Trauma isn't only a story we remember — it's something the body keeps holding long after the event is over. Somatic Experiencing is a way of working directly with that held response, helping your nervous system complete what it never had the chance to, so you can feel settled in yourself again.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented approach to trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine over several decades of studying stress and the nervous system. He drew on a simple observation from the wild: animals routinely face life-threatening danger, yet rarely carry lasting trauma. They discharge the survival energy the threat mobilized - through trembling, shaking, deep breath — and return to calm. Human beings, with our capacity to override and hold in those responses, often don't get to complete that cycle.
When we can't do that, our nervous system can stay stuck in states of fight, flight, or freeze long after the danger has passed, showing up as anxiety, tension, numbness, or a body that feels permanently on guard. SE works gently with physical sensation rather than the story alone, helping that unfinished survival energy move through and settle. Instead of asking you to revisit what happened, we work together on a quieter question: what is happening in your body right now, and what does it need to complete?
How Somatic Experiencing works
In a session, I'll invite you to notice what's happening in your body: a tightness, a warmth, an urge to move, a settling breath or any form of discomfort. We move slowly and in small, tolerable steps - a process SE calls titration - so your system is never flooded. Over time, this helps restore your natural capacity to move between activation and calm, instead of feeling stuck on high alert or shut down.
Much of the work is a gentle rhythm SE calls pendulation: moving your attention back and forth between what feels difficult and what feels neutral or steady, so your system slowly learns it can touch activation and still return to calm. Along the way we lean on "resources" — a place, a person, a memory, a sensation that feels safe in your body — to keep you anchored when things get tender. Over time these small completions accumulate: your nervous system widens what it can tolerate, and states that once felt overwhelming become something you can meet, and move through, without being swept away.
What Somatic Experiencing can help with
SE can be helpful for trauma and post-traumatic stress, chronic anxiety, a nervous system that feels always "on," the numbness or disconnection that can follow overwhelming events, and stress that shows up physically. It pairs naturally with relational therapy and with Brainspotting, since both work with how experience lives in the body rather than words alone.
Somatic work and shame
Shame is one of the hardest feelings to reach by talking, because it isn't really a thought — it's a full-body state. It shows up as heat in the face, a collapse in the chest, a pull to look away, hide, or disappear. Physiologically it tends to draw the nervous system into a kind of shutdown, and no amount of reasoning with yourself — "I have nothing to be ashamed of" — seems to touch it, because the part of you holding the shame isn't listening in words.
This is where Somatic Experiencing can be especially valuable. Rather than arguing with the story shame tells, we work with how it lives in your body, slowly and in small doses, so the collapse has room to shift instead of being pushed away or pushed through. Shame also feeds on isolation and on going unseen — so being gently met and stayed with, without judgment, is itself part of what lets it loosen. Over time, many people find they can feel the old pull of shame without disappearing into it: they can stay present with themselves, and with another person, right through the feeling.
What a session looks like
Sessions are slow, gentle, and led by your comfort — there's no need to re-tell or relive anything in detail. You stay in control throughout, and much of the work is simply learning to listen to your body's signals with support. My role is to keep the pace safe so your system can do what it already knows how to do.
In-person in Toronto, online across Ontario
I offer Somatic Experiencing in person in Toronto and through secure online sessions across Ontario, so you can do this work from wherever you feel most grounded.
Take the first step
The first step is simply a conversation. I offer a free 15-minute consultation — no pressure, just a chance to see whether this approach and I are a good fit for what you're carrying.