Somatic Therapy Online

What Is Somatic Therapy?

“Somatic” means relating to the body. Somatic therapies start from the idea that stress and trauma affect the body, not only memory and thought: a tight chest, a held breath, or a sudden urge to freeze or get away. In session, you learn to notice these sensations and find what helps your body settle. The aim is more choice in how you respond, without having to relive what happened.

Somatic Experiencing Explained

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented approach to trauma developed by Peter Levine. It works with small amounts of distress at a time, which it calls titration, and moves back and forth between distress and a sense of steadiness, which it calls pendulation. Its premise is that the body’s response to threat can settle when approached gradually.

SE is one of several body-based approaches. Others, such as TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises), have their own training and certification.

How It Is Used in Sessions

Somatic work at Closing the Wound is drawn from Somatic Experiencing. In practice, this means pausing to notice what happens in your body as you talk, slowing down when something feels like too much, and building simple ways to steady yourself that you can practise at home.

Somatic work is combined with talking approaches, most often in counselling for complex trauma and anxiety.

Can You Do Somatic Therapy Online?

Yes. Somatic work online relies on your own attention to sensation, guided by questions, and involves no touch. Your breathing, posture and pace can still be seen on screen, and sessions include frequent check-ins. Research on body-based therapy by video is still limited. Most evidence on video therapy comes from other approaches.

Can You Do Somatic Work on Your Own?

Some of it, yes. You may be offered short practices to do at home, such as noticing your breath or where your feet meet the floor, and sessions help you find what settles you. These practices support the work done in sessions rather than replace it. If a practice at home stirs up strong distress, that is a sign to slow down and bring it to your next session.

What the Evidence Shows

Evidence for SE is early but encouraging. In the first randomised trial, 63 adults with PTSD who had 15 weekly SE sessions improved more than those on a waiting list, in both PTSD and depression symptoms (Brom and colleagues, 2017). A 2021 review of 16 studies found preliminary evidence that SE reduces PTSD symptoms, noted mixed study quality and called for more rigorous trials (Kuhfuß and colleagues, 2021).