MY Somatic therapy services
My NeuroAffective Touch (NAT) and Somatic Experiencing™ (SE) Somatic Therapy is a blend of talk and safe touch based therapy that focuses on your physiology as it relates to your psycho-social development and current mental health.
My practice incorporates SE and NAT with safe touch to help generate a deeply trusted sense of Safety and Attunement to help you navigate life, goals, and relationships from a sense of wholeness and wellbeing.
Additionally, the practice of Somatic Therapy will help you develop Somatic Literacy™ as you explore and balance your Somatic Intelligence with both Cognitive and Emotional Intelligences. This internal connection and understanding builds the relationship with oneself that is primary to all other relationships and goals in life.
Questions such as “Why do I always…?” and “How can I make this discomfort go away?”, as well as chronic pain patterns from emotional or physical injury get identified and become a thing of the past as you learn to trust your body, heart, sensations, and mind.
Finally experience your whole Self in a coherent and unified way through Somatic Therapy.
Somatic Bodywork is NOT MASSAGE
My work is not massage.
I utilize my 2 decades long background in Somatic Experiencing and SE Bodywork, my career in Child Development, my Birth Doula work, and 15 years as a therapeutic masseuse to inform where the body is holding a pattern, and together we work to help your Autonomic Nervous System feel safe enough to resolve the patterns which no longer serve you.
Unlike massage, SE Bodywork Sessions are clothed, and the work involves your active participation in your personal process.
Once the underlying patterns resolve, the effects are often long lasting, even permanent.
Massage can support this process and I highly recommend finding a good masseuse.
WHAT CAN SOMATIC Therapy DO FOR YOU?
NeuroAffective Touch (NAT) and Somatic Experiencing (SE) help you become Somatically Literate™ by developing and balancing your Somatic Intelligence with your Cognitive and Emotional Intelligences. It teaching you about your own Autonomic Nervous System and how you can relate to both yourself and the world in an authentic and whole way.
Being Somatically Literate means that you will accurately understand what the signals in your body actually mean. You will be able to work with your body, rather than against it. This understanding lends itself to you finally being able to enjoy a fuller life with increased resilience and a new capacity to fully be present.
The practice of SE helps you restore your body’s natural resiliency and inherent self-correcting, self-regulating mechanisms. It guides you to be able to unwind chronic patterns of tension, pain, anxiety, shame, and fears through your newfound confidence in your body’s inherent Somatic Intelligence.
NeuroAffective Touch is a practice of Self Compassion and deep connection to a layer of ourselves that is deeper than the Nervous System by iteself. Our Nervous System is the conduit that carries information of the internal and external worlds of ourselves … and NAT touches that place and part of us which the conduit of our nervous systems is communicating with and for. It is deeply nurturing and reparative of things we often don’t have words for.
WHO IS RIGHT FOR Somatic therapy?
Somatic Therapy is appropriate for anyone experiencing overwhelm, chronic symptoms of pain, immobilizing sadness, anxiety, fear, and/or panic attacks, numbness (physical and/or emotional), and any number of symptoms, anywhere on the spectrum from mild to life inhibiting.
Whether you have work or relational stress, anxiety, repeated use injuries, chronic pain, lasting problems related to surgery, or other injuries, SE Bodywork and Somatic Therapy can help.
MY CLIENTELE
My clientele is widely varied and includes professionals (attorneys, CPAs, MDs, psychotherapists, teachers, etc.), celebrities, athletes, yoga instructors, creative artists, children, teenagers and young adults.
All ages benefit greatly from Somatic Therapy, even if the event that triggered the pattern occurred more than 20 years ago. As Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, states, “Trauma is in our nervous systems, not in the event.”
I have also worked with an Oncology population and am well trained in the benefits and contraindications for people with compromised lymph nodes and immune systems, and who have become fighters and survivors of this life changing experience. Because my work is non-invasive and emotionally supportive with a focus on Autonomic Nervous System Regulation, SE Safe Touch Bodywork is an appropriate approach for this population.
SE and NAT could be a good match for you if you are experiencing any of the following:
Chronic Pain
Chronic Anxiety/Depression
Excessive Anger or Frustration
Easily Flooded Emotionally or an Absence of Emotions
Panic Attacks
Syndromes
Post Traumatic Stress Response and/or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Response
WHAT DOES A SESSION LOOK LIKE?
A session is fully clothed. It is NOT massage.
Sessions start seated and talk based. When appropriate, we move to the Somatic Table, or may do some Somatic movement to shift some activation before resting into the support available.
Table work sessions generally involve using blankets and pillows to provide comfort, warm pillows and safe touch to attune and attend to Autonomic Regulation, gentle informed safe touch contact, and some movement. All with a strong focus on Sensations to build Somatic Literacy(TM) sometime referred to a “Body Mapping”.
While a session may involve contact/touch, it is not always appropriate. Unlike a massage, you are fully dressed with the focus on restoring your resiliency and respecting boundaries, learning about consent, and completing thwarted defenses and/or unmet emotional needs.
It is a careful step-by-step process, peaceful and typically non-triggering, which may or may not include much talking.
Commonly, specific points of contact and holding are necessary to help facilitate a Shift towards feeling better.
Disclaimer: I am a Practitioner of Somatic Therapies and I carry a License in the state of California for Massage and Bodywork. I do not carry a Clinical Psychology License and I am unable to accept or bill Insurance.
My Title is “Non-Clinical SEP”. I carry professional insurance with ABMP for Bodywork, Somatic Bodywork, SE, and Doula services.
INTERESTED?
CALL ME AT 818-445-9908 OR USE MY EMAIL FORM TO SEE IF SE IS A GOOD MATCH FOR YOU
Education and Experience
Neuro-Affective Touch (NAT)
BA in Psychology, concentration in Neurophysiology, Human and Child Development
Prenatal massage and preparation, psychological and physical
Pre and post surgery preparation and recovery
Tai Chi
Acupressure
Oncology bodywork
Myofascial reorganization
Anatomy/Physiology
Deep Tissue and Structural Integration along with multiple bodywork and massage disciplines
Contact me to schedule an appointment.