Somatic healing is a gentle, mind-body approach to trauma recovery and emotional well-being. It supports the release of stress, overwhelm, and unresolved experiences that have become stored in the body. Through somatic therapy, individuals can regulate their nervous system, strengthen resilience, and reconnect with their body's natural capacity to heal.
If you are feeling stuck, disconnected from yourself, or weighed down by past experiences, I'd be honored to support you, whether online or in person!
In the sections below, I'll share what somatic experiencing looks like in practice, the techniques we may explore together, and how it can gently support your healing process.
How Online Somatic Experiencing Supports Trauma Healing
Unlike traditional talk therapy, which primarily processes life events through the mind, somatic therapy engages the nervous system to access and release the experiences that are held in the body.
Through mindful awareness, body-based techniques adapted for virtual sessions, and practices that support nervous system regulation, online Somatic Experiencing can help restore a sense of balance, safety, and ease.
Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing is a globally recognized, neuroscience-informed approach that uses gentle body awareness to help process trauma, renegotiate overwhelming experiences, and support deep, lasting healing.
What Are Somatic Healing Techniques, and How Do They Work?
Somatic healing techniques are body-based practices that help you gently reconnect with your physical sensations, emotions, and inner experience. These techniques are rooted in the understanding that trauma and chronic stress aren’t just stored in the mind—they’re also held in the body
By bringing mindful awareness to physical cues like breath, tension, posture, and sensation, somatic healing supports the nervous system in moving out of survival states and into regulation, even in an online setting.
Over time, this process can help release stored trauma, increase resilience, and restore a felt sense of safety and ease.
Here are a few examples:
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Helps anchor your awareness in the present moment by connecting to your body and the environment. This might include noticing your feet on the floor, your seat in the chair, or the contact your body makes with the earth. Grounding helps regulate overwhelm and build a sense of safety.
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Involves gently noticing physical sensations inside your body—such as warmth, tightness, tingling, or spaciousness—without judgment. Tracking helps bring unconscious experiences into conscious awareness so they can be processed and integrated.
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Guides you to connect with memories, people, places, or objects that evoke a sense of comfort, safety, or strength. Resourcing can stabilize the nervous system and build capacity before exploring more difficult material.
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Instead of diving fully into overwhelming memories, titration breaks the experience into smaller, more manageable pieces. This allows the body to process trauma gently, without re-triggering or re-traumatization.
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Involves moving awareness between sensations of distress or discomfort and sensations of ease or safety. This natural back-and-forth flow helps the nervous system expand its capacity to feel and release stuck energy.
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Uses your senses to explore the space around you—looking around the room, noticing colors, shapes, or sounds. Orientation calms the fight-or-flight response and helps reestablish a sense of presence and control.
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Encourages small, intuitive movements—like stretching, shaking, or expressive gestures—that help release stored tension or complete unfinished survival responses. This allows the body to move through what it once couldn’t.
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Focuses on the natural rhythm of your breath to support regulation. Rather than controlling the breath, you gently observe it, allowing it to soften and deepen at its own pace, which can bring a sense of calm and presence.
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These include visualizations or physical exercises that help you repair and strengthen your personal boundaries and create a sense of containment. This can be especially helpful for those who feel “too open,” emotionally overwhelmed, or disconnected from themselves
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Occurs in the therapeutic relationship when your nervous system attunes to the calm, grounded presence of a supportive other. This relational safety helps regulate your internal state and supports new, healing experiences.
These techniques are designed to regulate the nervous system, gently release stored trauma, and support the development of healthier, more resilient coping patterns over time.
The Benefits of Somatic Healing & Who It Helps
Online Somatic Experiencing supports healing by addressing the root of stress and tending to the trauma symptoms in small, manageable amounts. Whether you’re moving through anxiety, chronic pain, C-PTSD, or burnout, somatic practices help restore balance by supporting your nervous system’s natural ability to regulate, release, and heal. Key benefits include:
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By tracking sensations, slowing down, and working in small, manageable steps, Somatic Experiencing helps your body shift out of chronic fight, flight, or freeze responses. Over time, your nervous system begins to settle into a more balanced and regulated state, allowing for greater calm and presence.
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Unprocessed trauma can create holding patterns in the body that show up as chronic tension or pain. Somatic practices support the gentle release of this stored activation, helping the body unwind habitual bracing and soften protective patterns.
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Techniques like grounding, orienting, and resourcing reconnect you with the present moment and your physical surroundings. This builds internal and external cues of safety, which are essential for healing from trauma.
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By learning to stay with and regulate difficult sensations or emotions without becoming overwhelmed, you build emotional capacity. You begin to feel more able to meet life’s challenges with steadiness, flexibility, and self-compassion.
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Somatic work helps down-regulate the overactive stress response that underlies anxiety. As your system learns that it doesn’t have to stay “on alert,” you may notice more ease, spaciousness, and the ability to rest and stay in this state.
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Somatic Experiencing doesn’t require you to relive the details of your trauma. Instead, it works through the body in a titrated, gentle way—helping you complete and resolve the survival responses that were interrupted and did not get to complete.
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As you learn to listen to your body’s signals with curiosity and compassion, you rebuild trust with yourself. This creates a more integrated sense of who you are—physically, emotionally, and intuitively.
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Somatic work helps you tune into the felt sense of your boundaries—where you begin and end—allowing you to more clearly sense what is yours and what is not. This can lead to clearer communication, healthier relationships, and less emotional enmeshment.
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As the body releases survival energy and no longer feels stuck in protective states, more space becomes available for joy, creativity, playfulness, and a fuller range of emotional experiences.
Somatic healing benefits anyone seeking to recover from trauma, enhance emotional well-being, or reconnect with their body. It offers a deeply embodied path for personal growth—helping you not only heal from the past but also relate to present-day experiences with greater awareness, resilience, and self-trust. Whether you’re on your own healing journey or holding space for others, somatic work supports a more integrated, compassionate, and life-affirming way to move through the world.
My Start with Trauma
Not too long ago, in what feels like another lifetime, I was living in the aftermath of trauma.
Although, I didn’t realize that’s what it was.
I was drowning in shame, lived with chronic pain, and suffered through lonely depressive times before I discovered the profound impact of somatic therapy and somatic healing. I was constantly overriding my internal messages, I said yes when I wanted to say no, and no when I wanted to say yes, and I embarrassingly continued to create dysfunctional relationships.
I was suffering & felt trapped in my experience.
After having a really big wake up call, where my deeper issues surfaced and became blatantly obvious smacking me in the face…
I realized I needed to turn towards it.
I had already done psychotherapy, energy healing & soul work.
So where do I turn now?
This question steered me toward somatic therapy and other body-based trauma resolution work.
In 2017 I enrolled in a somatic healing coaching program. By 2020 I had become a practitioner of 5 body-oriented approaches:
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner
Biodynamic Breathwork & Trauma Release Practitioner
Yamuna Body Rolling Practitioner
Certified Sex, Love & Relationship Coach
Alchemical Alignment: Trauma Resolution & Embodiment of Spirit Practitioner
Through study, mentorship, and my own personal healing, I transformed long-held trauma patterns, resolved chronic pain, set healthy boundaries, and reconnected with my body. My anxiety eased, depression lifted, and I began living with clarity, confidence, and freedom.
Somatic healing enabled me to resolve the core of my original trauma and has become the foundation of the work I now offer.
I had been suffering from worsening anxiety for which I saw a therapist and psychiatrist to treat… Sessions weren’t helping, and meds caused me to progress to full blown panic attacks that were detrimental to my everyday life.
I was looking for an alternative and found Brianna… Through working with her on trauma resolution and my nervous system dysregulation, my panic attacks have all but stopped and my anxiety is minimal!!!
Female, age 34, Registered Nurse
For the majority of my life, I had been suffering from debilitating stomach problems and poor digestion until I experienced somatic symptom disorder treatment, which brought me true relief.
Before treatment, these stomach problems controlled my life; I was always nauseous after eating every meal or even just something as simple as an apple…
Bri made me feel seen and validated, and that is something I have never had before. After two sessions with her, we did somatic trauma resolution work, and my entire life has done a 180. The problems I had with my stomach have gone away completely, and I have cried of joy to so many of my friends and family at how my life has changed BECAUSE of the work Bri did with me.
I have already gained six pounds back that my body needed! I have tried so many different things to try and remedy that issue (talk therapy, CBT, etc.) and nothing had worked until I went to Bri. She is an amazing human and healer.
Female, age 26, Student
How We Work Together
Sessions are offered online via zoom or in person in San Juan Capistrano, California, where I guide clients through somatic therapy in Orange County to release stored trauma, restore nervous system balance, and reconnect with their authentic selves.
During the first session, we’ll review your client intake form and explore what brings you in for healing. Together, we’ll identify your core patterns of disharmony and how it originated within your mind, body and spirit. We will then establish goals for healing, discuss a loose treatment plan, and assign homework if it feels appropriate.
Commonly Asked Questions:
Q: Will my insurance cover this?
A: No, unfortunately insurance does not cover this service.
Q: What is the cost per session?
A: 1 hour appointments are $190.
1.5 hour appointments are $285.
Cards are charged at the time of booking. After scheduling you will receive a confirmation email. And shortly after that you will receive a separate email with the ‘Client Intake Forms’. Please bring this form completed to our first in person session or return it within 48 hours of an online zoom session.
Book an Appointment
If talk therapy or energy work hasn’t helped you fully heal, or if you feel caught in old patterns or trauma responses, I am here to help. Through trauma healing online, we can gently work together to release what’s keeping you stuck and create space for lasting change.
Wherever you are in your journey, healing is possible. Your story is still unfolding.
Book your online appointment today.