Somatic Therapy | Yoga and Sound Baths in Hollywood | CA
Performance is exhausting in every industry, but in Hollywood it is the industry. The women who come to Power Through Process from this part of the city often know better than most the distance between how they appear and what they actually feel. Somatic therapy, yoga, and sound healing exist in that distance. They are practices that have nothing to do with how things look and everything to do with what is actually true in the body. For women of color who have been performing strength and composure for audiences that are sometimes not even real, this work is a place to finally be off. The walk of fame runs along Hollywood Blvd beneath the hills that hold the Hollywood sign at their crest.
Runyon Canyon draws a particular morning crowd up its slopes before the day begins in earnest. Vine Street cuts through the heart of an industry neighborhood that has been reinventing itself for a century. Paramount Pictures anchors the southeast while the Hollywood Forever Cemetery holds the neighborhood's permanent residents in its palm-lined grounds. Los Feliz begins just east, its streets climbing into the hills near Griffith Observatory. East Hollywood runs south toward Koreatown and the 101 corridor. Cahuenga Pass channels the valley traffic over the hill, and the Hollywood Hills hold a grid of canyon roads where the city's ambitions are housed and largely invisible to each other.
Hollywood draws women who are extraordinarily skilled at managing their own presentation and extraordinarily unfamiliar with their own interior. Somatic therapy in Hollywood offers the reverse: a practice that has no interest in presentation and complete interest in what is actually happening inside. For women who have spent their professional lives crafting how they are received, working in a space that cares only about what is real can be both disorienting and profoundly relieving.
How it works
01
Start where you are—not where you think you “should” be
Somatic therapy does not ask clients to present themselves. It asks them to be present with themselves. The difference is enormous and often immediately felt. Sessions create a quality of attention in which the body's actual experience is the only relevant information. Not the story, not the impression, not the achievement. What is happening in the body right now, in this breath, in this moment.
02
No scripts. Just what your body needs
There is no right way to begin. The first conversation is genuinely exploratory, and clients are welcome to arrive with whatever language they have for what is happening, even if that language is not yet fully formed. We find the shape of the experience together, and from that finding, a direction emerges.
03
Where science meets soul
What shifts through somatic therapy is not a performance of wellness. It is an actual change in how the body experiences itself and its life. The nervous system's baseline shifts. The capacity to receive genuine rest expands. The gap between how someone appears and how they feel begins to close, not because the appearance changes but because the inside becomes more inhabitable.
Explore my therapy services and specializations
In an industry built on managing perception, the body quietly accumulates what the managed surface cannot express. Somatic therapy is the practice of attending to that accumulation with the seriousness it deserves. Not analyzing it, not reframing it, but listening to it where it actually lives and allowing it to move. Sessions create space for the body's experience to become legible without requiring it to be translated into language immediately. What arises is followed with curiosity rather than interpretation. Over time, clients develop the capacity to trust their own internal knowing in a way that their professional lives may have consistently undermined. All sessions are virtual. The privacy of the medium matters for clients who maintain public profiles in any capacity.
Bodies that have been used as instruments of professional ambition carry a particular relationship with movement: always purposeful, always productive, always in service of something external. Yoga and sound baths offer a different relationship entirely, one in which movement and stillness exist only for the body's own sake. Sound healing sessions use vibrational resonance to create a quality of release that does not depend on intention or effort. The body simply responds to what is offered. Yoga sessions build on that with slow, exploratory movement that has no audience and no standard of completion. For women who spend most of their waking hours performing in some capacity, this is genuinely different territory. These offerings are accessible virtually, which means they can be received privately and without exposure.
In industries built on networking, the difference between genuine connection and performed connection can become invisible over time. Women who are highly skilled at professional relating sometimes find that they have lost access to the authentic kind. Relational Gestalt therapy rebuilds that access from the inside out. Sessions attend to what is actually happening in the relationship between practitioner and client in real time. Where does connection happen easily and where does it get deflected? What does the body do when the relationship feels safe versus when it feels evaluative? These questions are not answered conceptually. They are answered through direct experience in the session. The quality of genuine presence that clients build in sessions tends to transfer into their lives outside of therapy, reshaping the relational landscape in ways that go beyond what the professional context had allowed.
Creative and performance industries produce a particular nervous system profile: high activation, intermittent intense reward, and very little sustained experience of genuine safety. The audition cycle, the pilot cycle, the development cycle. Each one requires intense activation followed by a period of uncertainty that never fully resolves. The body learns that rest is not an option it can afford. Nervous system regulation work creates new experiences of safety that are not dependent on external outcome. Sessions help the body learn that it can be fully present and not at risk, that it can relax without losing its edge, that regulation is not the same as complacency. Over time, the body begins to have more range and more choice. This work is available virtually and appropriate for women across every sector of the entertainment industry and creative professions.
The entertainment industry in Hollywood has a documented history of producing environments in which the boundaries required for safety are routinely violated. Women who have worked in this industry, or adjacent to it, often carry trauma that has been minimized, disbelieved, or absorbed into a general narrative of how things work. Somatic trauma therapy holds the full weight of that experience. Sessions work at the level of what the body has held regardless of whether it was formally acknowledged. The approach is slow, careful, and guided entirely by the client's own readiness. Nothing is rushed, and nothing needs to be perfectly described to be addressed. For women navigating the particular terrain of Hollywood, this work creates a private and fully safe container for healing that does not require public disclosure or institutional validation.
Audition anxiety. Pitch anxiety. The particular quality of dread that accompanies creative vulnerability in a competitive environment. These are not generic anxiety. They are specific to an industry that requires repeated exposure of the self in evaluative contexts. Sound meditation addresses the nervous system underneath the professional framing. The vibrational quality of healing instruments works with the body's own physiology to shift the nervous system out of activated states without requiring the mind to resolve the source of the activation. Something releases before the analysis catches up to explain what just happened. For women whose analytical resources have been deployed continuously in service of their careers, this is a meaningful kind of relief. Sound meditation sessions are offered virtually and available to women at any stage of their practice.
Black women in the entertainment industry navigate a specific set of impossible standards: to be enough without being too much, to be visible without being reduced to a type, to succeed within systems that consistently underinvest in their stories. The labor required to navigate that landscape is extraordinary, and it is labor that is rarely seen or compensated. My anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework holds this experience in its full cultural context. Therapy in this practice does not ask Black women to individualize what is fundamentally a systemic experience. The industry's history, the industry's present, and the body's response to navigating it are all legitimate material for the work. This is a space where Black women in Hollywood do not have to negotiate for the right to be fully seen. They arrive fully seen, and the work proceeds from there.
For women whose bodies have been tools of professional identity, somatic yoga offers a way of inhabiting the body that has nothing to do with how it looks or what it can produce. Sessions are oriented entirely toward interior experience, toward what the body knows when no one is watching and nothing is required. The practice moves through gentle sequences that prioritize sensation over form, breath over choreography, and rest over completion. What accumulates over time is a different kind of relationship with the body, one in which it is a source of intelligence and pleasure rather than a professional instrument. Somatic yoga is offered virtually and accessible to women at any level of physical practice.
Black couples in Hollywood carry the specific complexity of being in an industry that monetizes images of love while often leaving the actual experience of it underresourced. This therapy works with what is real, honoring the culture, the history, and the genuine humanity of each partner. Sessions are offered virtually.
In Hollywood's entertainment and media industries, burnout is normalized and wellbeing is often the first thing cut. My corporate wellness programs bring somatic tools, nervous system education, and sound healing into workplace contexts that recognize that the people behind the work deserve genuine support. Available virtually.
Serving clients in Hollywood and nearby areas
My practice serves women throughout Hollywood and the surrounding communities, including Los Feliz, East Hollywood, Silver Lake, Koreatown, West Hollywood, and the Hollywood Hills. All sessions are virtual. An embedded map of the Hollywood 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 Hollywood
I'm the founder of Power Through Process Wellness Co. and a somatic therapist, yoga practitioner, and sound healing facilitator serving women of color in Hollywood and across Los Angeles. My work draws from somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, relational Gestalt, and trauma-informed mindfulness, held within an anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework. I work with women who are skilled at presenting themselves and ready to come home to themselves. This practice stands on one conviction: 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.
