California
Somatic
Healing
A body-centered approach to relief from chronic stress, pain, and unresolved trauma.
A body-centered approach to relief from chronic stress, pain, and unresolved trauma.
"The body has its own intelligence. Healing happens when we learn to work with it rather than around it."Thatcher Hayward, SEP
Somatic Experiencing is grounded in decades of neuroscience research into how the nervous system responds to stress and threat. When the body's survival responses (fight, flight, or freeze) don't fully complete, that energy remains stored in the nervous system, producing the chronic symptoms many people carry for years: tension, hypervigilance, exhaustion, reactivity, disconnection.
Somatic work addresses these patterns where they actually live, in the body's physiology, below the reach of language and rational thought alone. The prefrontal cortex, where language and rational thought reside, has limited access to the subcortical structures where survival responses are processed. Somatic work reaches those structures directly, through sensation, breath, and the felt experience of the body.
The result is change that is felt, not just understood.
Most approaches to stress, anxiety, and unresolved experience work from the top down, through language, insight, and cognition. That work has real value. But the part of your nervous system that holds tension, vigilance, and old threat responses doesn't speak in words. It speaks in sensation.
Somatic Experiencing, the practices of Kathy Kain, and decades of study in Eastern yogic and meditative traditions all point to the same truth: the body has its own intelligence, and healing happens when we learn to work with it rather than around it.
Sessions are offered via Zoom. The work is quiet, careful, and cumulative. We build the capacity to feel safe, not as a concept, but as a lived experience in your own body.
"I've done years of talk therapy. This was the first time I felt something actually shift in my body, not just my understanding of it."
Many people who come to somatic sessions have done significant therapeutic work and understand their patterns well. The nervous system changes not through insight but through experience, repeated, gentle, and accumulated over time.
Trauma has become one of the most used, and most diluted, words in wellness culture. Used loosely it can mean almost anything. But in its original sense the word describes something specific: an experience that overwhelmed the nervous system's capacity to process and complete.
By that definition, it is far more common than most people realize, and it has nothing to do with weakness or fragility. Many people who benefit most from this work don't identify as traumatized. They simply know that something feels unresolved, and that their body is still responding to a past the rest of them has moved on from.
You don't have to use the word. What matters is whether the description fits.
I grew up in technology. From an early age it was where my mind lived, systems, problems, how things fit together. That led to a career as a tech consultant, working with large organizations, solving complex problems, operating in the kind of high-performance environment where the body is largely beside the point.
What shifted things wasn't a single moment. It was the gradual recognition that intellectual mastery, however far it took me, left something untouched. In my teens I found meditation, which gave me the first real tools for that other kind of exploration. Later, years of study with Master Arthur Goodridge in Eastern internal arts deepened it into something more embodied. A practice that has taken me to monasteries in India and Southeast Asia, and continues to deepen, runs alongside all of this.
Eventually that path led to the body in a more direct way, to training as a Neuromuscular Therapist and Structural Integration practitioner, and to building what became one of San Francisco's most established bodywork practices. It was there, in the treatment room, that something kept appearing: held emotion, incomplete stress responses, the body's unfinished business. Structural work could address the tissue. It couldn't always reach what was held there.
That observation led me to Somatic Experiencing, and later to the work of Kathy Kain, one of the most respected senior practitioners in the field, author of Nurturing Resilience and The Tao of Trauma. What drew me to her work was something I recognized immediately: a quality of presence and attunement that goes beyond technique. I now assist regularly in her trainings, which remains one of the most rigorous parts of my continuing education.
In a way, the somatic work completes a circle. The contemplative practice came first. The bodywork gave it clinical precision. Somatic Experiencing gave it the framework to meet what the body holds and help it move. If you want to read what clients have said about the bodywork practice over the years, you can find it at canmt.com, nearly 30 five-star reviews from a decade of work in San Francisco.
What I bring to a session is the sum of all of this: someone who has lived inside high-performance, analytical culture and found a way out of it through the body. Clinical precision, embodied presence, and the understanding that this work is not separate from life. It is life, looked at from the inside.
Everything you need to know to decide if this work is right for you.
What actually happens in a somatic session?
We begin by developing access to what feels stable and resourced, a grounded state you can return to. From there, the work moves at the pace your nervous system can tolerate. We pay attention to sensation, to what arises in the body, and gradually build the capacity to be with both challenging and pleasant experiences. Over time the aim is for unresolved experiences, the ones that live just beneath the surface and influence how you feel and act, to find their natural completion. Sessions are conducted via Zoom.
Do I need to have experienced something I would call trauma?
No. Many people who benefit most from this work don't identify as traumatized. What matters is whether something feels unresolved, whether your nervous system is still responding to a past that the rest of you has moved on from. Persistent tension, difficulty relaxing, reactivity that feels out of proportion, a sense of disconnection: these are all invitations for this work, regardless of what caused them.
I've already done a lot of therapy. Will this be different?
Probably yes, in an important way. Talk therapy works primarily through language and insight. Somatic work operates at the level of the nervous system, where language doesn't always reach. Many people who come to somatic sessions have done significant therapeutic work and understand their patterns well. The missing piece is often the body, where those patterns continue to live regardless of how well we understand them.
Can this work be done effectively over Zoom?
Yes. Somatic work is fundamentally about developing awareness of internal experience, sensation, breath, the felt sense of the body. None of that requires physical presence in the same room. Many clients find that working from their own home creates a sense of safety that actually supports the work. The relational dimension of co-regulation, one regulated nervous system helping to settle another, translates well to video.
What about the impact of COVID?
Many people notice that something shifted after 2020 and hasn't fully returned to baseline, a persistent low-level anxiety, a difficulty settling, a sense of disconnection that time and effort haven't fully touched. This is not a personal failing. Sustained collective stress, isolation, uncertainty, loss, disruption, creates exactly the kind of incomplete nervous system responses this work is designed to address. If this resonates, you are far from alone.
How many sessions will I need?
This varies significantly depending on your history and what you're working with. Some people notice real shifts within a handful of sessions. Deeper or longer-standing patterns generally benefit from more sustained work, as the nervous system changes gradually, not all at once. After an initial session I'll share an honest sense of what I think would serve you, with no pressure to commit beyond that.
What are your rates?
Sessions are $200 and run 60 to 75 minutes. Depending on current client load, I occasionally have availability at a reduced rate for those with financial need. If cost is a concern, mention it when you reach out and I'll let you know what's possible.
Reach out by phone, email, or the form below, whatever feels most comfortable.
Feel safe, centered, and grounded, again, or for the first time. Sessions available via Zoom from anywhere in California and beyond. The first step is simply a conversation.