What Is Somatic Therapy Exactly — and Should You Try It?

Maybe you’ve read “The Body Keeps the Score,” the book about trauma that’s been a bestseller for years. Or you’ve seen people talking about things like eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (aka EMDR).  

Enter somatic therapy, a holistic approach that bridges the mind-body connection and focuses on helping people heal from traumatic experiences. Some people say somatic therapy works better for them than talk therapy. But what exactly is somatic therapy, and should you try it?

What is somatic therapy?

Somatic therapy is a broad term, but it generally refers to mental health practices that seek to help heal the ways in which trauma and other difficult emotions can show up physically in our bodies. Rather than considering the mind separately from the body, it considers how they work together.

“Though in medicine and among the general public there is often a delineation made between mind and body, there isn’t really one; mental and physical health are not separate issues,” says Thomas Soeprono, MD, fellowship director of Consult Liaison Psychiatry at UW Medical Center.  

Somatic therapy practices are designed to help you focus on bodily sensations in order to connect to emotional distress or pain you’re experiencing. Then, they help you process it so you can understand how it is impacting your mental health and begin healing. Practices may include:  

• Hypnosis
• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
• Body scan meditation
• Grounding techniques, like the 5-4-3-2-1 method: notice five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, and one you can taste
• Mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy (MABT)

The idea behind these therapies is that, when someone has developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),  complex PTSD, anxiety or depression, or has chronic pain or is grieving, they need to first feel safe in their own body and be aware of any physical symptoms they’re having — like flashbacks, insomnia, desensitization or muscle tension — in order to access their thoughts and behaviors.

Kim Rezentes, a nurse care manager at Harborview Medical Center who works with patients recovering from trauma and opioid use disorder, recently used somatic therapy with other patients as part of a clinical pilot research study.

“We were teaching people how to describe sensations and drop into and be present in their body,” says Rezentes.   

How is somatic therapy different than talk therapy?  

Talk therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or psychoanalysis, are designed to help people identify which thoughts they’re having and behaviors they’re doing that are distressing or unhelpful, and how to begin shifting to different thoughts and behaviors. This type of therapy doesn’t ignore the body, but it also doesn’t focus on the body.  

And while therapies like CBT have been studied and proven to be helpful for people dealing with many different mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression and even insomnia, research on many types of somatic therapy is lacking.  

In many cases, somatic therapies are best used as complementary therapies rather than a standalone treatment. For someone who is having a hard time opening up or connecting with their physical symptoms, though, somatic therapies could be a good starting point to establish feelings of safety and then move on to other treatments.

For example, in the study Rezentes was involved with, participants reported experiencing less chronic pain and other symptoms. These reductions might have been due to techniques participants learned in the study, such as doing a body scan meditation to notice how different parts of their body felt in the moment; breathing techniques to encourage calm; and softening rather than tensing up when touching painful body areas.  

“People in the study would come in with no or a negative relationship to their body, but their awareness of their body definitely increased during the time I worked with them,” Rezentes says.  

Since the study only took place over eight weeks, it was difficult to determine the long-term benefits of somatic therapy, though Rezentes ended up incorporating some of the techniques in her existing work with patients, such as leading breathwork exercises and asking people what they’re experiencing in their body.  

Somatic therapy can also be helpful for people who are stuck in a fear response like fight, flight or freeze, where their body is continuously perceiving a threat where there isn’t one, Soeprono says.  

“Somatic therapy has helped bring awareness back to which state someone is in and can give some indicators as to how to approach it,” Soeprono says.

What steps to take if you’re interested in somatic therapy

If you’re struggling with your mental health, the first thing to do is reach out to someone you trust. Consider talking with your doctor or finding a therapist — some therapists specialize in PTSD or provide sessions that are trauma-informed, meaning they have more familiarity working with people who have had traumatic experiences.

If you haven’t tried something like CBT yet, it is worth trying first since it has proven to be helpful for many people. But if you really want to try somatic therapy, just make sure you find a practitioner who is also a licensed mental health specialist or doctor.  

There are also ways you can try incorporating somatic therapies into your daily life on your own, like walking meditation or deep breathing. 

The type of therapy you choose matters less than seeking help if you’re struggling. So if you want to try somatic therapy, go for it — just make sure you’re consulting with an expert who has your best interest at heart.