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Somatics
ABOUT
THE FIELD OF SOMATICS
Somatics is the interdisciplinary field that explores the body from within. The word soma comes from the Greek meaning
"the living body in it's wholeness", not just as a physical structure but as a living, sensing, meaning-making experience.
Somatics brings together movement and breathwork traditions, martial art and dance, western somatic psychology, neuroscience and poly-vagal theory, and body-based wisdom to understand how our thoughts, emotions, histories and identities are lived and expressed through the body.
In somatics, the body is not separate from the psyche or spirit. Rather than treating the body as an object, somatics honours it as a living subject, a source of intelligence and memory, and a primary site for learning, healing and transformation.
SOMATIC COACHING
Somatic coaching is a transformative, body-based, bottom-up, approach to personal development, trauma recovery and healing, relationship and intimacy work, creativity and expression, social justice and collective healing, and leadership.
It supports accessing and developing embodied awareness, expressions, and insights, and taking embodied actions that align with our values and what we care most about, even under great pressure and stress.
This form of coaching is incredibly rich and deep. It helps us return to wholeness, to become more of who we are, to keep moving towards what we long for. It supports feeling, releasing, speaking, moving, completing, opening, softening, strengthening, clarifying, healing - what needs and wants to be - all in the body.
Through intentional somatic inquiry, somatic openings, and somatic practices involving sensing, movement, touch, breath, and sound - we learn to reconnect to their inner experience and transform how we relate with our whole selves. We learn to listen to our bodies' signals, recognise and shift patterns, physical shaping including posture, movement and sensations, and survival strategies - shaped by past experiences.
We cultivate new pathways for healing, regulation, and agency. New expanded and embodied capacities for presence, resilience, intimacy, connection, joy, and more.
SOMATIC PARTS WORK
Somatic Parts Work or Somatic Internal Family Systems work is an embodied approach to working with the different "parts" within us, they are almost like sub-personalities each with their own feelings, beliefs, protective strategies, and body patterns. This modality is rooted in both Internal Family Systems and Somatic Psychology, this modality, recognises that we are not one unified self, but a constellation of inner parts shaped by past experiences, relationships, and survival needs. For instance, some try to protect us (e.g. the pleaser, the controller, the achiever, the analytical one), while others carry the wounds (e.g. the hurt child, the shamed teen, the frozen one).
In Somatic Coaching parts work becomes more than a mental exercise, it becomes a sensing, feeling process, where instead of just talking about these parts, we meet them directly in the body. Through attunement, compassionate inquiry and somatic guidance, clients learn to sense, listen to and relate to their parts, not just analyse them. This allows for deeper integration, as each part can be seen felt, supported to soften, shift or take on new roles.
At the heart of this work is the emergence of Self Energy that exists beneath all our parts. This is our natural leadership presence. Self energy expresses itself through 8 core qualities: calm, clarity, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness. From self we can: meet our inner parts with care, unblend from reactive patterns and protective strategies, experience embodied re-patterning, take action from wholeness not wounding
EMBODIMENT COACHING
Embodiment coaching shares some of the philosophies and aspects of somatic coaching, for example some somatic inquiry and awareness will be involved. However, while embodiment coaching can support healing from trauma and other deep work such as parts work - it is through an expressive, action-oriented lens. It focuses more on 'the becoming' by drawing from the expressive richness of dance, flow arts, martial arts and dramatic arts. Expanding your range of being, and increasing access to vitality, through practices like movement, improvisation, gesture, rhythm, postural exploration, voice, breath.
Embodiment work can be very liberating and healing in different way, with the heavier focus on embodying more of the traits and ways of being that we desire to. It can help with: Reclaiming parts of ourselves through movement, or creative expression. Using movement, posture and gesture to safely explore emotional themes and support transformation. Exploring and embodying new patterns e.g. courage, sensuality, play, confidence.
Embodiment coaching typically assumes a level of stability and capacity in the body and nervous system, and tends to work best after or alongside deeper healing and trauma work. Or for clients with mild to moderate trauma who are ready to expand beyond coping into thriving.
"Somatics is not about fixing yourself.
It's about becoming more of who you are
- more whole, more connected, and more able to take action aligned with your values."
STACI K. HAINES
Why Somatic Coaching?
Because your body remembers what your mind forgets, and holds what the mind can't bear to carry. Those parts we try to escape, hum and dictate from beneath the surface, just waiting to be met. Because healing isn't just a thought, it's a felt experience.
If you've tried mindset work, self-development, or talk therapies and still feel stuck, disembodied, or disconnected... If you've journalled, reflected and intellectualised, got to the place where you understand why you feel and behave the way you do - yet the patterns persist, or when you stop one unhelpful or harmful behaviour a different one rears it's head. It's not because there is something wrong with you. It's because insight alone doesn't reach the emotional imprints stored in our bodies or create embodied lasting change.
Cognitive and top-down approaches can be incredibly supportive and powerful, they help us make meaning, build awareness and understand our stories. But they often don't go far enough when the pain, trauma, or the patterns live in the body.
That's where somatic coaching comes in and offers the missing piece.
This work honours your whole being - body, mind and nervous system.
We explore whats happening beneath the surface: the tension in your belly when you say yet but mean no, the clench in your jaw when you try to speak your truth the numbness that wraps around your heart when connection feels too close, the resistance and pressure in your chest as you try to connect with joy.
Together we build safety and capacity in your body, so you can stay present, feel more, trust more, express more, connect more. So you can keep coming back into your center and true self energy, make new embodied choices, and take actions that align with what you value, care about and want to move towards the most, even under stress/pressure.
Somatic coaching is about coming back into relationship with your body - your aliveness, your intuition, your boundaries, your joy. Coming into a new compassionate relationship with your exiled wounded parts and your protector parts
It's about reclaiming what's always been yours - the right to feel everything, to choose, to express, to feel dignity, safety and belonging. and to feel free.
It's not just about talking about change, but embodying it, living it.