Somatic Therapy for LGBTQ+ Adults and Adult Children of Immigrants in Oakland & Online in California
The body—as archivist and healer—can guide you into your true sense of self.
Somatic Therapy for Body Awareness
For LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants who have experienced trauma, neglect, and oppression, connecting to the body can feel unfamiliar. Patterns of bodily tension, such as chronic anxiety, remind us that we have been bracing for impact. The body might be telling you about its experience through:
Confusion about your emotions, not knowing what you’re feeling or where
Fear of the sensations in your body
Panic or overwhelm when triggered
Dissociation (feeling outside your body or far away)
Urgency, a sense of racing or moving quickly
Tightness, body aches, fatigue
Hypervigilance
Agitation, irritability, or defensiveness
Distrust of others, avoidance of intimacy
Inability to relax or sleep
Nightmares or emotional flashbacks
Worry that there’s just “too much” to feel
Shutting down in response to traumatic memories
In my practice in Oakland and online, I offer a safe, compassionate, and relational container to listen to what the body is trying to say at the pace and depth that work for you and your nervous system.
“It’s through our bodies that we experience and engage life, and it’s in our bodies that we heal.”
Prentis Hemphill
Somatic Therapy For Trauma in Oakland and Online in California
Try as we might, we cannot think our way out of trauma. Trauma came in through the body and, with guidance, it can find its way through the body. When we experience trauma, our connection with our body is disrupted. It’s like having an internal map that suddenly has missing or obscured parts.
Somatic therapy can help restore that inherent connection with yourself.
As your therapist, I provide a grounded and inviting container where you can safely be guided into your inner wisdom by returning to the first ways we experience ourselves and the world—through sensation, breath, movement, and touch.
Somatic Therapy As Resistance to Capitalism
We live in a society that encourages and capitalizes on us disconnecting from our felt sense of being. If you learned to over-achieve, put others first, or push past your pain in order to survive, you might especially struggle to notice what is happening inside.
At my Lake Merritt office in Oakland and online, I support LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants feel into the pace that your body naturally wants to move at, not the one society tells it to. Through focusing attention on sensations, movement, and breath, you can learn to be more present, trust your intuition, access greater capacity for connection, and deepen your sense of self.
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When working with LGBTQ+ adults, I am thoughtful about the ways in which queer and trans people have been taught to disconnect from their bodies. This disconnection might be due to experiences of trauma, abuse, neglect, and oppression, as well as efforts to cope with those experiences.
I’m respectful of the fact that there are certain parts of the body that LGBTQ+ adults do not feel comfortable focusing on in session. Working together, I ask for permission to bring attention to the body before doing so. I ask you about the language you use to refer to your body, and about any limits or boundaries you have about addressing the body in that moment.
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I often work with adult children of immigrants who learned to hold in their feelings. Their emotions have been stored in the body over time.
Sometimes it’s easier to explore the sensation than it is to name the feeling. Sometimes it’s such a relief to be able to clearly and directly say, I’m angry! I’m sad! I’m hurt!
In my Oakland practice and online, I’m meeting you where you are in your relationship with your body, whether that’s just starting to get to know your body and your emotions, or deepening the existing connection to your felt sense of who you are.
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Somatic therapy can include mindfulness, breathwork, and grounding.
In practice, this could look like noticing sensations in your body and seeing how you feel as you notice them. I might invite you to pay attention to the characteristics of your breath—Is it tight, shallow, short, or deep? Does the breath come easy or does it get stuck?
To strengthen this awareness, I might ask you to notice what happens when you focus on the sensations. Does the sensation get bigger, smaller, or stay the same? Do you notice any parts that are curious about the sensation? Are any parts scared of it?
We will spend as much time needed to create trust in the body. It’s your process—you get to set the pace and limits.
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We practice noticing triggers without immediately trying to change or fix them. By doing so, we come to learn more about what is being communicated through the body. Maybe it’s I don’t feel safe. Or This is too much.
When we are triggered, we often rush to react. We shut down, we demand, we appease, we withhold. With anxiety, we usually attempt to avoid or bypass the feelings because they’re so uncomfortable. We might choose to distract through media, shopping, substances, sex, or sleep. We might try to regulate through other people, like our partners, friends, or family. Some of us dissociate because we can’t tolerate the sensations any longer.
With somatic therapy, we give the body a chance to express its needs around safety and security. We listen and practice meeting this need through movement, breath, or touch.
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When the body is scared or wants to hide, we can find ourselves setting boundaries that feel more like walls than self-respecting limits. This can be confusing when this goes against our values and desires for how we want to act in healthy, loving relationships. Being able to learn the body’s needs allows us to create boundaries from a place of love and intention instead of fear and control.
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When we process trauma through the body, it starts with bringing attention to an area of concern or distress, such as a headache, muscle tension, or tightness. We use body awareness skills, grounding, and/or conscious breathing.
When the body feels like it has the space and resources it needs, we listen for the memory that the body holds about what happened.
We allow the body to complete the movement of what it wanted to happen. For instance, if the body wanted to scream but couldn’t, then it might have developed a knot in the throat. We then give the body an opportunity to scream, as much as it needs to return to equilibrium.
For interested clients who are appropriate candidates, I offer EMDR therapy as a way to further process trauma, while continuing to use somatic techniques and practices from Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.
Somatic Therapy Helps Us Return to the Inherent Wisdom of the Body
Our bodies have always known what they need in order to heal.
If you want to slow down & learn about the body’s wisdom, book your free 20-minute consultation video call.