Individual Somatic Coaching
What is it?
Somatic coaching is an alternative to talk therapy that relies on your body’s wisdom to transform you in a lasting way.
Somatics brings together a powerful set of tools — including from therapy, meditation, leadership coaching, and bodywork — that gets results that each discipline couldn’t alone.
Individual coaching is usually done in a series and we try to tackle one bigger change or a few smaller changes in that time. While we work through the past to find what may be holding you back and release it, we are primarily focused on the future and how you can move forward as the person you want to become.
What happens in a session?
When we first start working together, we focus on defining the change you want to make. Then each time we meet, we choose what to work on that will move you closer to your goals.
As in therapy, we’ll talk about what’s happening in your life, what you want to be different, and what’s happened in the past that’s holding you back.
We spend the most time doing body-based practices that help you discover how you operate, disrupt harmful patterns, and make lasting changes. These practices may happen sitting, standing, moving, or lying down. They are designed to help you look at all your dimensions simultaneously — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational. As we discuss what comes up for you during the exercises, I coach you to become more connected to your body, to safely explore what’s uncomfortable, and to try on new choices that you’re not accustomed to. You’ll grow by practicing the thing that’s hard for you, in a safe place.
As we explore deeper into who you are and who you are becoming, we gain insight around what you need to address next. As we go deeper, we may do a few longer sessions of somatic table work that focus on healing past experiences that are getting in your way.
Coaching sessions are typically 60 minutes and take place on zoom or in person.
Is it right for me?
Clients often come to me because they’ve made strides in therapy but it isn’t leading to the change they want now.
They have some amount of insight about what they want to change, and they are tired of falling back into what is familiar but no longer working. They are ready to be free of the baggage they’ve been carrying around for way too long.
Many clients are new to somatics, but they are curious and open to trying a body-based approach to change. They want a practitioner that will both create safe space to explore scary or difficult stuff and also guide them into the things they’ve been avoiding. They want an experienced practitioner that understands how transformation happens and can teach relational skills they may not have learned growing up.
They want an approach that will show results in a matter of months, not years and years.
Why is it effective?
Named for the Greek word “soma,” meaning “the living body in its wholeness,” the field of somatics emerged over the past 75 years as Western practitioners realized what most of the world knew for most of human history — we can’t change one part of ourselves in isolation. Western culture tried to separate “mind” and “body” for hundreds of years, and many of us were taught to disconnect from our bodies in order to live in our thinking. But contemporary science shows that we were wrong. Psychology and biology are inextricable — our thoughts and emotions cannot be separated from our muscles and bones.
This is why, if we want to transform in a lasting way, we can’t just think and talk about it. Somatic coaching creates change by working with all of your dimensions simultaneously — your beliefs, desires, histories, sensations, reactions to stress, physical health, and social context. Practices help you to shift your habitual moods, let go of old habits, and replace them with new actions.
Just like in good therapy, somatic coaching helps you arrive at new insights about yourself that you can’t alone. Then coaching makes real change possible by teaching skills that many of us never learned. This might include staying centered when you get triggered, setting appropriate boundaries, feeling for what you want and working towards it, experiencing pleasure and intimacy, managing your energy and stress levels, trusting yourself and building trust with others, being present and adaptable to changing conditions, giving and receiving feedback, and engaging in healthy conflict.
Somatic coaching doesn’t allow for complacency or endless talking in circles. Once we’ve established a basis of care and trust, the coaching will stretch you and keep nudging when the change inevitably gets hard. We keep going until the change is both internal and external, meaning you both feel more competent and receive positive feedback from trusted people in your life.
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I am committed to increasing access to healing by offering this work at an affordable rate, and as much as possible I do not turn away clients for lack of funds.
My suggested contribution is $160/session.
For clients who are not able to pay that full amount, I offer a very generous sliding scale.
If you have any concern about money, let’s talk about it and I’m confident we can find a mutually satisfying arrangement.
I accept cash, checks, and electronic transfers via Venmo, PayPal, and Wise.
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Sessions take place at my studio or on Zoom.
My studio is located about 15 minutes north of downtown Durham and 15 minutes east of downtown Hillsborough, NC.
Upon request, I see clients at their homes with a travel fee.
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No. Somatic healing does not currently fit the requirements for insurance plans. For this reason I offer a generous sliding scale to those with financial limitations.
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I see clients during normal business hours Monday-Friday, and by special request in the evenings and on weekends.
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If you’re interested in working with me or would like to learn more, shoot me an email or schedule a short introductory call. This is an opportunity to ask questions, get to know each other a bit, and decide if you’d like me to support you.
I provide clients with a private scheduling link to easily book sessions.
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There is no minimum commitment to try somatic coaching and I encourage clients to begin with a few sessions to make sure it feels like a good fit.
Some clients experience profound shifts from a single session, but I strongly recommend committing to at least 10 sessions if you are trying to make big changes.
Typically this means we meet weekly for 3-4 months. This time allows you to find your footing in new practices and start to see the transformational fruits of our labor. After that time, some clients continue weekly and others prefer biweekly.
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The lineage of somatic coaching is long and diverse, and I’m happy to talk more about it with you.
Somatic coaching was developed over the past 50 years at Lomi School, Strozzi Institute, and generative somatics. Many teachers have contributed to the methodology and their living lineage.
Somatic coaching incorporates techniques from aikido, meditation, polarity therapy, Feldenkrais, Rolfing, gestalt therapy, body-oriented psychotherapy, linguistics, and other modalities.
My teachers have received formal permission to incorporate practices from their teachers in East Asia, South Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. I also want to acknowledge that nearly all forms of embodied practice in the United States are subject to the historical forces of colonization and appropriation.