The Somatic Psychotherapy Approach

How Somatic Psychotherapy works

Somatic Psychotherapy heals unresolved trauma – events that overwhelm us and cause stress disorder. Trauma is a right-brain, implicit memory wound to the body, the psyche, and the soul.*

The good news is that, due to brain plasticity, this breach can be repaired through compassionate right-brain connectivity.

My approach is integrative, transformative, and body-centred, based in emotional self-regulation theory, the neurobiology of trauma, attachment theory, and the ancient wisdom of nature-based traditions.

Somatic Psychotherapy explores and teaches:

  • how the mind lives not just in the brain, but in the heart and gut and in your whole body.
  • we are each a fractal of the Whole.
  • how your thoughts and beliefs about who you are in the world determine your emotional expressions in relationships and in creating your world.
  • you are "God Eternal within the Body" (Gregg Braden)

Somatic Psychotherapy also enhances skills to:

  • self-regulate the nervous system and change old, limiting patterns of thinking and behaving
  • transform major life challenges into experiences of renewal, connection, and growth
  • repair relationship injuries
  • improve emotional, mental, and physical health
  • restore connection to Self and internal parts
  • enhance creative flow and actions
  • expand social engagement in your life.

The body physically mirrors the sense of Self. When you expand with joy or contract in fear, your body reflects these patterns of expansion and constriction.

* (Dr. Sharon Stanley, 2011)


All content © Sylvia Cust, 2011 - 2015. All rights reserved. Photos - Banner: Jools Andrés; Aspens: Jools Andrés

Somatic empathy illuminates these patterns and safely works to restore brain connectivity, repair the breach in self-boundaries, and lay down new messages in the neural pathways.

What happens in a session:

You are welcomed in your wholeness, rather than fragmented parts and problems to be solved. You are safely guided in tracking your sensations in your body even as your story unfolds. We incorporate gestures, movements such as  subtle rotating of your head, pushing, pulling, opening, closing. A rhythmic pattern of oscillation, tracking and resourcing is encouraged to complete the flight, freeze and fight responses.

The energetic releases that you experience in the session are integrated through guided reflection.