What Is Somatic Therapy and Does It Actually Work?
Written by Kelly Gant, MA, LPCC, E-RYT
Our bodies are constantly communicating with us – whether it’s through muscle tension, through breath, or even tears. Sometimes, those signals are easy to ignore or brush aside, but for many people, the body holds on to experiences long after the mind has tried to move on. If you've ever heard a therapist ask "Where do you feel that in your body?" and weren't quite sure what to make of it, or you've simply been curious what somatic therapy actually is, you're in good company.
What Does “Somatic” Mean?
The word somatic comes from the Greek word sōma, meaning "body." In therapy, somatic approaches focus on the connection between bodily sensations, the nervous system, and a person's emotional experiences. While traditional talk therapy might focus on thoughts, memories, and beliefs, somatic therapy brings a person back to their physical experiences.
Therapists may ask a person to notice sensations such as tightness in the chest, warmth in the hands, or a feeling of heaviness in the body while they discuss difficult experiences. A therapist might introduce grounding exercises, breath, gentle movement, and orienting to the room during a session to help a person regulate their nervous system.
Somatic therapy can be a way for the body to release the residual effects of trauma and help us regulate the body's stress responses. It can often be used to help someone when talking alone has not relieved their symptoms or the emotions connected to them.
To understand why this matters, it helps to first look at what can happen in the body when we experience something overwhelming or traumatic.
How Trauma Gets Stuck in the Body
Historically, trauma symptoms were frequently pathologized, focusing on "what is wrong with you" rather than "what happened to you." We now understand that these responses were actually survival mechanisms fired by the nervous system to help keep us safe during experiences that felt overwhelming. When the brain detects danger or a threat, it activates a series of emergency responses. These reactions are coordinated by the autonomic nervous system, which releases stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to prepare the body for action. Heart rate increases, muscles tense, and breathing becomes rapid. We might feel nauseous or lightheaded. This all happens in less than a split second in areas of our brain that are below conscious thought.
These emergency responses are commonly known as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. You may be familiar with some of them:
Fight — the urge to confront or push back against a threat. This might look like anger, irritability, or a sudden need to argue or defend.
Flight — the urge to escape or get away. This can present as avoidance, restlessness, an inability to sit still, or a tendency to stay very busy.
Freeze — the body's way of bracing or shutting down when fighting or fleeing doesn't feel possible. Someone may feel stuck, numb, disconnected, or unable to act or speak.
Fawn — a more recently recognized response, introduced by psychotherapist Pete Walker in the early 2000s, and a newer addition to our understanding compared to fight or flight, which was first described in the 1910s and 1920s, and freeze, which emerged in trauma literature in the 1970s. The fawn response is the impulse to appease, people-please, or put others' needs ahead of our own in order to stay safe or avoid abandonment.
A client may intellectually understand that they are safe, but their body continues to react with fight-flight-freeze or the fawn response. These are all normal responses when we are under threat. However, when a person experiences overwhelming stress or trauma, the nervous system may get "stuck" in these patterns of activation or shutdown. Instead of returning to a baseline state of feeling safe after the threat passes, the body may continue to act as if it is still under threat. This might look like chronic tension, anxiety, panic attacks, emotional numbness, dissociation, or hypervigilance.
This is not a personal failing, but actually the genius of the nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. And researchers have spent decades helping us understand why.
The Science Behind Somatic Therapy
Neuroscience and the field of trauma research have come a long way in explaining why somatic approaches can be helpful. Researchers began looking closely at why the body responds this way and what it might take to help the nervous system find its way back to safety. Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score, helped establish that trauma is not just a psychological event but a physiological one, stored in the body's tissues, nervous system, and muscle memory. Peter A. Levine, PhD, who developed Somatic Experiencing, found that when the body's survival responses don't complete their natural cycle, that incomplete energy can stay held in the nervous system long after the threat is gone. This is why two people can experience the same event and be affected very differently, and why understanding the body is so central to understanding trauma.
Janina Fisher, PhD, developed Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, integrating neurobiology, somatic interventions, and parts work, and Arielle Schwartz, PhD, created Resilience-Informed Therapy, blending somatic psychology, EMDR, mindfulness, and relational psychotherapy. Collectively, their work has helped illustrate the important ties between trauma, the nervous system, and how somatic approaches can help a person regain a sense of safety and regulation.
So what does this actually look like in practice?
What Happens in a Somatic Therapy Session?
Somatic therapy can help address what is stuck by working directly with bodily sensations and nervous system regulation. In somatic therapy sessions, the pace is often slower and more experiential than in traditional talk therapy. In session, this might look like a therapist helping a client to track what is happening in their bodies moment by moment. For example, a therapist might ask a client to notice subtle sensations, such as tension, tingling, pressure, warmth or coolness, or tightness, while talking about a stressful experience. This process of “tracking” can increase a client’s awareness of how emotions and memories show up in the physical body.
Nervous System Regulation and the Window of Tolerance
Another important element of somatic therapy is nervous system regulation. Clients learn skills such as grounding, breath awareness, and orienting to cues of safety in the environment around them. These practices help regulate the nervous system, effectively telling the system, “We are safe,” so that emotional processing can occur. Somatic therapy can help a person stay within their “window of tolerance” by moving slowly and teaching the nervous system to shift between moments of activation and calm or safety. Eventually, this pendulation between nervous system states can help a person feel less reactive, more grounded, and more connected to themselves rather than feeling overwhelmed. Somatic therapy can help a person learn to trust their senses, notice early signs of stress, and eventually use these coping strategies to feel more at ease.
How Somatic Therapy Works with Other Approaches
Many therapists combine somatic therapy with other modalities. For example, EMDR therapy often incorporates somatic awareness to help clients notice shifts in body sensations as traumatic memories are reprocessed. Mindfulness-based approaches may also be used to help clients notice physical sensations and emotions with curiosity and non-judgment. Arielle Schwartz notes that combining somatic therapy and EMDR can enhance the effectiveness of both therapies (Schwartz & Maiberger, 2018).
Who Can Somatic Therapy Help?
Somatic therapy can be helpful for a wide range of challenges. It can be used with individuals experiencing trauma-related symptoms or PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, chronic stress, burnout, emotional numbness, or dissociation. It can be used to help create a sense of safety and connection with self. What resides in the mind is often expressed in the body, and addressing both is important so a person may feel safe, begin to build resilience, and ultimately find healing.
Join Kelly on April 15th
If you're curious about exploring this work in person, Kelly is hosting Stress, the Body, and How We Heal: A Nervous System Workshop on Wednesday, April 15th, from 6:00 – 7:30 pm MDT at Space DNVR in Wheat Ridge, CO. It's a 90-minute experiential workshop — no prior experience needed, all abilities welcome. You can find details and registration atcenterpoint-healing.com/group-events
Reference
Schwartz, A., & Maiberger, B. (2018). EMDR therapy and somatic psychology: Interventions to enhance embodiment in trauma treatment. W. W. Norton & Company.
Book Recommendations
Embracing Our Fragmented Selves: A Workbook for Trauma Survivors and Therapists by Janina Fisher, PhD
The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control and Becoming Whole by Arielle Schwartz, PhD
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