Somatic experiencing touch therapy
Healing Through Connection
You may benefit from Somatic Experiencing Touch Therapy if:
You have Early-Life/Pre-Verbal trauma: experiences in childhood, like medical procedures or neglect, that are difficult to address verbally
You carry physical symptoms: chronic tension, pain, or other somatic complaints that haven’t responded to traditional therapy
You struggle with attachment & relationships: trouble navigating intimacy, boundaries, or distinguishing between safe/unsafe touch
You rarely feel safe or regulated: challenges in developing a sense of safety, trust, or calm in your body and with others
You’re not alone. Together we can support your body’s innate ability to heal & find regulation.
Receiving attuned and supportive touch creates positive physiological changes in the brain and the body.
$270 PER SESSION | 90 MINUTES
About Somatic Experiencing (SE) Touch Therapy.
Somatic Experiencing Touch Therapy is an advanced approach used alongside Somatic Experiencing. It’s not massage or body manipulation, but a therapeutic application of touch to support whole-body healing.
Our earliest experiences of safety often come through nurturing touch. When caregivers are unavailable or sources of distress, the body learns to cope by toggling between hyper-arousal and shutdown. Trauma or stressful events can leave lasting impacts, contributing to chronic health and emotional challenges.
Touch therapy helps the body feel safe, grounded, and regulated. By fostering co-regulation, supporting healthy boundaries, and facilitating the movement of bound trauma energy, it helps restore coherence across body systems and connection to yourself and others.
In sessions, we work together to hear your body’s story. By mindfully tracking sensations in the presence of an attuned SE practitioner, you can move out of survival mode and into a state of healing and integration.
What to Expect from SE Touch Therapy.
Touch work is conducted fully clothed and can be integrated while seated, lying face up on a massage table, or even standing during movement-based exercises. Touch is applied using hands, forearms, or feet, and indirect methods like cushions can also be used to provide support.
Sometimes, touch therapy involves no physical contact, focusing instead on resolving the activation around anticipating touch, setting boundaries, or voicing the ability to say no without guilt or shame. Comfort is prioritized with pillows, bolsters, and blankets, and the therapist consistently seeks consent for touch, ensuring clients can pause or stop at any time.
Initial touch typically begins at the periphery of the body, such as the base of the head, neck, shoulders, joints, or feet, with the aim of encouraging regulation. Depending on the client’s nervous system, the therapist may stay focused on one area for a session or multiple sessions before moving to other parts of the body.
Touch work can elicit unexpected emotions, sensations, or memories, and it’s common for the body to tremble or vibrate during a release. The therapist supports clients through these reactions, helping them feel contained and grounded. Rest after sessions is encouraged to allow for integration.
Getting Started Is Easy
01.
Book a free 15 minute consultation.
02.
Schedule your 90-min intake session.
03.
Begin therapy, start healing!
THE MODALITY
Somatic Experiencing (SE)
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a gentle, body-based approach to healing trauma and chronic stress. It focuses on helping the nervous system release stored energy and tension from overwhelming experiences, facilitating recovery from PTSD, accumulated stress, and emotional wounds.
SE supports healing by guiding you to gradually build tolerance and capacity for challenging sensations, impulses, and emotions without becoming overwhelmed. It allows for trauma resolution without re-telling or re-living the events, making it especially effective for pre-verbal or early traumas and offering flexibility in how much you choose to share.
Through techniques like “titration” (breaking down experiences into manageable steps) and “pendulation” (shifting between distress and comfort to release stored energy), SE helps you stay present and avoid overwhelm. This gentle process reduces the risk of re-traumatization while fostering a sense of safety and control.
Over time, SE helps transform patterns of fight, flight, freeze, or collapse into resilience and ease. Clients often experience shifts from anxiety or rage to peace, and from depression or numbness to empowerment and vitality. By resetting the nervous system and creating corrective bodily experiences, SE enhances your ability to feel balanced, alive, and engaged in life.
Frequently asked questions
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SE, which works very well with shock (sudden, single incident) trauma, emphasizes the concepts of titration (working with small chunks of activating sensation/information at a time) and pendulation (shifting awareness from the activation to a comforting resource and back again, repeating the cycle until the “charge” dissipates). Somatic Touch uses these same concepts, but adds the gentle hands-on contact that seems to work particularly well with developmental and attachment (pre-verbal) trauma.
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During our intake session together, we will discuss your goals, and from that develop a treatment plan. My first priority is to create a safe container, and I find at times that beginning without any physical contact can be very reassuring. This is why I use both Supportive Somatic Therapy and SE Touch Therapy in my practice.
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Approaching trauma from a body perspective can feel scary—after all, invasive physical contact is often the source of the problem! While the SE Touch Therapy techniques are done over clothing and are designed to feel supportive, it is more important that you feel safe and in control. It is not unusual that we spend a session or two simply increasing and decreasing the physical space between us, not making actual contact, to allow you to notice what it feels like to have boundaries and to have those boundaries respected. Self-touch is another method we can use to build your capacity to tolerate physical connection.
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Our goal is not only that you recover from previous traumatic experiences, but that your nervous system is able to effectively meet future challenges. Building your capacity to return to settled equilibrium is key. Because we are born without fully formed nervous systems, we are designed to acquire this skill through connection with a loving, regulated caregiver. With Somatic Touch, the therapist makes contact with specific areas of the body which are connected to stress responses and intentionally invites this healing co-regulation. Our nervous system neuroplasticity allows this capacity to develop, regardless of our actual age.
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This is often a very good idea! I work with many clients who regularly see a talk therapist, and I’m happy to make referrals. I also routinely receive referrals from psychotherapists who believe their clients can benefit from SE or SE Touch Therapy, and the therapist is either not SE trained or prefers to not use hands-on techniques with clients.
