Somatic therapy recognizes that therapy is stored and expressed in the body — and that healing requires attention to bodily experience, not just thoughts.
The Somatic Perspective on Therapy
Traditional talk therapy addresses therapy primarily through cognition. Somatic approaches add the body's wisdom:
- Therapy creates physical tension, postural patterns, and nervous system states that maintain it
- The body 'keeps the score' — especially when therapy has trauma origins
- Bottom-up (body to mind) processing can access material unavailable to cognitive approaches
Somatic Therapy Approaches for Therapy
Somatic Experiencing (SE): Developed by Peter Levine, tracks bodily sensations to resolve trauma and therapy.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Integrates somatic techniques with attachment theory for therapy.
EMDR: Uses bilateral stimulation to process traumatic memories contributing to therapy.
Body-oriented CBT: Adds somatic awareness to standard cognitive-behavioral work.
When Somatic Therapy Is Especially Helpful for Therapy
Somatic approaches are particularly valuable when therapy has trauma origins, when talk therapy has plateaued, or when physical symptoms are prominent.