Somatic Therapy
Coming Back to Your Body
Every emotion has a home in the body. Stress tightens the jaw. Guilt sinks into the stomach. Fear quickens the heart. Over time, the body becomes a living record of everything we’ve survived.
As Dr. Gabor Maté teaches, when we silence emotion long enough, the body begins to speak for us. Symptoms, tension, fatigue, and illness can all become expressions of what was never given space to be felt. The body is not betraying us; it’s trying to communicate what the mind has learned to tune out.
Somatic Therapy invites that communication back into awareness. By slowing down and listening to your body’s signals, you begin to understand what those sensations are trying to tell you. A tight chest might reveal unspoken grief. A restless leg might carry years of anxiety. Each physical cue becomes a doorway back to presence – a reminder that healing doesn’t happen through thinking alone, but through feeling what’s been waiting to be felt.
As Dr. Peter A. Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, explains:
“When we fight against or hide from unpleasant sensations and feelings, we make things worse. What is not felt remains the same or grows stronger, forcing us to fortify our defenses and live further from ourselves.”
Somatic work helps you interrupt that cycle. Instead of managing or avoiding discomfort, you learn to meet it with curiosity. Over time, the nervous system begins to trust again. The body softens. Energy that was once locked in survival begins to move, and in that movement, something begins to heal.
Why It Matters for Men
Many men are used to living in their heads. We analyze, problem-solve, and try to think our way out of pain. It’s what we’ve been trained to do – to stay rational, composed, and in control. But some things can’t be fixed with logic alone. Trauma, stress, and emotion live deeper than thought. They live in the body.
Traditional talk therapy can be powerful, but it often works “top down” – through insight and conversation. For many men, that approach can get stuck at the level of theoretical understanding without translating into real change. You might be able to explain why you feel anxious or angry, yet still feel the same tightness in your chest, the same restlessness in your gut, and triggers that are not getting any less touchy.
Somatic work takes a different route to understanding. It helps you move from thinking about what’s going on to feeling how it lives in you. Instead of looping through justifications or stories, you begin to notice what your body is saying – the subtle tension, the heat, the numbness, the breath that catches when a memory surfaces. Not to mention the emotions that are asking to be felt.
This bottom-up process lets the body process what the mind has been protecting you from. It’s like opening a back door to healing – one that doesn’t require words or analysis, just presence and patience. Over time, you start to develop a different kind of strength: the ability to stay connected to yourself in moments when your instinct is to shut down, escape, or go on the attack.
Somatic therapy helps you build a relationship with your body built on curiosity instead of control. It teaches you that feeling isn’t weakness – it’s how you finally begin to listen to what’s actually present in the moment.
Somatic Therapy at Wild North
People often say they want to be more present – to “live in the moment.” But most of us spend our time in story mode, replaying the past or predicting the future. When that happens, we leave the present behind. Somatic therapy helps you return to what’s actually happening right now – the sensations, emotions, and impulses that make up the truth of the present moment. It gives you the skills to access presence not as an idea, but as a felt experience.
At Wild North, somatic work is about reconnecting with your body’s intelligence – learning to listen to the subtle signals that have been there all along. The tightness in your jaw, the heaviness in your chest, the knot in your gut – each carries information and can unlock hidden emotion. As Dr. Gabor Maté writes, when emotion is suppressed, the body begins to speak for us. Those aches, symptoms, or patterns of exhaustion aren’t failures of willpower; they’re the body’s way of trying to get your attention.
Drawing from Peter A. Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and Bessel van der Kolk’s research, this approach helps you gently explore what your body is holding – tension, energy, memory – and find ways to release it. Through awareness, breath, grounding, and an integration with Internal Family Systems, you start to recognize what safety and connection actually feel like, not just what they sound like in theory.
Somatic therapy at Wild North isn’t about analyzing why you feel what you feel; it’s about feeling it. It’s about helping your body and mind begin to speak the same language again, so that presence becomes something you can inhabit – not just something you chase.
Somatic Therapy Can Help With:
Anxiety, burnout, and chronic stress
Emotional numbness or disconnection
Trauma and body-based tension
Difficulty relaxing or slowing down
Relationship and intimacy struggles
Spiritual Growth
Inclusive Practice
My practice is LGBTQ+ affirming, sex-positive, and welcoming of women, non-traditional relationships, and gender-diverse identities. I’m also a friend and ally to the BIPOC community, and I have experience working with clients from diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. I strive to create a therapy space where you can explore your culture and experiences without fear of judgment or minimization. If you were born in the Milky Way, you are welcome here.