Somatic therapy is more than talking about what happened. It is a way of listening to what the body still remembers.
Somatic therapy is a body-centered approach to healing that begins with a simple understanding: our nervous system holds the imprint of stress, trauma, and overwhelming experiences. When something feels too much, too fast, or too unsafe, the body often responds by bracing, freezing, disconnecting, or staying on alert. Over time, these protective responses can become familiar patterns. We may notice them as tightness in the chest, shallow breathing, a clenched jaw, tension in the stomach, numbness, restlessness, or the feeling of never being fully at ease.
Somatic therapy gently brings awareness back to the body, helping you notice what is happening inside with curiosity rather than judgment. Instead of forcing a story or pushing through emotion, sessions move slowly and respectfully. Together, we pay attention to sensations, breath, posture, movement, and the nervous system’s natural rhythms. The body is not treated as a problem to fix, but as a wise part of you that has been trying to protect you.
This work may include grounding practices, breath awareness, gentle movement, tracking body sensations, and learning to recognize signs of safety, activation, or overwhelm. You are always fully clothed, always in choice, and always supported at a pace that feels manageable. The goal is not to relive the past, but to help the body complete what was interrupted, release what it no longer needs to carry, and build a greater capacity for calm, connection, and presence.
Somatic therapy helps insight become something you can feel, not just understand. It is a process of coming back into your body, rebuilding trust in yourself, and creating more space to live with ease.
Benefits of Somatic Therapy
By working with both the mind and the body, somatic therapy helps you understand how stress, trauma, and emotion show up physically. This body-centered approach supports nervous system regulation, releases stored tension, and helps you feel more grounded, connected, and present in your life.
Nervous System Regulation
Learn to recognize signs of overwhelm, shutdown, or activation, and gently guide your body back toward steadiness and safety.
Somatic Awareness
Reconnect with your body’s signals, sensations, and needs, building a deeper sense of trust in yourself.
Tension Release
Soften patterns of bracing, tightness, and holding, allowing the body to release stress at a pace that feels safe.
Embodied Integration
Connect physical sensations with emotions and life experiences, helping insight become something you can feel, not just understand.
Frequently
Asked Questions
Questions we often asked
Q1: Who can benefit from individual therapy?
Individual therapy can help children, adolescents, and adults experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, trauma, relationship difficulties, or life transitions.
Q2: How long does therapy usually last?
The length of therapy varies based on your goals and needs. Some clients benefit from short-term therapy, while others choose ongoing support.
Q3: What happens in a typical session?
Sessions focus on understanding your concerns, developing coping strategies, and working toward meaningful, personal goals at your own pace.
Q4: Is everything I share confidential?
Therapy is confidential, with limited legal exceptions related to safety, which your clinician will explain during your first session.
Q5: How often will I attend sessions?
Most clients begin with weekly sessions, though frequency can be adjusted based on progress and individual needs.
Meet Viviane Hens
Therapy with Viviane is more than just talking—it is an invitation to safely reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom. As a dedicated somatic practitioner in Atlanta, Viviane brings a deeply compassionate, grounded, and warm presence to every session. She believes that true, lasting healing happens when we stop treating the mind and body as separate, and instead listen to the stories stored within our nervous system.
As a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Certified Bioenergetic Therapist (CBT), and Certified Trauma & Tension Releasing Exercises (CTREP) Provider, Viviane specializes in helping clients move out of chronic stress, trauma, and survival mode. Her integrative approach blends traditional psychological insights with body-based somatic practices, giving you concrete tools to release deep-seated physical tension and restore emotional balance.
Working with Viviane allows you to gently untangle old emotional patterns, rebuild a profound sense of internal safety, and step back into a life of authentic vitality and connection.
The Bridge: From Somatic Therapy to TRE
At the heart of somatic therapy is the understanding that the body is always responding, protecting, adapting, and trying to return to balance. Stress and trauma are not only remembered in thoughts or stories. They can live in the nervous system, in the breath, in the muscles, and in the places where the body learned to brace, freeze, or hold on.
When we feel safe, the body has a natural capacity to soften and release. Breath deepens. Muscles loosen. Sensation returns. The nervous system begins to understand that the danger has passed. But after overwhelming experiences, this natural cycle can become interrupted. Instead of moving through stress and coming back to rest, the body may stay alert, tense, numb, or disconnected.
Somatic therapy helps you begin listening to these signals with care. It teaches you to notice the body’s language: tightness in the chest, heaviness in the stomach, tension in the shoulders, a sense of collapse, or the impulse to move away. These responses are not random. They are intelligent protective patterns that once helped you survive.
TRE begins from a similar place. The body knows how to release what it has been holding. Through gentle exercises, TRE invites the body’s natural tremoring response, allowing stress and tension to discharge without needing to force, analyze, or explain everything. The shaking is not weakness. It is the nervous system finding its way back toward balance.
This is where somatic therapy and TRE meet: both trust the body’s wisdom. Both honor the pace of safety. Both remind us that healing is not only something we understand. It is something the body can experience.
Your body knows the way back to ease.