacy of a community that has built something meaningful and the private pressures that maintenance of that meaning creates. This therapy honors the strength of what has been built while creating room for the vulnerability and honesty that sustain a relationship over the long term. Sessions are available virtually.
Organizations in Baldwin Hills and the broader south and central LA corridor serve communities with real histories and real stakes. My corporate wellness offerings are grounded in trauma-informed, anti-oppressive practice and support teams in building the kind of inner resilience that external success requires. Available virtually for California organizations.
Serving clients in Baldwin Hills and nearby areas
My virtual practice serves women throughout Baldwin Hills and the surrounding communities, including View Park, Leimert Park, West Adams, Crenshaw, Jefferson Park, and neighboring parts of south and central Los Angeles. The work is accessible from any private space, which means no commute and no barrier to beginning. An embedded map of the Baldwin Hills service area appears below.
Chelsey has been a mentor to me in many ways. She has a warm, patient, thoughtful presence that is consistent and unmoving, and the ability to closely contact whatever arises in a calm and non judgemental way that allows for connection. Highly recommend!
Haley Winer
Chelsey and I recently led a group and I was in awe of her ability to hold space, give others feedback, and stay regulated throughout the course. Chelsey was a supportive, caring, and wonderful co-facilitator. I learned so much from her!
Julia Willinger
She's phenomenal. I've had a few different therapists during my mental health journey, but Chelsea is the first one to actually make me feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable. She reminds me that it's okay to acknowledge my feelings, instead of bottling them up in order to process the situation that brought that particular feeling up. I spent a long time feeling invisible; my sessions with Chelsea remind me that I'm here, and I matter. It feels good to feel seen and understood.
Anonymous
What inspires me about Chelsey's clinical skills is that she has a talent and passion for integrating her work with holistic health and wellness. She offers healing on a deep level and her very presence has a calming effect. I highly recommend Chelsey.
Fox Eros Life Stress Intimacy Polyamory
Chelsey's approach to therapy is rich, fulfilling, and empowering. Her groundedness propels her in the ability to be attuned to her clients' needs which is valuable to community healing.
Keri Anderson
I have had the privilege of being Chelsey's supervisor for the past 18 months. She is a caring and compassionate clinician who brings thoughtfulness, warmth and curiosity to her work with clients. I highly recommend Chelsey.
Penny H.
Chelsey has been a mentor to me in many ways. She has a warm, patient, thoughtful presence that is consistent and unmoving, and the ability to closely contact whatever arises in a calm and non judgemental way that allows for connection. Highly recommend!
Haley Winer
Chelsey and I recently led a group and I was in awe of her ability to hold space, give others feedback, and stay regulated throughout the course. Chelsey was a supportive, caring, and wonderful co-facilitator. I learned so much from her!
Julia Willinger
Testimonials
Hello, I'm Chelsey Reese, somatic therapist and sound healer serving Baldwin Hills
I'm the founder of Power Through Process Wellness Co., a somatic therapist, yoga practitioner, and sound healing facilitator serving women of color across Baldwin Hills, the Crenshaw corridor, and greater Los Angeles. My practice draws from somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, relational Gestalt, and trauma-informed mindfulness, held within an anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework that honors both personal and ancestral dimensions of healing. I built this work for women who are ready to heal not just individually but in relationship with the lineage they carry. This work is about one thing: empowering women of color to listen to the wisdom inside their bodies, release stored trauma, and step into an abundant life of peace and connection.
Frequently asked questions
How does virtual therapy work?
Virtual therapy sessions are held over a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform. All you need is a private space, a stable internet connection, and a device with a camera and microphone.
Can I use my insurance for virtual therapy?
I currently do not accept insurance. I can provide a superbill for reimbursement and I do accept Loveland Vouchers.
What if I need to cancel or reschedule a session?
I ask for at least 24 hours notice to reschedule or cancel your session. Cancellations made less than 24 hours notice may incur a fee.
