Somatic Therapy
Connecting with your whole self, when it feels like talking alone can’t create the change you desire
What Is Sensorimotor Psychotherapy?
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a trauma-informed approach that integrates the connection between mind and body. We pay attention to the connections between emotions, thoughts, and movements to explore past painful experiences. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy helps our brains and bodies process trauma in a safe, effective way that leads to a felt sense of safety in our bodies.
Many people come to somatic work after years spent understanding what happened to them — important, but often not enough. When anxiety persists despite every coping skill, somatic therapy offers a different path: embodied healing. It doesn't require a narrative, or even a clear memory. Whether trauma was a single event or the environment you grew up in, this work meets you there.
Going at Your Own Pace
Most people who've lived through trauma don't want to access their bodies — going inside can feel unsafe. This work honors that. It's an invitation, not a demand: a chance to slowly explore your relationship with your body and, over time, feel more at ease within it.
Creating Safety and Stability
Before deeper work begins, we focus on building resources — internal and external supports that create a felt sense of safety, in the body and in the world around you. Internal resources might be a breathing exercise or a peaceful image; external ones might be a trusted friend, a pet, a cup of coffee.
If you live at the extremes — overdrive or shutdown — this work can help you find something more balanced and grounded. Somatic therapy doesn't tell you that you're safe. It helps create safety from the inside out, safety you can feel.
If you're interested in somatic therapy using Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, call or email for a free phone consultation. Our office in Vienna, Virginia is easily accessible from Oakton, Fairfax, Tysons, Great Falls, and surrounding areas, and we offer virtual therapy throughout Virginia. We look forward to connecting with you.
Somatic Therapy: Embodying the Wisdom Within
Reconnecting With What's Happening Inside
Many of us live stuck in our heads — planning, problem-solving, anticipating what's next. Or we get swept up in anxiety and stress until it becomes too much, and we go numb instead. We live in the future or the past instead of the here-and-now.
Somatic therapy offers a way back to yourself. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, developed by Pat Ogden, Ph.D., helps you notice how sensations, movements, and images shape your thoughts and emotions — usually outside conscious awareness — and slows things down enough to feel the connection.
Somatic therapy can help if you experience:
Disconnection from your body, or feel like it's the enemy
A single overwhelming event (a car crash, a medical procedure)
Multiple traumatic experiences with no clear beginning or end
Shame, guilt, or a sense that something is inherently wrong with you
Violence or scary/scared parents in childhood
Small stressors that easily overwhelm your ability to cope, or a pattern of shutdown
Insights that don’t translate into changed emotions or behavior
