Your mind has moved on. Your body hasn't.
Trauma-informed somatic therapy for adults and teens in Marin County and throughout California.
You may not think of yourself as someone with trauma. Maybe what happened wasn't "bad enough" or “doesn’t compare.” Maybe you've already processed it by talking about it, understanding it, and making peace with it intellectually. And yet something in your body can’t be safe or at peace.
You startle easily. You go numb when things get intense. You feel a low hum of danger even when you're safe. Certain smells, sounds, or situations pull you somewhere you don't want to go. You're exhausted by your own vigilance, and you can't explain why it won't stop.
This is not weakness. This is not a charter flaw. This is your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you alive and it hasn't yet learned that the threat is over.
Somatic therapy helps your body catch up to what your mind already knows.
Why talk therapy often isn’t enough
How I work with trauma
My approach to trauma is deeply relational and attuned to your needs. One size does not fit all when it comes to working with suffering.
I draw on EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), one of the most well-researched trauma therapies available, which works directly with the way traumatic memories are stored and processed in the nervous system. I also integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS), which helps you relate to the protective parts of yourself that developed around trauma with curiosity and compassion rather than shame.
Underlying both is a somatic awareness that runs through everything we do. We’ll track how your body responds moment to moment, building your capacity to feel safe in yourself, and gradually expanding your window of tolerance for difficult experiences.
Over time, clients begin to find their way back to the five states that trauma most commonly disrupts: feeling genuinely safe in their bodies, open to what life has to offer, clear in their own direction, able to persist through difficulty, and, eventually at peace with their story and themselves.
What clients often discover
This might be for you if:
Trauma doesn't live primarily in the story. It lives in the body through bracing, holding intensity, going still, or disappearing when something activates you. Talking about traumatic events can bring understanding and even relief, but it often can't reach the places where trauma actually lives: the nervous system, the muscles, the breath, the gut.
This is why so many people spend years in talk therapy and still feel the effects of trauma in their daily lives. The story gets clearer, but the body stays stuck.
Somatic therapy works differently. Rather than primarily analyzing what happened, we work with how it lives in you now by tracking the body's responses, creating safety in the nervous system, and gradually building the capacity to be present with what’s been overwhelming. The body becomes not just the site of suffering, but the path through it towards wholeness.
Over the course of our work together, clients navigating trauma frequently experience:
A quieting of the nervous system's constant vigilance and activation. There’s more ease, rest, and presence in their daily lives.
The ability to feel emotions without being overwhelmed or shut down by them.
A return to themselves by feeling more recognizable, grounded, and like the person they were before or the person they always wanted to be.
Healthier relationships, as the patterns trauma created in disconnection begin to soften and shift.
A sense of integrating their story and no longer being defined or controlled by it.
You've experienced childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, or adverse experiences that still affect you today.
You've been through a single overwhelming event, like an accident, loss, or violation that changed how you feel in your body and in the world.
You've tried talk therapy and gained insight but still feel stuck in patterns you can't seem to shift.
You experience anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional flooding, numbness, or dissociation.
You're ready to work with your body, not just your mind.
