Embodied Processing / Somatic Therapy

Developing our Felt Sense

Many of us have lost touch with the felt sense of who we are, living mostly in our minds. As Michael Singer says, “The mind is a place the soul goes to escape from the heart.” When life brings big emotions and stress, our nervous system can become overwhelmed, and disconnecting from the body often becomes a way to cope.

More recently, we have started to understand the need of "feeling it to heal it” and that the body keeps the score - as per the title of the best selling book by Bessel Van Der Kolk. This disconnection between our mind and body can lead to us being disconnected from our true selves, our emotions, wants and desires. Our emotions are here to guide us in this life - to tell us when something is out of balance. I believe that guiding people back to being within the body, feeling into our emotions and feeling safe within ourselves is key to our wellbeing.

Getting to the Root of Your Symptoms Through a Nervous System Lens

Embodied Processing (EP) is a trauma-informed approach to resolving painful mental, emotional and relational issues by addressing the root cause in the body.

Embodied Processing is a body-based, trauma-informed therapeutic approach that helps individuals safely access and release unresolved emotional pain, stress, and trauma held in the nervous system. It is rooted in somatic (body-focused) psychology and neuroscience, recognising that our bodies hold memories, patterns, and protective responses that operate beneath conscious awareness.

Many of our difficulties can be traced back to incomplete or unprocessed experiences that were overwhelming at the time they occurred. Rather than being fully processed and integrated, these experiences can become "stuck" in the body, influencing how we feel, behave, and relate to others. This results in a dysregulated nervous system, repressed emotions and suffering (eg anxiety, pain, sleep problems, addiction, stress, chronic tension, reactivity, emotional numbness, or a sense of being disconnected from oneself or life).

Embodied Processing works by gently guiding you into the felt experience of the body in a safe, present-moment way. Through cultivating awareness of bodily sensations, emotions, and subtle shifts in your internal state, the body is supported to complete these interrupted processes naturally. The approach doesn’t require re-telling your story in detail—instead, it allows the deeper layers of emotion and sensation to unfold organically, without force or analysis. Over time, this leads to a more regulated nervous system, a greater sense of inner safety, and increased capacity to meet life with presence, resilience, and authenticity.

This gentle, attuned approach can be especially helpful for those who’ve felt overwhelmed, disconnected, or anxious about being in their body. You don’t have to go anywhere you’re not ready to go. Simply learning to be with yourself in a kind and present way is already powerful, and healing unfolds from there.

What happens during a session

Each session is held in a calm, compassionate, and non-judgmental space. You are always in control of the pace and depth of the work.

Each session typically includes the following:

Guided awareness to help you come into the body in the present moment.
Building a resource (eg safety/calm) within the body, so you can safely connect with your body and emotions without retraumatisation.
Exploration of physical sensations, emotions, or memories that arise.
Using the mind-body and your unconscious mind, we uncover the root cause(s) of your suffering.
Support in staying with your experience gently, allowing the body to process what needs to be felt and integrated.
Space for reflection and grounding at the end.

Some examples of what I've helped with EP...

(To protect my clients identity I have changed some details including names)

Helen anger issues began to resolve when we found the root cause and worked on integrating this anger.

Angela found that her fear, anxiety and chronic pain were due to grief over losing her mum many years prior. We gently worked with allowing this grief to be felt to resolve her issues.

Grace's unresolved shame was found to be linked to unresolved childhood events. Sessions helped her to reconnect with her inner child, with understanding, love and compassion.

What can Embodied Processing help with?

This work can be beneficial for a wide range of emotional, psychological, and somatic issues, including:

Anxiety and overwhelm
Depression or emotional numbness
Trauma (developmental, relational, or acute)
Chronic stress or burnout
Dissociation or disconnection from the body
Grief and loss
Difficult relationship patterns
Low self-worth or self-criticism
Chronic pain or other conditions / Mind-Body Syndrome /TMS
Creative blocks or feeling stuck in life

It’s also a powerful practice for those on a self-development or spiritual journey, seeking deeper self-understanding and embodiment.

What is Trauma?

Trauma is what happens in the body when we don’t have the capacity to safely process and recover from a threat. When something is overwhelming, frightening, or deeply distressing and the nervous system doesn’t have the capacity or support to fully process it, the experience can get “stuck” in the body. Instead of moving through a natural stress cycle (like fight, flight, or freeze and then recovery), the nervous system may stay in a state of dysregulation. This can look like:

Hyperarousal (anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, irritability)
Hypoarousal (numbness, depression, disconnection, exhaustion)
A mix of both

In this state, the body continues reacting as if the threat is still present, even long after it’s over. That’s why trauma can show up as physical symptoms, emotional overwhelm, or behavioural patterns that don’t seem to make sense logically.

Depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, chronic pain and so on are manifestations of trauma and a dysregulated nervous system. Talk therapy cannot help resolve these issues, as we need to work with the system that created them in the beginning.

Trauma does not have to be something big like sexual, mental or physical abuse. Trauma is not getting your needs met, not being loved unconditionally by a parent, being bullied at school, the death of a pet and so on. Therefore, we all have some amount of trauma.

What does it mean to be Trauma Informed?

To be trauma-informed means to understand that we’re working with our nervous system's survival instinct, and the way these drive us in our lives. We do not choose to react a specific way - our nervous system reacts automatically to different situations and is not a cognitive experience. We therefore work with that system ie the nervous system within the body and NOT with the cognitive mind.