Present-moment awareness
Becoming curious about sensations, impulses, emotion, images, or shifts in attention without needing to analyze them immediately.
Somatic therapy
Change can involve more than understanding why.
Somatic therapy makes room for the body’s responses alongside thoughts, emotions, relationships, and personal history.
In plain language
Your nervous system is part of the conversation.
Difficult experiences can shape automatic responses—tightening, bracing, scanning for danger, going blank, pulling away, or moving quickly into action. These responses may happen before words or deliberate thought have time to catch up.
Somatic therapy invites gentle awareness of what is happening in the present. With support, you may become more familiar with your signals, notice moments of steadiness, and develop more choice in how you respond. The aim is not to make you feel a certain way on command.
Inside a session
What somatic work may include.
Each session is different. Invitations are adapted to your needs and can always be changed or declined.
Support and steadiness
Identifying people, places, memories, movements, or qualities that help create even a small sense of support.
New responses
Exploring boundaries, movement, expression, or a different pace when an old pattern begins to take over.
Consent and pacing
You stay in relationship with your own “yes,” “no,” and “not yet.”
Trauma-informed care pays attention to capacity. Drisana will not ask you to push through an experience simply because it is difficult.
You can ask questions, pause, orient to the room, return to conversation, or change direction. These choices are part of the therapeutic work.
Helpful context
What somatic therapy is not.
- It is not a demand to relive or disclose every part of a painful experience.
- It is not a performance of calm, mindfulness, or body awareness.
- It is not a promise of quick or guaranteed results.
- It does not replace medical care, psychiatric care, or emergency support when those services are needed.
Questions
Before trying somatic therapy.
Will I have to talk about every detail of what happened?
Not necessarily. You and Drisana can discuss what feels useful and manageable. Somatic work can focus on present-day patterns and resources without requiring a complete retelling of difficult experiences.
Does somatic therapy involve touch?
Oasis currently provides online therapy, so sessions do not involve therapeutic touch. Body-based work may include attention to sensation, movement, posture, breath, imagery, or orientation, always with your consent.
What if I cannot feel sensations in my body?
That is okay and can be an important starting point. There is no correct way to notice. The work can begin with thoughts, emotions, images, or the environment around you.
Is Somatic Experiencing the same as somatic psychotherapy?
Somatic psychotherapy is a broad category of approaches that include body-based awareness. Somatic Experiencing is one specific framework. Drisana is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and integrates somatic work with relational therapy.
A first step
Curious whether this approach fits what you need?
A brief consultation is a place to share what you are looking for, ask questions, and get a sense of whether working together may feel right.
15 minutes · Complimentary · No commitment to begin therapy