Somatic Experiencing Therapy in Squamish and Online

What is Somatic Experiencing?

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a trauma healing therapy that helps you understand and work with your mind, body, and emotions. Think of it as a conversation with your body. We move beyond the cognitive or intellectual stories you may already know on repeat, to hear your body's stories where trauma and stress are stored.

You'll learn to track sensations in your body like tension, tightness, or discomfort, and explore how they relate to your emotions and past experiences. You'll build capacity for the things that are uncomfortable, ultimately allowing them to unwind stored patterns of trauma, stress, and bracing. An SE session may not include a ton of talking. Instead we’ll we'll be busy noticing what emerges moment to moment in your felt sense.

Anxiety, overwhelm, boundary issues, shame, attachment wounds, and relational struggles can often be tracked and explored at the nervous system level. Our systems naturally want to move towards healing and together we create the safe space for that to happen.

Somatic work isn't just about tracking the trauma. It's also about finding the places and things that feel good in the body. Building new neural connections with glimmers (the opposite of triggers): felt-sense experiences of compassion, safety, healing, connection, and ease. Those moments where you feel most like yourself, whether alone, or deeply supported by loved ones, animals, nature, spirit, and more.

The Science Behind Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, a biophysicist and psychologist who spent decades studying how animals in the wild recover from threatening events. He noticed that animals rarely develop lasting trauma. They instinctively discharge stress responses through shaking, trembling, and movement. Humans, however, often suppress these natural completion responses, leaving the nervous system stuck in unresolved survival states. This doesn’t mean we’ve done something wrong. It usually means our nervous systems had to go with what worked, and what was safe enough in the moment. For example, if someone attacks us, we might freeze because fighting back will only be more dangerous. Or if get hurt as a kid and our parent tells us to ‘suck it up’ then we’ll learn to override our natural response in order to maintain connection.

SE draws on this understanding, along with findings from neuroscience, trauma research, and attachment theory. When we experience something overwhelming, the brain's threat response activates before the thinking brain has a chance to process what's happening. This means that talk therapy alone — while incredibly valuable — sometimes can't fully reach the places where trauma lives. Somatic Experiencing works directly with the body's nervous system, supporting the completion of survival responses that were interrupted, and helping your system return to a state of regulation and flow.

This isn't about reliving or re-traumatizing. It's a gentle, titrated process working with just enough activation at a time to allow the nervous system to process and integrate, rather than become overwhelmed.

What to Expect in a Somatic Experiencing Session

If you've only experienced traditional talk therapy, an SE session might feel quite different. Here's what a session might look like:

Slowing down. Much of the work happens in the pauses. I'll invite you to slow down, turn your attention inward, and notice what's present in your body right now. This might feel unfamiliar at first, especially if you're used to moving quickly through thoughts and feelings.

Tracking sensations. Rather than focusing primarily on the story of what happened to you, we'll explore what's happening in you — sensations like warmth, tightness, tingling, heaviness, or ease. Images or colors, emotions, impulses to move in a particular way. Words or meaning that emerge from a particular place in your body when we pay attention. These are the body's language, and learning to listen to them is central to the work.

Titration and pendulation. We move carefully between activation (slightly uncomfortable or charged material) and resource (what feels safe, grounded, or neutral). This rhythm helps your nervous system build tolerance and integrate experiences gradually, without flooding.

Working with the here-and-now. SE is rooted in present-moment awareness. Even if we're exploring something from your past, we're always working with how it shows up right now in your body and nervous system.

No two sessions are the same. Sometimes sessions feel quiet and subtle. Other times, something significant shifts. You might notice a spontaneous breath, a releasing of tension, tears, warmth, or a sense of coming home to yourself. Sometimes we spend more time understanding the story or meaning tied to your experience. Sometimes we integrate parts work. All of it is welcome. That said, we don’t try and do anything “cathartic” as this can actual create more overwhelm in your system.

Sessions are 50 minutes. In the early stages, we spend time building trust and establishing a felt sense of safety together. This foundation is everything: the nervous system can only do its best healing work when it starts to feel at least a little bit safer.

Who is Somatic Experiencing Right For?

SE can be a powerful approach for a wide range of experiences and challenges. You might consider somatic therapy if you:

• Feel stuck despite years of talk therapy. You have insight and self-awareness, but something still hasn't shifted. You understand why you do what you do and yet you keep doing it.

• Struggle with anxiety, chronic stress, or overwhelm that feels like it lives in your body, not just your mind: a racing heart, tight chest, shallow breathing, or a constant sense of dread.

• Have experienced trauma, whether a single incident (accident, assault, medical procedure, loss) or ongoing relational trauma, childhood neglect or abuse, or complex/developmental trauma.

• Feel disconnected from your body, emotionally numb, or like you're going through the motions of life without truly being present in it.

• Experience chronic pain or physical tension that doesn't have a clear medical explanation — the body often holds what the mind has not been able to process.

• Struggle with patterns in relationships — shutting down, becoming reactive, feeling unsafe in intimacy, or chronically people-pleasing.

• Are healing from burnout, grief, or major life transitions that have left you feeling unmoored or unlike yourself.

• Want to feel more at home in your body — more connected, alive, and capable of experiencing joy, pleasure, and ease.

• Want to bring more acceptance and compassion into your life – maybe you’re neurodivergent or highly sensitive, and the effort to mask and adapt to the world has become unsustainable.

SE is suitable for adults at any stage of their healing journey: whether you're just beginning to explore therapy, or you've been doing deep personal work for years and are ready for a different kind of support. If you have a mindfulness practice, have dabbled in embodiment before, or have done some therapy before, we’re often able to do a little bit more somatic practice earlier in our work together – but it really can be adapted for anyone.

Benefits of Somatic Trauma Therapy

I love this work because it's so deeply transformational. We can understand something, be aware of our stories or our patterns, and still feel stuck and unable to shift them through thinking or sheer force of will. That's because our bodies and nervous systems are so powerful. They're designed to adapt to trauma and overwhelm, and keep us safe. And that's exactly what they're doing.

Maybe we experience that as being stuck in flight, fight, freeze, or shutdown. That can feel scary and frustrating. Instead of fighting with our bodies, we can support them to experience something new.

This work takes some time and consistency — we're rewiring your system from the ground up. The effects are long-lasting and can help you to:

• Reduce anxiety and symptoms of chronic stress

• Better regulate emotions and tolerate discomfort

• Respond to challenges with more flexibility and choice

• Experience life, vitality, and yourself in new ways

• Experience more connection and safety in yourself and in relationships

• Heal the roots of patterns that talk therapy hasn't been able to reach

• Feel more present, embodied, and genuinely at ease in your own skin

Somatic Experiencing vs. Other Trauma Therapies

There are many evidence-based approaches to trauma therapy, and they all have their place. You may have heard of EMDR, CBT, IFS (Internal Family Systems), or somatic therapies like Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. So how is SE different?

Somatic Experiencing is distinctive in its focus on completing interrupted survival responses and working with the nervous system's natural capacity to regulate and heal. Rather than processing trauma through narrative or cognitive reframing, SE works beneath the level of thought — with the body's physiology itself.

I love that it’s also non-pathologizing – we don’t try to convince your mind or body that it’s doing something wrong. We assume it’s been doing something exactly right that kept you safe and alive – and now we’re helping it to learn something new.

That said, SE integrates beautifully with other modalities. In our work together, I may draw on elements of other approaches depending on what your system needs. I most often integrate Internal Family Systems or parts work as I find they work beautifully together. The guiding principle is always: what helps your nervous system feel safe enough to heal?

How Long Does Somatic Therapy Take?

This is one of the most common questions, and the honest answer is: it depends. SE is not a quick-fix protocol — it's a relational, process-oriented approach. Some people notice meaningful shifts within a few months. Others, particularly those healing from complex or developmental trauma, may work in SE for a few years.

What I can say is that the changes that happen through somatic work tend to be deep and lasting. Rather than managing symptoms on the surface, we're addressing the underlying patterns in your nervous system. Many clients describe a point where they realize they've fundamentally changed, not just in how they cope, but in how they feel moving through daily life.

Ready to Begin?

If something in this page resonated with you, I'd love to connect. You don't need to have everything figured out — just a sense that you're ready to try something different, and a willingness to get curious about what your body has to say.

Learn more about SE in these blog posts:

What is Healthy Aggression? Boundaries, Anger, and What Your Nervous System Actually Needs

How to Set Boundaries Using Somatic Therapy & IFS: Six Steps

What Is Dorsal Vagal Shutdown? Signs, Causes & Gentle Ways to Reconnect

How to manage your anxiety

You can also learn more about Somatic Experiencing here.