Somatic Therapist in Atlanta

Work with what your body is holding, not only what you can explain.

You can understand exactly what happened to you and still feel it in your chest, your jaw, your stomach. You can know that something is over and still find your body reacting as though it is not. Talking about a difficult experience does not always change the way your body responds to it. Somatic therapy works with that gap directly.

What somatic therapy is

Bodies hold on to unprocessed trauma, and it often surfaces as physical symptoms that leave you feeling unsafe in your own body. That can look like:

  • Flashbacks
  • Chronic pain
  • Gastrointestinal issues
  • Muscle tension and backaches
  • Poor sleep and migraines
  • Feelings of hopelessness, depression, or numbness

Trauma is stored at the subcortical level, below the reach of language, and needs to be released in ways that talk therapy cannot address on its own.1 Somatic therapy honours the mind–body connection by addressing those physical manifestations directly, treating trauma closer to its root rather than only reworking the story around it.2

What a session looks like

Your therapist will invite you to notice what is happening in your body while you talk — where the tension sits, where your breath stops, what shifts when you describe something. From there you might work with breath, gentle movement, grounding, or simply tracking one sensation until it changes on its own. Sessions often move more slowly than talk therapy, and a good deal happens without much narration.

Nothing is forced. You set the pace, you can stop at any point and orient back to the room, and you never have to describe more than you want to.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing is a specific somatic method built on the observation that the body mobilises enormous energy to survive a threat, and that this energy often stays stuck when the threat has passed. Rather than returning to the full story of what happened, it works with the physical residue that was left behind, in pieces small enough to stay tolerable. Jessica Taylor has completed all levels and all consultations of Somatic Experiencing training.

Who somatic therapy tends to help

  • People whose trauma has not shifted through talk therapy alone
  • Anxiety that shows up physically before it shows up in thought
  • Feeling numb, flat, or disconnected from your own body
  • Chronic tension, sleep or gut symptoms with no medical explanation
  • Neurodivergent adults, for whom sensory experience and nervous-system regulation are often central rather than incidental

Who offers somatic therapy at Inner Balance

Take the next step

If this is the kind of work you have been looking for, the easiest place to start is a free consultation call. It is a short conversation, with no obligation, to get a feel for how sessions might go and to ask anything you want to ask first.

References

  1. van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books.
  2. Salamon, M. (2023, July 7). What is somatic therapy? Harvard Health. health.harvard.edu