The Body Remembers: Somatic Wisdom for Healing Beyond Talk Therapy

" The body always leads us home... if we can simply learn to listen."

For the last two decades, I’ve been walking the bridge between the body and the psyche—working at the edges of where words fall short, where pain gets stored in muscle and fascia, and where the nervous system tells its own story. In this space, healing isn't something we talk about; it’s something we inhabit.

What Is Somatic Psychotherapy?

Somatic psychotherapy is a holistic approach to healing that recognizes the inseparability of body and mind. It honors the truth that trauma, grief, anxiety, and joy are not just mental states—they are embodied experiences. They live in posture, breath patterns, muscle tension, gut instincts, and subtle shifts of sensation.

In somatic work, the body becomes an ally in the therapeutic process—not just a container for the mind, but a guide. We learn to listen to its cues, its rhythms, its stored memories. In doing so, we access a deeper, more integrated form of healing—one that moves beyond cognition into felt sense, presence, and transformation.

My Lineage: A Path Rooted in Experience

My own path in this work has been shaped by over 20 years of study and practice at the intersection of Gestalt awareness, East/West psychology, and somatic explorations. Almost ten of those globe-trotting years were spent learning, teaching, and facilitating at Esalen Institute—one of the birthplaces of the human potential movement, where the wisdom of the body was almost always at the center of the work.

There, I trained and collaborated in communities deeply informed by the likes of Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Gabrielle Roth, and Alan Watts. My work has also been shaped by more contemporary voices—teachers and colleagues like Peggy Horan, Michael Clemmens, Susan Harper, Perry and Johanna Holloman, and countless luminaries who continue to evolve the somatic lineage with compassion, clarity, and depth.

Why the Body Matters in Healing

We live in a culture that privileges the verbal, the cognitive, the diagnostic. But the body speaks an older language—one of instinct, gesture, image, and sensation. For many of us, healing begins when we remember how to listen.

Somatic therapy supports people in:

• Releasing trauma stored in the nervous system

• Reclaiming agency and embodied boundaries

• Cultivating resilience through nervous system regulation

• Accessing deep, authentic emotion in safe and contained ways

• Learning to live from a place of grounded presence rather than reactivity

As a practitioner, I don’t view symptoms as pathology—I see them as signals. The body is wise, not broken. Our task is to slow down, get curious, and build a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that have been exiled, silenced, or misunderstood.

An Invitation

This blog will be a space where I share reflections, tools, and perspectives from the field of somatics, Gestalt, Contemplative and Buddhist Psychotherapy, psychedelic integration, and relational healing. Whether you’re a fellow practitioner, a curious seeker, or someone in your own process, my hope is that these words offer resonance, relief, and perhaps a new way of seeing what’s possible. Together we can discover your somatic wisdom.

The body remembers.

And with care, curiosity, and presence—It can also re-member us back into wholeness.

The Body Remembers: Somatic Wisdom for Healing Beyond Talk Therapy