I offer somatic therapy in Brisbane and online throughout Australia, working with anxiety, trauma, chronic stress, emotional overwhelm, relationship difficulties and the ways our experiences can become held in the body.
Somatic therapy brings attention not only to what we think, but to what is happening in the body, our emotions and our relationships. It can be particularly helpful when you understand intellectually why you feel or behave a certain way, yet something in you continues to respond differently.
Perhaps you’ve had the experience of knowing something in your mind, yet feeling something entirely different in your body.
You know you’re safe, yet your shoulders remain tense.
You know your partner isn’t angry with you, yet something tightens in your chest when their tone changes.
You tell yourself to relax, but your breathing stays shallow.
You understand your childhood is over, yet part of you still seems to be waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
For many people, this becomes deeply frustrating.
“I understand why I do this.”
“I’ve talked about it for years.”
“I’ve read the books.”
“So why does it keep happening?”
It’s a good question.
Perhaps the answer begins by noticing something we rarely stop to consider.
We often imagine that our lives are shaped by our thoughts.
Yet much of our experience seems to unfold before we’ve had a chance to think about it.
As you read this, perhaps take a moment to notice yourself.
Not to meditate.
Not to analyse.
Simply to notice.
How are you sitting?
Where are your feet?
Is your breathing deep or shallow?
Are your shoulders relaxed?
Can you feel your jaw?
None of these observations are particularly remarkable.
Yet they point towards something surprisingly important.
Long before we’ve decided what something means, our breathing has already changed. Our posture has shifted. Our eyes have looked away. Our muscles have tightened or softened.
Something has already happened.
Only afterwards does the thinking mind arrive, trying to explain it.
Perhaps this is because we don’t simply think our lives.
We live them.
As you read this, perhaps take a moment to notice yourself.
Not to meditate.
Not to analyse.
Simply to notice.
How are you sitting?
Where are your feet?
Is your breathing deep or shallow?
Are your shoulders relaxed?
Can you feel your jaw?
None of these observations are particularly remarkable.
Yet they point towards something surprisingly important.
Long before we’ve decided what something means, our breathing has already changed. Our posture has shifted. Our eyes have looked away. Our muscles have tightened or softened.
Something has already happened.
Only afterwards does the thinking mind arrive, trying to explain it.
Perhaps this is because we don’t simply think our lives.
We live them.
It’s easy to imagine ourselves as separate individuals moving through the world.
There’s me.
There’s you.
There’s everything else.
But our actual experience is rarely like that.
Walk into a room where two people have just been arguing.
Nobody needs to tell you.
You can feel it.
Sit beside someone who is deeply calm.
Notice what begins to happen to your own breathing.
Smile at someone who smiles back.
Watch how your face changes without effort.
Our lives are constantly shaped through relationship.
Not just through words, but through posture, movement, tone of voice, rhythm, distance, closeness and countless subtle exchanges that happen beneath conscious awareness.
We are always participating in the situations we find ourselves in.
This is part of why I think of my work as relational somatic therapy Brisbane clients often describe, therapy that pays close attention not only to what’s happening inside you, but also to what happens between us as we work together.
The question isn’t whether this is happening.
The question is whether we’re aware of it.
Many people come to therapy believing something inside them is broken.
I rarely see it that way.
More often I meet people whose lives make perfect sense once we understand the conditions they have lived through.
Perhaps you learned to stay quiet because speaking up wasn’t safe.
Perhaps you became the responsible one because someone had to.
Perhaps pleasing other people helped you stay connected.
Perhaps staying constantly alert protected you from being caught off guard.
At first these were responses.
Over time they became familiar.
Eventually they began to feel like your personality.
“I’ve always been anxious.”
“I’ve always been a people pleaser.”
“I’ve always overthought everything.”
Maybe.
Or perhaps these are simply ways your life learned to organise itself under particular circumstances.
Peter Levine, one of the pioneers of somatic trauma therapy, has written about trauma not simply as what happens to us, but what remains within us when we have been unable to process an overwhelming experience with sufficient support.
I find that a profoundly compassionate way of understanding people.
It suggests that what often looks like dysfunction may actually be an intelligent attempt to survive.
The word somatic simply means “relating to the body.”
People sometimes assume that means massage, breathing exercises or relaxation techniques.
Those practices can certainly be helpful.
But for me, somatic therapy is something much simpler.
It’s learning to become interested in how your experience is already unfolding.
Not only the story you tell yourself afterwards.
The experience itself.
The tightening in your chest.
The way your breathing changes when difficult topics arise.
The impulse to apologise.
The way your eyes look down when speaking about yourself.
The distance you create between yourself and another person.
None of these experiences are problems to eliminate.
They’re part of the conversation your life has been having for years.
Often we’ve simply never learned how to listen.
This is one of the differences between somatic therapy and approaches that work primarily with thoughts. We can still talk, think and make sense of things together, but we also pay attention to what is happening in your body and emotional experience as we do.
Sometimes the body tells us something before we have words for it.
One of the assumptions many of us carry is that therapy should make us different.
Less anxious.
Less emotional.
More confident.
More resilient.
Perhaps.
But I’ve found that trying to change ourselves too quickly often means we stop paying attention.
We become so focused on fixing our experience that we never really meet it.
Real change rarely begins with force.
It begins with awareness.
Not the kind of awareness that judges.
The kind that quietly notices.
As we become more intimate with our own experience, something often begins to shift naturally.
Not because we’ve made it happen.
Because we’re no longer fighting what has been asking to be seen.
The quality of our attention matters.
Gentle curiosity changes us very differently from harsh self-criticism.
People often expect therapy to involve advice.
Or techniques.
Or being told how to think differently.
Sometimes those things have their place.
More often, our work begins somewhere much simpler.
We slow down.
Together we become curious about what is happening right now.
Not only in your thoughts, but in your body, your emotions, your relationships and the situations that shape your life.
I may invite you to notice your breathing, a sensation in your body, a movement, an emotion or what happens between us as we speak.
There is no correct experience you’re supposed to have.
And you don’t need to be particularly “in touch with your body” before beginning somatic therapy.
We start wherever you are.
Rather than asking:
“How do I stop feeling like this?”
We might begin by asking:
“What is this experience trying to show us?”
That small shift can open possibilities that simply weren’t available while we were trying to escape ourselves.
People seek somatic therapy for many different reasons, including:
Every person’s story is different.
Therapy isn’t about fitting you into a diagnosis.
It’s about understanding how your own life has unfolded and discovering new ways of participating in it.
Anxiety isn’t always experienced primarily as thoughts.
It can appear as tightness in the chest, shallow breathing, a racing heart, restlessness, nausea, difficulty sleeping or a persistent feeling that something is about to go wrong.
You may understand perfectly well that there is no immediate danger and still find that your body doesn’t seem to believe you.
Somatic practices for anxiety Brisbane clients use often begin here, learning to notice these bodily signals with curiosity rather than trying to push them away.
Somatic therapy can help us become curious about these responses rather than immediately trying to suppress them.
Over time, we can begin to recognise how anxiety emerges, what happens in the body and what conditions help you feel safer and more supported.
Trauma can affect far more than our memories of what happened.
It can shape how we experience safety, relationships, closeness, conflict and our own bodies.
Sometimes people find that they understand their past very well intellectually, yet their body continues to react as though the past is still happening.
This is the heart of somatic healing for trauma Brisbane, working gently with the body’s present-moment responses rather than only the story of what happened.
Somatic trauma therapy pays attention to these present-moment responses.
The aim isn’t to force you back into painful experiences or make you repeatedly relive what happened.
Instead, we work carefully with what is happening now, at a pace that feels manageable.
I offer somatic therapy in Brisbane as well as online somatic therapy throughout Australia.
Whether you’re looking for in-person sessions, somatic therapy online Brisbane, or somatic therapy Australia-wide, support is available wherever you’re located.
Whether you’re struggling with anxiety, trauma, relationship difficulties, chronic stress or simply have the sense that you’ve become disconnected from yourself, therapy offers a space to slow things down and become more aware of what is actually happening.
For Brisbane clients, sessions offer the opportunity to work together locally. Online sessions are available for people elsewhere in Queensland and across Australia.
You don’t need to have everything figured out before you begin.
Curiosity is enough.
Somatic therapy is an approach to therapy that includes awareness of the body as part of the therapeutic process.
Rather than working only with thoughts and stories, we may also notice sensations, breathing, posture, movement, emotions and the ways your body responds while we talk.
It doesn’t mean that every session is focused on the body. It simply means we don’t assume that thinking is the only doorway into understanding ourselves.
Somatic therapy can be particularly useful when anxiety is experienced strongly in the body.
You may know intellectually that you’re safe while experiencing a racing heart, shallow breathing, tension, restlessness or a persistent sense of danger.
Rather than treating these sensations simply as symptoms that need to disappear, somatic therapy allows us to become curious about what they are communicating and how your system has learned to respond.
Somatic approaches are commonly used when working with trauma because traumatic experiences can influence bodily responses, emotional regulation and our sense of safety long after an event has ended.
The work doesn’t require you to repeatedly retell or relive traumatic experiences.
We can work gently with what emerges in the present and pay attention to what feels manageable for you.
We talk.
Somatic therapy isn’t necessarily dramatically different from what you might imagine therapy to look like.
The difference is that alongside what you’re saying, we may become curious about what you’re experiencing while you say it.
Perhaps your breathing changes.
Perhaps you feel something in your stomach.
Perhaps you suddenly want to look away.
Perhaps you notice nothing at all.
All of that is welcome.
The aim isn’t to perform a technique correctly.
It’s to become more aware of your experience.
No.
Some people arrive in therapy feeling very disconnected from their bodies. For others, paying attention to bodily sensations can initially feel uncomfortable.
We don’t force anything.
Somatic therapy can begin very gently, and you remain in control of what we explore.
Yes. I offer somatic therapy online throughout Australia as well as working with clients in Brisbane.
Online therapy can still allow us to pay attention to breathing, posture, sensations, emotions and what is happening in the present moment.
Finding the right therapist is a personal decision.
That’s why I offer a free 30-minute consultation.
It’s an opportunity for us to talk about what’s been happening in your life, for you to ask any questions, and for us both to get a sense of whether working together feels like the right fit.
There is no pressure and no obligation to continue.
Sometimes a conversation is the best place to begin.
Book your free 30-minute consultation
