Somatic Therapy in West Vancouver

Talking is necessary, but it is rarely sufficient. The body holds what the mind has been busy explaining away — and until the body is engaged, the change tends to stay theoretical.

Somatic therapy is a family of body-based approaches to psychotherapy that work with the nervous system, posture, breath, sensation, and embodied experience as primary clinical material. Drawing on the work of Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy), Bessel van der Kolk's research, and Stephen Porges's polyvagal theory, somatic work has become one of the most important developments in contemporary trauma therapy.

At Baraka, somatic approaches are integrated into our broader practice. They are not the only thing we do, but for many of our clients — especially those working with trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, burnout, and postpartum nervous-system dysregulation — they are the layer of work that produces the most lasting change.

Available in English and Farsi, in person at our Ambleside office and online across British Columbia.

What "somatic" means in practice

A somatic-informed session looks, on the surface, similar to a regular therapy session. We talk. But the talking is anchored in attention to:

• What is happening in your body as you tell the story — the held breath, the tightened jaw, the bracing in the shoulders, the sudden disappearance of sensation
• The nervous system state you're in at any given moment — sympathetic activation (fight/flight), dorsal shutdown (freeze, numb), or ventral safety (grounded, connected)
• The window of tolerance — the zone within which the nervous system can metabolize experience rather than be flooded by it