Somatic therapy
Somatic approach supports awareness and connections between one’s mind and body through touch and movement. Somatic sessions take many forms, ranging from quiet stillness to vigorous activity. Goals for a session vary based on your own needs; such as relief from physical pain, finding inner calm from emotional distress, or support for development.
How can a somatic therapy session serve?
Somatic therapies bridge the connections between body and mind through movement, resonant touch, breath, and mindfulness. How will your session go for yourself and your child?
- Relieve discomfort and pain
- Reduce tension in specific muscles & fascia
- Increased suppleness
- Release restriction on nerves
- Quiet inner exploration & awareness
- Deep relaxation
- Process difficult emotional events
- Wake up neurological networks for easier function
- Light play in developmental movement therapy
You take the lead on where a session will go for yourself and your child. Given your goals, I can facilitate release and inner connection. You and your child can have more ease in being and in activity.
Support for your journey
In a somatic therapy session you connect with your own innate resources for a direct, felt experience. Compassionate awareness of your body and mind and its wisdom is a place of discovery, healing, and development.
Somatic therapies and somatic education includes a fertile field of approaches and practices; some ancient, including yoga, and some freshly articulated, such as Body Mind Centering®. Modern somatic therapies reference anatomy, physiology and child development in movement awareness and touch therapies.
All somatic approaches share a common perspective: Movement is life, from the vibrancy of each cell to your whole engaged activity in the world. Movement awareness is a primary connection between your body and your mind. Movement is a natural mode of healing.
Pathways in – Somatic modalities
The somatic modalities that I incorporate into sessions most often are:
- Craniosacral therapy for newborns and young children
- Myofascial toning therapy & craniosacral therapy for women
- Mindfulness practices for women
- Developmental movement therapy for babies, toddlers and adults!
Awareness in inner movement
We can bring awareness to internal movement, such as breathing. We can witness movement in action, such as movement for self care. Somatic bodywork increases fluid flow, nourishing tissues for increased suppleness. Mindfulness in motion takes place in both our inner world and our actions in the outer world. I can support you in entering into mindfulness of your heart-mind activity, where you can unearth your heart’s yearnings and desire to move on this knowing.
Movement play
I also support the awakening of your child’s natural developmental movements which form emerging minds and growing bodies. Your child can form a healthy sense of self through joyful activity. The developmental movements of infancy create specific body-mind connections for ease in the mind and in movement.
Movement play is a lifelong resource for all of us from childhood through the continuous changes of adulthood. Developmental movement in the first years underlies every arena of an individual’s development; physical, emotional/social, attention/cognition and emerging sense of self. With developmental movement therapy at any age we can revisit and renew ourselves with simple, engaging activities. I tailor a program that enables you or your child to come into your own.
Somatic therapy and education intrinsically trusts the wisdom of one’s body-mind with its multitude of healing functions. At any age, from infancy to adulthood, the body-mind is able to self-correct if one goes off course when we give mindful attention to activity. In this way you can trust the unfolding of your own – and your child’s – healing process and development.
How are somatic therapies different from other bodywork or exercise?
Somatic therapies and education bridge from traditional practices to new approaches. Traditions of yoga and qigong incorporate movement with awareness, while meditation practices from many spiritual sources bring one into stillness to know the mind.
Somatic therapy includes our experiences of movement in our inner world, including breath, fascia and fluid rhythms as well as our awareness of moving through the outer world. While pregnant your awareness encompasses the baby that you carry within.
While many bodywork modalities are relaxing, they don’t foster mindfulness. Because they don’t nourish suppleness of tissue, pain recurs – and requires more sessions. Exercise tones muscles but doesn’t foster awareness or specific brain connections that are developmental at any age.
My role as facilitator is to help you directly experience what is going on inside. Whether in movement or in stillness, you or your child can wake up to the present moment for more ease.
What to expect in a session
Sessions may include movement, touch, sounding, body-based imagery or finding release in physical or emotional challenges. I employ the resonant touch and developmental movement of somatic therapy that is uniquely relevant for babies and mothers. I draw on developmental movement as the wellspring of body and mind integration for all ages. For prenatal support you may work one-on-one, or may work together with your partner or your birth team. You can foster bonding with your baby in developmental movement for birth and mothering.
Find what to expect in a session for women at myofascial therapy and for infants and toddlers at craniosacral therapy and developmental movement therapy. Children through school age can also receive craniosacral therapy.