Somatic Therapy | Yoga and Sound Baths in Westwood | CA
High achievement and chronic exhaustion are not opposites. They are, for many women, constant companions. The degree, the career, the credibility earned in rooms that were not easy to enter. And underneath all of it, a tiredness that no credential can address. Power Through Process is a somatic therapy and sound healing practice built for exactly this territory, for the woman who has earned everything and still cannot find her way to genuine ease.
Westwood sits at the western edge of the city, anchored by the UCLA campus whose Royce Hall and Bruin Walk define the northern boundary, and whose medical complex on Westwood Plaza draws one of the highest concentrations of healthcare professionals and graduate students in California. The Westwood Village commercial district runs along Broxton Ave, a few blocks from the Hammer Museum on Wilshire Blvd and the Geffen Playhouse on Charles E. Young Drive. To the east, Century City rises with its high-rise towers and its Westfield mall. Veteran Ave runs south toward Culver City. Brentwood begins just north along San Vicente Blvd. This is a neighborhood of sustained intellectual ambition, where the pressure to be impressive is ambient.
The women who seek somatic therapy in Westwood are often in the midst of or just past major achievements. Medical school, a doctorate, a promotion, a tenure decision. And they are discovering that achievement has not resolved the inner experience the way they expected. The body has been postponing something for a long time, waiting for a moment of safety that academic or professional success was supposed to provide. My work creates that moment of safety directly, without waiting for the external circumstances to arrange themselves.
How it works
01
Start where you are—not where you think you “should” be
Cognitive frameworks are useful, but the body does not heal through understanding alone. Somatic therapy works at the level where experience is actually stored, in the nervous system's patterns, in the breath, in the muscular holdings that developed as protective responses and persisted long after the protection was needed. Sessions create space for those holdings to be noticed, named, and released.
02
No scripts. Just what your body needs
The first conversation is not an intake process. It is an actual conversation, unhurried and low-pressure, where we establish whether this work and this relationship feel like the right fit. No credentials are required to reach out. No level of crisis. Just the sense that something in the body is asking for attention.
03
Where science meets soul
The work this practice does produces change that becomes structural rather than situational. Clients do not manage their symptoms differently. They find that their body's baseline relationship with stress, safety, and rest has actually shifted. What required effort before becomes natural. What was inaccessible before becomes available. These are not outcomes that require ongoing maintenance. They are the new foundation.
Explore my therapy services and specializations
The most academically sophisticated women in a client's life can be the ones who are most disconnected from their own bodies. The training required for advanced degrees, for demanding professional roles, for sustained high performance, often comes at the expense of inner attunement. The body gets managed so that the mind can stay productive. Somatic therapy reverses that orientation. Sessions focus on rebuilding the relationship between sensation and meaning, between what the body experiences and what the self can receive from that experience. Clients begin to develop what they often describe as an internal signal, a growing sense of what is actually happening inside rather than what they think should be happening. Sessions are virtual. This is a practice that does not require geography, only presence.
For women who have optimized nearly every area of their lives, yoga and sound baths offer something that optimization cannot produce: a genuine experience of the body's natural state without any project imposed on it. Not rest as recovery for future productivity. Rest as its own valid destination. Sound baths use the body's own vibratory nature to create resonance that supports nervous system regulation. The experience is physical rather than cognitive, and it produces a quality of settling that many clients describe as unlike anything they have accessed through conventional wellness practices. Yoga sessions move slowly and with full attention to sensation, building the capacity to inhabit the body with curiosity rather than management. Both offerings are accessible virtually and designed for women regardless of prior experience with either practice.
Achievement-oriented environments often produce a relational style built around competence and self-sufficiency. The person who solves problems, who does not burden others, who maintains independence as a form of dignity. Relational Gestalt therapy works with the cost of that style and the possibility of something more mutual. This work uses the immediate therapeutic relationship as its primary medium. What happens in the room when support is offered? How does the body respond when a need is acknowledged rather than preemptively managed? These experiences in the session become templates for new ways of being in relationship outside of it. Clients from high-achieving backgrounds often find this work among the most challenging and most rewarding they have done, because it addresses the dimension of their experience that their professional competence has not been able to reach.
Graduate school, residency, the early years of a demanding career: these are nervous system training programs as much as they are professional ones. They condition the body to stay in a heightened state of readiness, to treat rest as negligence, to experience stillness as a kind of threat. The body learns these lessons thoroughly, and they do not unlearn themselves when the training period ends. Nervous system regulation work addresses those conditioning patterns directly. Sessions help the body to have new experiences of safety, ones that accumulate and gradually expand the range of states the nervous system can access. Rest becomes genuinely possible rather than just theoretically available. This work is offered virtually and is appropriate for women at any stage of the recovery from high-pressure training or career environments.
For women in academic and professional environments, trauma often arrives without the label. The hostile environment that required constant vigilance. The evaluations that felt more like judgments of worthiness than assessments of competence. The accumulated microaggressions that were never acknowledged as harmful. Somatic trauma therapy holds space for the full range of these experiences. Sessions work at the level of the nervous system's response rather than the level of narrative. What the body does when certain memories or contexts are activated is the material. Working with that directly tends to produce relief that the mind's attempts to reframe the experience could not achieve. For women in Westwood and the broader UCLA corridor navigating the specific stresses of academic and professional ambition, this work offers a container that is genuinely equal to the complexity of what they carry.
Anxiety in high-performing environments frequently masquerades as conscientiousness. The inability to stop working, the perfectionism that is always finding one more thing to correct, the difficulty being present in any moment that is not actively productive. Sound meditation offers a direct interruption of that cycle, not through discipline or effort but through the body's own response to vibrational resonance. During sessions, the vibrations of healing instruments produce a shift in the nervous system's state that the thinking mind cannot prevent or manage away. The body simply receives what is offered. Many clients experience this as the first genuine rest they have had in a very long time. Sessions are available virtually and welcome women with no prior experience of meditation alongside those with established practices.
Black women navigating academic and professional institutions carry a dual burden that non-Black colleagues rarely see. The intellectual labor of the work itself and the additional labor of managing how their presence is received, interpreted, and questioned. This second tax is real, documented, and cumulative, and it requires a therapeutic container that acknowledges it explicitly. My anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework does exactly that. The work does not ask Black women to set aside the racial and cultural dimensions of their experience in order to access healing. Those dimensions are part of what the healing addresses. Black women in Westwood, whether navigating the UCLA environment or working in the professional world around it, deserve care that sees them fully and meets them there. This practice offers that.
Academic and professional training tends to produce a highly verbal relationship with experience. Everything gets processed through language and analysis. Somatic yoga introduces a different kind of intelligence, one that is tactile and immediate, that lives in the quality of a breath or the sensation of movement rather than in the words used to describe them. Sessions are structured to move slowly enough for sensation to actually be noticed, and with enough space for what is noticed to matter. The practice builds over time into a form of non-verbal self-knowledge that complements rather than contradicts the analytical skills clients have developed through their professional lives. Somatic yoga is offered virtually and is accessible to women at any level of physical practice.
For Black couples navigating the academic and professional corridors of Westwood and west Los Angeles, the relational cost of high-achievement environments is real and rarely named. This therapy names it, and works with it, creating space for the relationship to become a source of restoration rather than another context requiring performance. Sessions are virtual.
Academic and professional organizations in Westwood and the UCLA corridor operate within some of the most demanding environments in higher education and research. My corporate wellness offerings bring trauma-informed somatic practices and nervous system regulation tools to teams and departments that are ready to invest in sustainable wellbeing. Available virtually.
Serving clients in Westwood and nearby areas
My practice serves women throughout Westwood and the surrounding communities, including Brentwood, Century City, West Los Angeles, Mar Vista, Palms, and the broader UCLA corridor. All sessions are offered virtually, which means the quality of care does not depend on any client's proximity to a physical office. An embedded map of the Westwood 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 Westwood
I'm a somatic therapist, yoga practitioner, and sound healing facilitator, and the founder of Power Through Process Wellness Co. I serve women of color across Westwood, the UCLA community, and the greater Los Angeles area. My practice draws from somatic experiencing, polyvagal-informed care, relational Gestalt, and trauma-informed mindfulness, held within an anti-oppressive, decolonizing framework. I built this work for women who have done everything they were supposed to do and are now ready to do something for themselves. My practice is rooted 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 work that matters most.
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.
