Somatic Therapy in Beverly Hills, CA
Your Body Is Holding More Than You Realize
There’s tightness in your chest. The tension in your shoulders that never fully goes away. And your body braces before a difficult conversation, even when you tell yourself there’s nothing to worry about. These aren’t just physical symptoms. They’re your body telling you something needs attention.
Somatic therapy works with the connection between your mind and body to release what talk therapy alone can’t reach. At Inner Strength Therapy in Beverly Hills, we use somatic therapy to help you move through anxiety, trauma, and chronic stress at the deepest level.
In-person in Beverly Hills | Online throughout California
Somatic Therapy in Beverly Hills, CA
Your Body Is Holding More Than You Realize
There’s tightness in your chest. The tension in your shoulders that never fully goes away. And your body braces before a difficult conversation, even when you tell yourself there’s nothing to worry about. These aren’t just physical symptoms. They’re your body telling you something needs attention.
Somatic therapy works with the connection between your mind and body to release what talk therapy alone can’t reach. At Inner Strength Therapy in Beverly Hills, we use somatic therapy to help you move through anxiety, trauma, and chronic stress at the deepest level.
In-person in Beverly Hills | Online throughout California
When Talk Therapy Isn’t Enough
You’ve done the work. Maybe therapy, books, and self-reflection have given you intellectual understanding of your patterns. But something still isn’t shifting. The anxiety and tension is still there. You still feel on edge in ways you can’t fully explain.
However, that’s not a failure. It’s a sign that what you’re carrying isn’t just in your mind. It’s in your body.
In fact, Trauma, stress, and emotional pain don’t just live in your thoughts. They get stored in your nervous system, your muscles, and breath. Your body remembers what your mind has tried to move past. Until that stored energy is addressed, it keeps showing up as tension, reactivity, numbness, or a constant sense that something is wrong.
Somatic therapy is designed to work with exactly this.
What Is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a body-centered approach to healing that recognizes the deep connection between your physical experience and your emotional world. Instead of focusing only on what you think, somatic therapy pays attention to what you feel in your body, where you hold tension, how your nervous system responds to stress, and what your body needs to release.
In traditional talk therapy, you might understand why you feel anxious, but the anxiety persists because your nervous system is still stuck in a state of high alert. Somatic therapy works directly with that nervous system response, helping your body learn that it’s safe. As a result, the relief isn’t just intellectual. You feel it.
When combined with psychodynamic therapy, which explores the emotional patterns and relational dynamics underneath your experience, somatic therapy becomes even more powerful. You understand the why and you release the how. That’s the approach we take at Inner Strength Therapy.
What to Expect in a Somatic Therapy Session
Every session is different because every person is different. But somatic therapy generally includes a blend of the following, tailored to where you are in your healing:
Body awareness
Gentle guidance to notice what’s happening in your body. You might notice tension in your chest, numbness in your shoulders, or a subtle shift when you bring attention to a particular area. This isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about listening to what your body is telling you.
Breathwork and grounding
Intentional breathing and grounding techniques that calm your nervous system and create a sense of safety in the moment. This is especially helpful if you tend to feel anxious, disconnected, or overwhelmed during emotional conversations.
Movement
Sometimes simple, mindful movement helps release what words can’t. This might look like gentle stretching, shifting your posture, or allowing your body to express what it’s holding. It’s always at your pace and always within your comfort zone.
Nervous system regulation
Learning to recognize when your nervous system is activated (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) and developing tools to bring yourself back to a regulated state. Over time, this rewires how your body responds to stress.
Integration
As sensations, memories, or emotions arise during the session, we work together to make sense of what’s coming up. This is where somatic therapy and talk therapy meet. The tension releases, and with it comes understanding of what it was holding.
Somatic therapy isn’t one-size-fits-all. Sessions are shaped around your comfort, your history, and your pace.
Who Benefits from Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy can be especially helpful if you’re experiencing:
Anxiety that lives in your body. Racing heart, shallow breathing, muscle tension, a feeling of being constantly on edge. Your body is stuck in fight-or-flight mode, and no amount of rationalizing makes it stop.
Trauma or PTSD. Whether it’s a single event or years of relational or developmental trauma, the impact is still being carried in the body. Flashbacks, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, and difficulty feeling safe are all signs that the nervous system needs support.
Narcissistic abuse recovery. The constant hypervigilance, the fawn response, or the way your body learned to scan for danger in relationships. Somatic therapy helps your nervous system unlearn those survival patterns.
Chronic stress and burnout. You’ve been running on adrenaline for so long that your body doesn’t know how to rest. Fatigue, headaches, and insomnia start to feel constant. It’s your body telling you it’s had enough.”
Feeling disconnected from your body or emotions. Going through the motions without feeling fully present. Identifying what you’re feeling or where you feel it feels impossible. Somatic therapy helps you reconnect.
Physical symptoms without a clear medical cause. Chronic pain, digestive issues, tension headaches, or fatigue that your doctor can’t fully explain. These can be signs that your body is holding unprocessed stress or emotion.
If you’ve tried talk therapy and it helped your understanding but didn’t fully resolve how you feel in your body, somatic therapy might be the missing piece.
How Somatic Therapy Is Different from Talk Therapy
In traditional talk therapy, you sit across from a therapist and discuss your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. That’s valuable. But for many people, especially those dealing with trauma or chronic anxiety, talking about the problem doesn’t resolve what the body is holding.
Here’s a simple way to think about it:
Talk therapy helps you understand why you feel the way you do. Somatic therapy helps your body actually let go.
You might know exactly why you’re anxious. Maybe you can trace it back to childhood, to a specific relationship, to a pattern you’ve identified a hundred times. But knowing isn’t the same as healing. This approach bridges that gap by working with the nervous system directly, helping your body release what your mind already understands.
At Inner Strength Therapy, we don’t choose one over the other. We combine somatic therapy with psychodynamic therapy so you get both: the understanding and the release. That’s how lasting change happens.
Questions About Somatic Therapy
What does a somatic therapy session look like?
Each session is different depending on what you’re working through. It might include guided body awareness, breathwork, gentle movement, or simply noticing what’s happening in your body as we talk. Every session is collaborative and always at your pace.
Is somatic therapy the same as massage or bodywork?
No. Somatic therapy is psychotherapy, not bodywork. There is no physical touch involved. We work with your awareness of your body, your breath, your posture, and your nervous system responses. It’s a psychological approach that includes the body, not a physical treatment.
Do I need to have experienced trauma to benefit from somatic therapy?
Not at all. Somatic therapy is helpful for anyone dealing with anxiety, stress, burnout, emotional disconnection, or physical tension. Trauma is one reason people seek it out, but it’s not the only one. If your body is carrying stress, somatic therapy can help.
Can somatic therapy help with anxiety?
Yes. Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people seek somatic therapy. It often manifests physically, through a racing heart, tight chest, shallow breathing, or a constant sense of being on edge. Somatic therapy works directly with these physical responses to help calm your nervous system.
How is this different from meditation or mindfulness?
Meditation and mindfulness can be part of somatic therapy, but somatic therapy goes further. It’s a therapeutic process guided by a trained therapist who helps you understand and process what your body is holding. The goal isn’t just calming down in the moment. It’s about resolving what’s causing the dysregulation in the first place.
Do you offer somatic therapy online?
Yes. I offer secure, HIPAA-compliant video sessions to anyone in California. Somatic therapy works well in a telehealth format because much of the work involves guided awareness, breathwork, and nervous system regulation, all of which translate effectively to virtual sessions.
Your Body Already Knows What It Needs
You don’t have to keep pushing through. Tension, exhaustion, and the feeling that something is off are your body’s way of trying to tell you something. Somatic therapy is how you finally listen
If something on this page spoke to you, trust that feeling. There’s no need to have it all figured out before you reach out.
Call or text (831) 272-4622, email [email protected], or book online.