Somatic Therapy | Yoga and Sound Baths in Marietta | GA
Armor that begins as protection can, over many years, become the cage it was meant to guard against. The emotional containment that kept someone safe in environments that were not. The self-sufficiency that was adaptive when depending on others was not an option. The strength that was built not from choice but from necessity. Power Through Process is a somatic therapy and sound healing practice for women of color who can feel the armor they built and are ready to find out what is underneath it.
Marietta Square sits at the heart of a city that has been the Cobb County seat for nearly two centuries, its amphitheater and restaurants anchoring a downtown that has cultivated its character rather than simply inherited it. Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park rises to the northwest, its wooded ridges and Civil War-era earthworks a reminder that this particular landscape has absorbed more than one kind of history. Life University sits along Cobb Parkway, while Kennesaw State University anchors the northern part of the county with its considerable student and faculty population. Barrett Pkwy and the Marietta City Schools corridor serve one of the largest suburban communities in Georgia, and the Big Chicken on US-41 has become the kind of landmark that tells you exactly where you are in a way that has nothing to do with official geography. Smyrna lies to the east, and the entire Cobb County corridor runs from the Chattahoochee River on the east to Cherokee County on the north.
Women who seek somatic therapy in Marietta often come at a particular moment: when the armor that served them so faithfully for so long has started to feel like it is working against them. The emotional containment that was once adaptive has become isolation. The self-sufficiency has become loneliness. The strength has become exhaustion. My practice meets that moment with both respect for what the armor protected and genuine curiosity about what becomes possible when it finally softens.
How it works
01
Start where you are—not where you think you “should” be
Armor is not just a psychological construct. It is a physical one. The way the chest braces. The way the jaw sets. The way the body organizes itself around the expectation of challenge. Somatic therapy works with the physical dimension of protection, attending to the body's holdings with care and creating conditions for them to begin to relax.
02
No scripts. Just what your body needs
There is nothing to perform in the first conversation. No correct way to present the need, no level of suffering required to justify beginning. What matters is simply the sense that something is being held that deserves attention. The first conversation is honest and calm and oriented entirely toward whether this work and this relationship feel right.
03
Where science meets soul
The softening that happens through somatic therapy is not dramatic. It accumulates in small ways that become significant over time: the moment when a feeling is expressed before the edit can catch it, the conversation in which a need is stated without apology, the morning when the body wakes without its familiar bracing. These moments compound into something genuinely different.
Explore my therapy services and specializations
The women who built their armor for the best of reasons often carry it with the most thoroughness. Every contingency covered. Every vulnerability managed. Every potential source of pain preemptively addressed. Somatic therapy creates a space where that thoroughness is gently invited to rest. Not to be dismantled but to be put down for long enough to discover what the body is actually experiencing underneath it. Sessions attend to the physical experience of the present moment: the quality of the breath, the texture of sensation in the body, the way the system organizes itself around what is alive in the room. Over time, clients develop a growing capacity to be in contact with their own experience without the reflex to protect against it. Sessions are virtual and accessible from any private space.
Armor is held in the body. It lives in the muscles that stay contracted, the breath that stays shallow, the physical holding patterns that developed as responses to specific experiences and persisted long after those experiences ended. Yoga and sound baths work directly with those holding patterns, offering the body a different kind of experience than the one that produced the armor. Sound healing uses vibrational resonance to support the nervous system in releasing physical holdings that have become habitual. The body responds to what is offered in a way that is not dependent on the mind's willingness to participate. Yoga sessions build the capacity to remain present as that release happens, moving slowly and with attention through whatever surfaces. These offerings are available virtually and welcome women who are encountering bodywork for the first time.
The woman in armor often experiences her relationships through the armor rather than through herself. She knows what she is willing to give. She is considerably less clear on what she is willing to receive. Relational Gestalt therapy works with exactly this dynamic, using the live experience of the therapeutic relationship to explore what it feels like to be in genuine contact with another person. Sessions attend to what happens between practitioner and client when the armor has been put down for an hour. What does genuine contact feel like? What does the body do when it is neither protecting nor performing? What arises when care is offered without any requirement attached? These are not rhetorical questions. They are explored through actual experience in the session. Clients frequently describe this work as the most unexpectedly transformative thing they have done, because it addresses the dimension of their lives that all their protective intelligence could not reach.
The nervous system that learned to power the armor is a nervous system that has been running in a state of elevated readiness for a very long time. It is doing exactly what it learned to do. Nervous system regulation work does not criticize that learning. It expands what is available alongside it, creating new experiences of ease that begin to widen the range of what the body knows how to inhabit. As those experiences accumulate, the nervous system's baseline shifts. The armor does not disappear, but it begins to feel optional rather than mandatory. The body begins to have more choice about when to brace and when to soften. That choice itself is the healing. This work is offered virtually and appropriate for women at any stage of their relationship with their own protective patterns.
Armor has origins. It was built in response to something specific, even if the specific has become so distant that it feels like simply who someone is. Somatic trauma therapy works gently with those origins, not by forcing someone to return to what was difficult but by creating enough safety in the present that the body can begin to loosen the defenses that were organized around the past. Sessions are slow and always paced by the client's own sense of what feels workable. The goal is never to remove protection prematurely. It is to create conditions in which the body discovers that the protection is no longer the only option available. What clients find through this work is often more spacious than they expected, a quality of inner room that the armor had been preventing them from knowing was there.
Armor and anxiety are close relatives. The armor was built to manage the anxiety of being vulnerable. The anxiety now requires the armor to feel safe. Sound meditation interrupts this cycle at the level of the nervous system, using vibrational frequency to create an experience of safety that is not dependent on the armor being in place. During sessions, the resonance of healing instruments creates physiological conditions in which the nervous system can briefly experience ease without its usual protective structure. Clients often find that those brief experiences of unarmored ease become, over time, something the body learns to access more broadly. Sessions are available virtually and welcome women at any level of prior meditation experience.
For Black women, the armor was often built in direct response to environments that required it. The workplace that punished authenticity. The family system that could not hold need. The cultural expectation that Black women be strong regardless of what strength costs. Therapy for Black women in my practice holds the armor with deep respect for what it protected and genuine care for the person wearing it. My anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework understands that asking Black women to soften, to be vulnerable, to put the armor down, is a request that can only be made safely when the space offering it is genuinely safe. This practice is built to be that space. What is available to Black women here is not the dismantling of their strength but the discovery that their strength has a softer center that deserves as much tending as everything it has protected.
Armor in the body manifests as specific physical holdings, and somatic yoga is one of the most direct practices for beginning to identify and gently release them. Not through stretching aggressively toward a new range of motion, but through slow, breath-led exploration of where the body has been contracted around its protection and what it feels like to let some of that contraction ease. Sessions move with complete attention to sensation, pausing where the body communicates something significant and following the thread of what surfaces with curiosity rather than agenda. Over time, the physical armor begins to have more flexibility. Not because it was forced to change but because the body discovered it was safe enough to. Somatic yoga is offered virtually and is appropriate for women whose primary relationship with their bodies has been one of protection rather than pleasure.
Black couples in Marietta and Cobb County carry the particular complexity of building partnership in communities that are simultaneously deeply familiar and actively changing. This therapy creates a stable, culturally attuned space in which both partners can do the relational work their love deserves. Sessions are available virtually.
Cobb County organizations and Marietta-based businesses operate in a region that is growing rapidly and managing that growth with varying degrees of attention to human wellbeing. My corporate wellness programs bring trauma-informed somatic tools and nervous system regulation practices to teams that want to do it differently. Available virtually.
Serving clients in Marietta and nearby areas
My practice serves women throughout Marietta and the surrounding Cobb County communities, including Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell, and neighboring parts of the northwest Atlanta metro. All sessions are offered virtually, accessible from any private space. An embedded map of the Marietta 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 Marietta
I'm a somatic therapist, yoga practitioner, and sound healing facilitator, and the founder of Power Through Process Wellness Co., serving women of color in Marietta and across the Atlanta metro. My work is grounded in an anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework and integrates somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, relational Gestalt, and trauma-informed mindfulness. I work with women who built their armor for excellent reasons and are ready to find out what is waiting beneath it. My practice is built on the belief that 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 is the most vital work there is.
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.
