Have you ever had a client burst into tears on your table without warning? Or experienced a moment during bodywork where something “shifted” emotionally as much as physically—yet neither of you could quite put it into words?
If so, you’ve already touched the world of somatic therapy, whether you knew it or not.
In this post, we’re going to take a deep dive into the fascinating world of somatic therapy: what it is, why it matters, how it works, and how it might transform both your clients’ experience—and your own. This is not just another modality. It’s a way of thinking about the body-mind connection that challenges and expands how we approach healing.
This guide is written with massage and manual therapists in mind, but it’s relevant for any health professional curious about the body as a gateway to emotional and neurological transformation.
What Is Somatic Therapy, Really?
Let’s strip it back to basics.
The word “somatic” comes from the Greek soma, meaning the living body. So somatic therapy simply means therapy that works through the body.
But that definition hardly does it justice.
In practice, somatic therapy is a broad umbrella for a variety of body-centered approaches to healing trauma, stress, and emotional dysregulation. What sets it apart is its belief that the body doesn’t just reflect psychological distress—it contains and expresses it.
Somatic therapy helps people listen to their bodies, feel what’s there, and gently work through the emotional and neurological residue of past experiences—without needing to “talk it all out.”
Unlike conventional talk therapy, somatic therapy engages the body’s felt sense—the internal, physical awareness of emotion and experience. The premise is that trauma and stress live in the nervous system and musculature, and healing must happen at that level too.
How Somatic Therapy Works
At its core, somatic therapy involves:
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Tuning into physical sensations
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Tracking internal states of the nervous system
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Using movement, breath, touch, or awareness to discharge stuck energy
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Bringing regulation and resilience to the client’s embodied experience
Many somatic therapists describe their work as helping the body “complete what it couldn’t complete” when it first experienced trauma or stress. For example, if a client was frozen in fear during an accident, their body may still be carrying that freeze response years later.
Rather than rehashing the trauma, the somatic therapist works gently with the nervous system’s pattern of holding, often without needing words at all.
Key Concepts Behind Somatic Therapy
Let’s look at the foundational principles that shape this approach:
1. The Body Holds Memory
Research and clinical experience support what many of us have sensed intuitively: our bodies store our experiences, especially those that are overwhelming or unresolved.
This isn’t just metaphor. It’s neurological.
Trauma and chronic stress alter the autonomic nervous system (ANS), priming the body for survival responses (fight, flight, freeze) even when the threat is long gone. These responses get stuck in the system, often leading to:
2. Bottom-Up Regulation
Traditional psychotherapy works top-down—using cognition to change feelings and behavior. Somatic therapy works bottom-up, by changing what the body feels in order to shift emotions and thoughts.
It’s a more neurologically attuned approach for those whose trauma or stress is stored in the body.
3. Safety and Co-Regulation
The cornerstone of somatic work is creating a felt sense of safety. Only when the nervous system feels safe can it begin to release and reorganize.
This requires not only technique, but also attunement, presence, and trauma-informed awareness from the therapist. For massage therapists, this may mean slowing down, inviting awareness, and allowing clients to feel seen and respected—not just fixed.
A Brief History of Somatic Therapy
While somatic therapy has exploded in popularity recently, it has roots reaching back a century.
– Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957)
A student of Freud, Reich was the first to assert that emotions were stored in the body, coining the idea of “muscular armoring.” He used breathwork, movement, and expressive exercises to help clients release this tension.
– Moshe Feldenkrais
Developed the Feldenkrais Method, which uses subtle movement to re-educate the nervous system. His work helped show that movement itself can be therapeutic and rewiring.
– Alexander Lowen
Founder of Bioenergetics, he expanded on Reich’s work to link chronic postural patterns with emotional defense mechanisms.
– Peter Levine
Creator of Somatic Experiencing (SE). Levine’s model focuses on completing interrupted survival responses to release trauma and restore nervous system balance.
– Pat Ogden
Founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which combines somatics with attachment theory and cognitive therapy.
– Bessel van der Kolk
Author of The Body Keeps the Score, he brought these ideas to a mainstream audience and has become a leading advocate for body-based trauma therapies.
Together, these pioneers laid the foundation for a wide array of somatic modalities used today.
Where Massage Therapists Fit In
If you’ve ever done deep tissue work and felt a client twitch, cry, or sigh in unexpected ways—you’ve witnessed the body release stored emotion.
But there’s a difference between stumbling into these moments and understanding how to work with them safely and intentionally.
Somatic awareness can dramatically enhance your practice by helping you:
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Recognize when a client’s response is neurological, not physical
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Understand what’s happening in the nervous system
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Avoid unintentionally re-traumatizing sensitive clients
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Support emotional release when it arises—without going outside your scope
You don’t need to become a psychotherapist. But you do need nervous system literacy, especially if you regularly work with clients experiencing chronic pain, trauma, anxiety, or emotional overload.
What Somatic Therapy Can Help With
Somatic therapy is especially effective for conditions with a psychosomatic component—meaning they involve both mind and body.
This includes:
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PTSD and developmental trauma
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Anxiety and panic disorders
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Depression
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Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue
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Digestive issues
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Headaches and migraines
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Emotional numbness or dissociation
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Chronic pain with no identifiable injury
It also benefits people who:
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Struggle with boundaries or personal agency
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Feel stuck in repeated behavioral patterns
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Want to feel more connected to their body
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Have tried talk therapy but hit a plateau
For massage and manual therapists, this means you may already be treating clients who would benefit from a more somatically-informed approach.
Common Somatic Techniques
There is no single somatic therapy technique. Instead, there’s a toolkit of methods you can explore and adapt.
1. Body Awareness
Helping clients notice where they feel tension, space, movement, or sensation in the body. This can be done with words, touch, or guided attention.
2. Breathwork
Simple breathing patterns help regulate the nervous system. Somatic therapists often use slow, diaphragmatic breathing to calm clients during sessions.
3. Grounding
Helping clients connect with the present moment through contact with the table, feet, or environment. It’s especially helpful for dissociation or overwhelm.
4. Pendulation
Moving back and forth between areas of tension and ease in the body. This builds capacity and avoids flooding the nervous system with too much sensation.
5. Titration
Working with emotional or physical intensity in small, manageable doses. This approach is key when working with trauma.
6. Movement and Touch
Somatic work may include spontaneous movement, gentle tremoring (as in TRE), myofascial release, or subtle touch like craniosacral therapy—always guided by the client’s response.
What the Research Says
Although somatic therapy isn’t always easy to measure in conventional research terms, a growing body of evidence supports its effectiveness.
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A 2022 meta-analysis of Somatic Experiencing showed positive outcomes for trauma, anxiety, and somatic symptom disorders.
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Heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of nervous system health, improves with somatic work.
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Functional MRI scans show changes in brain activity related to emotion regulation and body awareness after somatic interventions.
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Studies show massage therapy plus somatic awareness techniques is more effective for trauma and chronic stress than massage alone.
The takeaway: Somatic therapy bridges the gap between the emotional and physical body—and there’s science to back it.
Getting Started with Somatic Work
If you’re a therapist ready to begin integrating somatic techniques, here’s where to start:
1. Cultivate Your Own Body Awareness
It starts with you. You can’t guide others into their body if you’re not connected to your own. Practices like yoga, Feldenkrais, breathwork, or simply checking in with your posture and breath throughout the day can help.
2. Start Using Somatic Language
Simple shifts in how you speak to clients can open somatic awareness:
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“What do you notice in your body right now?”
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“Let’s take a moment to feel the support of the table.”
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“You don’t need to fix anything. Just notice.”
3. Respect Scope and Safety
Stay within your training and scope. Refer clients to trauma-informed psychotherapists when needed. Always prioritize safety, consent, and collaboration.
4. Invest in Education
Look for continuing education courses designed specifically for bodyworkers, with clear boundaries, practical tools, and trauma-informed instruction.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If you’d like to start integrating somatic principles into your bodywork practice in a safe, ethical, and practical way, we highly recommend this course:
👉 Somatic Essentials: Core Techniques for Every Practitioner
This 4-hour CE course is designed specifically for massage and manual therapists. You’ll learn:
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The foundations of somatic therapy
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Practical hands-on techniques
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Trauma-informed communication
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Simple but powerful ways to work with the nervous system
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Lifetime access + CE credit
Whether you’re just beginning to explore somatics or looking to deepen your existing skills, this course offers a powerful and professional starting point.
Final Thoughts
Somatic therapy is more than a technique—it’s a paradigm shift. It asks us to move beyond fixing tissues and instead engage with the full intelligence of the human body.
It’s not about replacing what you do—it’s about enriching it. Adding a somatic lens can make your practice more nuanced, trauma-informed, and profoundly healing.
And perhaps most importantly—it brings us back to where all healing starts: the body.
