Somatic Therapy | Yoga and Sound Baths in Pasadena | CA
Pressure that accumulates over years does not release through understanding alone. It has to move somewhere, and when it is not given a way to move, it stays in the body, in the jaw, the shoulders, the solar plexus, the place behind the sternum where emotion gathers and does not discharge. Power Through Process is a somatic therapy and sound healing practice built around that reality. It offers women of color a place to finally let what has been building for a long time begin to move.
The Rose Bowl sits in a natural bowl in the Arroyo Seco floodplain, surrounded by the oak-lined trails of the adjacent parkway that cyclists and runners use in the early morning before the rest of Pasadena wakes up. Old Town along Colorado Blvd holds the commercial identity of a city that has always known its own worth. The Caltech campus sits quietly behind its walls off California Blvd, producing a specific kind of intellectual intensity in the surrounding neighborhood. Paseo Colorado and the Lake Ave district serve as the city's more accessible face, while the Altadena border to the north and the Arroyo Seco to the west give the area a greener texture than much of the basin. San Marino lies just south, and the San Gabriel Mountains form the backdrop to the entire tableau. Pasadena is a city that has been here a long time and intends to stay.
The women who come to somatic therapy in Pasadena are often high-achieving, deeply rooted, and privately exhausted. They have built lives here or come here for the prestige of the institutions, the quality of the schools, the relative stability. What they have not always been given is a space where the cost of that stability can be named and attended to. My practice is that space.
How it works
01
Start where you are—not where you think you “should” be
The body keeps a different account than the mind. It holds the cost of every moment of survival, every performance of fine, every swallowed need. Somatic therapy begins by honoring that account rather than trying to override it. Sessions create the conditions for the body's held experience to become visible and, over time, to release.
02
No scripts. Just what your body needs
The first conversation is genuinely unhurried. We explore what brings someone here, what the body has been expressing that has been difficult to name, and whether this approach and this relationship feel like the right fit. Nothing is decided before it is ready to be decided. The beginning is as gentle as it needs to be.
03
Where science meets soul
What somatic therapy, yoga, and sound healing build does not require active maintenance to sustain. It becomes part of the nervous system's new operating range. Clients find that the changes they experience in sessions begin to show up in their daily lives, not as techniques they apply but as qualities they simply embody. The foundation grows stronger over time.
Explore my therapy services and specializations
The women who arrive at somatic therapy in Pasadena have often been high-functioning for so long that the exhaustion has become structural. It is not a phase they are going through. It is the water they are swimming in. Somatic therapy is for exactly that kind of exhaustion, the kind that has become too embedded to be addressed by vacation or by trying harder to rest. Sessions attend to what the body is communicating right now: the quality of the breath, the sensation in the chest, the way the body organizes itself around certain topics. Over time, clients develop a capacity to hear those communications and respond to them, which is an entirely different skill from understanding what causes them. Sessions are virtual and accessible from any private space. The depth of the work does not depend on the location.
There is a quality of exhaustion that has layers. The outer layer is the daily tiredness. Below that is the older tiredness. Below that, sometimes, is something that has been there so long it has stopped being registered as an experience and has simply become the background. Yoga and sound baths work through those layers incrementally, not all at once, but consistently over time. Sound healing sessions use vibrational resonance to reach the deeper layers where words and movement cannot easily go. The body responds to the frequency of healing instruments in a way that bypasses the protective defenses the mind has constructed, and something releases that has been held in place for a very long time. Yoga sessions build the capacity to remain present in the body as that releasing happens. These offerings are available virtually and welcome women who have no prior experience with either practice.
Long-established communities can carry long-established relational patterns. The way someone learned to navigate relationships in a family, in a school, in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone. Relational Gestalt therapy examines those patterns with curiosity rather than judgment, tracing them back to their origins and exploring what alternatives are available. Sessions use the real-time experience of the therapeutic relationship as the primary material. Not the past, not the theory, but what is actually alive between practitioner and client in this moment. What the body does when that relationship feels safe. What changes when something genuine is said out loud for the first time. Clients who engage in this work often find that it reaches into their other relationships in ways they did not anticipate. The changes in how they show up in the therapy room tend to ripple outward.
In communities with high educational and professional standards, the nervous system is often trained to stay ready in ways that never fully turn off. The vigilance that produced the grade, the promotion, the recognition. It served a purpose. It also has not learned that the purpose has changed, and it keeps running the same program. Nervous system regulation work gently disrupts that program by creating new experiences, ones in which the body discovers that safety is genuinely available rather than something that has to be earned through performance. Over time, the default shifts. The baseline lowers. The quality of daily experience changes in ways that are difficult to articulate and impossible to deny. This work is offered virtually and available to women wherever they are in their understanding of their own nervous system.
In communities shaped by high expectations and visible success, trauma that is not dramatically obvious often goes unacknowledged. The accumulated weight of having to be exceptional in order to be accepted. The emotional cost of achieving in environments that were not fully welcoming. These are real sources of stored stress, and the body holds them regardless of whether they are named. Somatic trauma therapy holds space for the full range of what has been held, from the recognized to the unnamed, from the dramatic to the quiet and cumulative. Sessions attend to the body's own readiness rather than any external timeline, moving only at the pace that the nervous system can integrate. For women in Pasadena carrying the complexity of high-achieving lives alongside personal and cultural history, this work provides a container that is genuinely comprehensive in what it can hold and address.
Anxiety that has been present for a long time can stop being identified as anxiety. It just becomes the way things feel, the alertness that is always there, the tightness that is always somewhere in the body, the difficulty being fully present in any moment without some part of the mind running a parallel assessment of what might go wrong. Sound meditation reaches that ambient quality directly. Healing instruments used in sound meditation sessions produce vibrations that interact with the nervous system at a frequency that anxiety cannot quite defend against. Something in the body releases before the mind has organized a response. Clients often describe the experience as the first time they have been quiet inside in a very long time. Sessions are offered virtually and available to women with any relationship to meditation practice.
For Black women navigating institutions and communities that were not designed with their full humanity in mind, the tax of that navigation is constant. In academic communities like the one surrounding Caltech, or in the professional networks of a city with Pasadena's particular social structure, the experience of being Black and excellent in spaces that resist holding both simultaneously is a specific kind of exhaustion. My practice holds an anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework that places that exhaustion in its full context, as a systemic and cultural reality rather than a personal limitation. Therapy here does not require Black women to reframe their experience in order to make it more comfortable for others. The experience is held as it actually is. This is a space where the full complexity of a Black woman's life is welcomed, attended to, and met with care that is equal to what she carries.
The trails along the Arroyo Seco and the paths around the Rose Bowl invite a certain kind of physical presence that is different from achievement-oriented exercise. Somatic yoga extends that invitation into a more interior direction, offering a practice that uses movement not to produce an outcome but to deepen the relationship with what the body already knows. Sessions move at a pace that allows sensation to be genuinely noticed rather than moved through. Clients are guided to bring the kind of attention to their physical experience that the rest of their lives rarely permits. What emerges over time is a quality of self-knowledge that is tactile and immediate, different from anything the analytical mind produces. Somatic yoga is offered virtually and is available to women at any level of physical practice or body awareness.
For Black couples in Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, the particular pressures of achievement-oriented communities can create relational dynamics in which growth is expected but vulnerability is not. Black couples therapy in this practice rebalances that, making room for the full range of what a relationship needs to thrive. Sessions are available virtually.
Research, healthcare, and professional organizations in Pasadena operate within cultures of excellence that can leave very little room for genuine rest and repair. My corporate wellness offerings bring trauma-informed somatic practices and sound healing into organizational contexts that are ready to invest in the long-term wellbeing of their people. Available virtually.
Serving clients in Pasadena and nearby areas
My virtual practice serves women throughout Pasadena and the surrounding communities, including Altadena, San Marino, Arcadia, Temple City, Monrovia, and neighboring areas of the San Gabriel Valley. The sessions are accessible from any private space, which means the distance between Pasadena and its neighboring communities is never a barrier. An embedded map of the Pasadena 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 Pasadena
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 Pasadena and across the greater Los Angeles area. My work draws from somatic experiencing, polyvagal-informed practice, relational Gestalt, and trauma-informed mindfulness, held within an anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework. I work with women who are living accomplished lives and carrying a private exhaustion that none of those accomplishments have addressed. This practice is grounded in 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 important 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.
