Where Somatic Therapy Comes From
And why therapy began to include the body, not just the mind
Where does somatic therapy come from? Learn how body-based approaches developed and why they can help with trauma, anxiety, and patterns that don’t shift through insight alone.
When something doesn’t shift through understanding alone
A lot of people come to therapy having already spent time trying to understand themselves. They’ve reflected on their patterns, noticed how their mind works, and often have a clear sense of where things come from. And still, something doesn’t quite change.
You might understand why you feel anxious, or notice your mind looping, but the experience itself stays the same. Insight can take you part of the way, but not all the way. That gap—between understanding and actually feeling different—is often what leads people to explore somatic therapy, even if they first come in thinking about anxiety or overthinking.
A shift in attention
For a long time, therapy focused primarily on thoughts, emotions, and interpretation. That work can be meaningful and helpful. But over time, some clinicians began to notice that certain patterns didn’t fully shift through insight alone. This reflects my experience as well. Just because someone can say “This happened to me in childhood,” and have a theory about why it connects to their current life, does not mean that person has changed.
People might explain their experiences clearly. They could track their thoughts and make sense of them. But their bodies were still responding in familiar ways—holding tension, staying activated, or not quite settling, even when nothing was wrong.
Gradually, attention began to shift. Instead of only asking what someone was thinking or feeling, there was growing interest in what was happening physically, in real time.
Early roots
Some of the earliest work in this direction came from Wilhelm Reich, who explored the idea that emotional patterns could be held physically, not just psychologically. His work was controversial and not always integrated into mainstream therapy, but it opened the door to including the body as part of psychological work.
At the same time, developments within psychoanalytic thinking were moving in a related direction. After Sigmund Freud, some analysts began to emphasize lived experience, early development, and the conditions that allow a person to feel real and integrated. Donald Winnicott, in particular, spoke directly about the psyche–soma—the sense that psychological life and bodily experience are not separate, but part of a single process. In his work, difficulties could be understood not only in terms of thought or emotion, but in how this integration develops, holds, or at times becomes disrupted.
Later, others developed this further in ways that were more explicitly grounded in bodily awareness. Eugene Gendlin emphasized what he called the “felt sense”—a subtle, bodily knowing that isn’t always captured in words, but can guide meaningful change when it’s given attention. Around the same time, approaches emerged that focused more directly on how the nervous system responds to stress and trauma. Clinicians like Peter Levine and Pat Ogden helped bring this perspective into trauma work, highlighting how patterns of activation and regulation shape our experience.
A shared understanding
While these approaches differ, they share a similar foundation. They recognize that our experiences don’t live only in thought. They also take shape in the body—in patterns of tension, activation, and response that develop over time, especially in response to stress or overwhelming experiences.
In that sense, this isn’t an entirely new idea. It reflects a longer-standing understanding, present across different strands of psychotherapy, that experience is always both psychological and bodily—what Donald Winnicott described as the psyche–soma. And importantly, these patterns don’t always change just because we understand them. They tend to shift through experience.
Why this matters for anxiety, overthinking, and trauma
This becomes especially relevant with patterns like anxiety, overthinking, and people-pleasing. You might understand why your mind returns to something, or notice yourself analyzing a situation again and again. But your system can still feel engaged—still slightly on, still looking for resolution.
From a somatic perspective, that makes sense. If your nervous system has learned to stay activated, your mind will often follow. Thinking becomes one way your system tries to create stability or anticipate what’s next. This is often where anxiety and trauma overlap—not necessarily in obvious ways, but in how the body continues to respond, even when you know you’re safe.
What somatic therapy is, in practice
Somatic Therapy isn’t about focusing on the body instead of the mind. It’s about including both. It is about making the implicit more explicit, and creating connection between our intellect and bodies. Some psychotherapists call this “name it to tame it.” In practice, that might mean noticing what happens physically as you talk about something, or slowing down enough to stay with an experience rather than moving past it.
The work is gradual. Not about pushing for change, but allowing patterns to unfold and shift in a way that feels manageable.
A different kind of change
Over time, this can lead to a different experience. You may still have the same thoughts, but they don’t carry the same weight. Your system may settle more easily, and patterns that once felt automatic may begin to loosen.
Not because you’ve forced anything—but because something underneath has shifted.
Somatic therapy in the North Bay
I offer somatic therapy for adults in the North Bay and across the SF Bay Area who are dealing with anxiety, overthinking, and patterns that don’t seem to shift through insight alone.
If you’d like to learn more, you can visit my somatic therapy page or explore related articles on high-functioning anxiety, overthinking, and people-pleasing, which often connect with this work in less obvious ways.