What Is Somatic Therapy?

Discover Somatic Therapy & Holistic Counselling Fremantle, Perth
& Australia wide Online

Somatic therapy is a holistic, body-based approach that helps you tune in to the physical and emotional signals stored in your nervous system. Many clients come to somatic work when talking alone hasn’t brought lasting relief. This work helps you feel safe in your body, process unresolved experiences, and build real resilience from the inside out.

Whether you’re navigating trauma, stress, anxiety, fertility, pregnancy, birth, motherhood, menopause, or emotional overwhelm — this gentle approach offers a path toward feeling grounded, balanced, and emotionally whole.

What Does "Body-Oriented or Somatic Psychotherapy" Actually Mean?

Your body holds memories. Even if you don’t “remember” a difficult experience, your nervous system does.

Somatic or body-oriented therapy helps you explore the physical sensations, emotions, and unconscious patterns that live in your body. With curiosity and compassion, we begin to release what’s been stored — not by forcing or reliving — but by listening, supporting, and regulating gently.

Zen raked circles in sand symbolising the body’s memory and the gentle release of stored trauma through somatic psychotherapy

Why Work With the Body?

When we experience trauma or prolonged stress, the part of the brain responsible for speech often goes offline. This is why some experiences feel “unspeakable.” Somatic therapy helps you process without needing the perfect words.

By working with breath, awareness, movement, and the nervous system, we create the internal conditions for healing to unfold naturally — in your body’s time.

New spiral shoot emerging from green leaves symbolising nervous system healing and trauma recovery through somatic therapy

My Somatic Therapy Approach

Here are some of the methods I use in session. You don’t need to choose — we’ll find what feels right for your system together.

  • Somatic EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is a body-based trauma therapy that combines traditional EMDR with somatic awareness. It gently helps you release trauma stored in your nervous system, so you can feel more grounded, safe, and emotionally free.

  • A depth-oriented, holistic approach that honours symptoms, dreams, and body signals as meaningful. Processwork helps you navigate emotional struggles, inner conflicts, and life transitions with more awareness and empowerment.

  • Drawing from breathwork, trauma resiliency, and Somatic Experiencing (SE), these tools help your body regulate and recover from stress. We work gently with sensations, not stories, to build safety and resilience from within.

  • A blend of modern psychotherapy and ancient wisdom. Mindfulness practices support you to observe emotions with kindness, build body awareness, and move through difficult experiences with more presence and compassion.

  • Pre- and Perinatal Psychotherapy explores how our earliest experiences — even from in-utero life or birth — can shape our emotional patterns and nervous system responses. This gentle work helps heal deep imprints, often beneath conscious memory, that affect your sense of safety, connection, and identity.

  • Grounded in Polyvagal Theory, this approach helps you understand and support your nervous system’s natural rhythms of safety, connection, and protection. Through somatic awareness, breath, and co-regulation, we work with your body’s signals — not against them — to create lasting emotional safety and resilience.