Somatic Therapy
Integrating the wisdom of your body in therapy
Somatic therapy is a body-informed approach to psychotherapy that recognizes something many people already know intuitively: not everything we carry can be talked through.
Stress, trauma, anxiety, grief, and chronic overwhelm don’t live only in our thoughts. They live in the nervous system - in patterns of tension, shutdown, activation, breath, posture, and sensation. Somatic therapy works directly with these patterns, helping the body complete responses that were once interrupted or learned as protective strategies.
At The Wren Centre in west Ottawa, somatic therapy is not about forcing release, reliving trauma, or “getting it out.” It is about building safety, awareness, and choice from the inside out.
When Somatic Therapy Can Help
Somatic therapy can be especially supportive if you:
Feel stuck despite insight-oriented or talk-based therapy
Experience anxiety or panic that feels physical or hard to explain
Notice chronic tension, numbness, fatigue, or overwhelm
Have a history of trauma, developmental stress, or attachment wounds
Struggle with emotional regulation or feel disconnected from your body
Find it difficult to put words to what you’re feeling
Want a gentler, more attuned pace of therapeutic work
Many people are drawn to somatic therapy because it respects the body’s intelligence and works with the nervous system rather than trying to override it.
What Somatic Therapy Looks Like
Somatic therapy sessions are collaborative and paced. Our therapists have different approaches and toolkits and will tailor somatic therapy to your needs.
Depending on the therapist and your needs, sessions may include:
Tracking body sensations, impulses, and emotional shifts
Learning to notice early signs of activation or shutdown
Gentle movement, grounding, or breath-based practices
Working with nervous system regulation and capacity
Integrating body awareness with insight and meaning-making
You do not need to recount traumatic events in detail for somatic therapy to be effective. In many cases, healing happens through present-moment awareness and small, precise shifts rather than intense emotional processing.
Our Approach to Somatic Therapy
Therapists at The Wren Centre in west Ottawa integrate somatic therapy alongside talk therapy and other evidence-based approaches. We recognize that bottom-up (body-based) and top-down (cognitive and relational) processes work best when they support one another.
Our work is trauma-informed, consent-based, and responsive to each client’s history, identity, and nervous system. We work with adults, teens, and children, adapting somatic approaches developmentally and relationally - especially when supporting parents and families.
Somatic therapy is not about fixing your body or forcing calm. It’s about helping your system learn that it has more options than it once did.
If you’re curious about somatic therapy, we’re happy to help you explore whether this approach may be a good fit for you or your child.
Many of the clients I’ve worked with who end up doing a significant amount of somatic therapy didn’t start off that way. Even when we progressed into mostly somatic work together - sessions that were much “quieter” or worked in meditative states - we would still have sessions where there was more talking.