Somatic Experiencing
Healing through the wisdom of your body.
You deserve to define your own path toward healing.
At Empowered Spaces, we offer holistic, trauma-informed approaches that honor the body as a powerful source of wisdom and healing. One of the ways we do this is through Somatic Experiencing® (SE) — a gentle, body-based method that helps you release stored stress and trauma, restore balance, and reconnect with your natural aliveness.
Healing at the level of body, mind, emotions, and spirit.
Image: Brea Youngblood
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, is a body-centered approach that helps you tune into the sensations and signals of your nervous system.
When we experience something overwhelming, our bodies can get “stuck” in protective patterns of fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown.
SE helps you gently complete these unfinished responses so that the energy of trauma can be released rather than held inside.
At the heart of SE is the belief that your body knows how to heal when given the right conditions.
Through mindful attention, curiosity, and compassion, you learn to listen to the story your body is telling — and to move toward greater safety, regulation, and resilience.
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
― Peter A. Levine
Healing at the Level of the Nervous System
Trauma isn’t defined by the event itself, but by how our nervous system responds to the experience.
It’s anything that happens too much, too fast, too soon, or for too long — leaving us feeling powerless or disconnected.
SE helps you come out of survival mode by slowly restoring a sense of safety and connection in your body.
As you build awareness of your sensations and learn to stay present with them, your system begins to unwind and integrate what was once overwhelming.
This process doesn’t require you to retell painful stories;
it invites you to befriend your body and reconnect with your innate capacity to heal.
How Somatic Experiencing Supports You
Through SE therapy, you can:
Release stored stress and trauma from the body
Develop a more balanced and regulated nervous system
Understand your body’s cues and respond with compassion
Restore a sense of ease, connection, and presence
Reclaim your vitality and capacity for joy
Somatic Experiencing Can Help With:
Anxiety, stress, or chronic overwhelm
Depression, numbness, or fatigue
Chronic pain or tension
Trauma and PTSD
Burnout or vicarious trauma
Dissociation or disconnection from the body
Attachment wounds or relational struggles
The lingering effects of oppression, discrimination, or systemic trauma
Therapists Trained in Somatic Experiencing
The therapists listed here are members of the Empowered Spaces Collective. Each therapist owns and operates their own independent private practice and leases space within our center. While we share values, community, and a trauma-informed approach, each therapist is solely responsible for their own services, policies, and clinical work
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Kelly Caul, MSW, LCSW, SEP (she/her)
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Katie Kirby, MSW, LCSW (she/her)
Psychotherapist
Somatic Experiencing (Intermed ateYear)
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Franca Bibow, MSW, LMSW, RYT (she/her)
Psychotherapist, Yoga Teacher, Reiki Practitioner
Somatic Experiencing (Beginning Year)
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Sarika Stone Talve-Goodman, LCSW, MS in Narrative Medicine, PhD in Literature (she/her)
A Gentle Path Back to Yourself
Somatic Experiencing is not about forcing change —
it’s about creating safety inside the body so change can naturally emerge.
As you learn to trust your body again, you begin to move from survival toward flow, from holding to releasing, from fragmentation to wholeness.
Healing happens in small, powerful moments of reconnection —
when your body remembers that it is safe to rest, feel, and be.
Your body holds the story. It also holds the way home.
Learn More About Somatic Experiencing
(for those who want to understand the science and roots of SE)
Somatic Experiencing® was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, inspired by his observation that animals in the wild rarely experience trauma despite frequent threats.
He noticed that after a stressful event, animals instinctively shake, tremble, or move in ways that discharge survival energy and restore balance. Humans, however, often suppress these natural impulses — leaving the body stuck in activation or shutdown.
SE helps complete these interrupted survival responses by gently guiding attention to physical sensations — tightening, fluttering, warmth, vibration, expansion — and allowing the body to move through them safely and gradually.
This process engages the autonomic nervous system, helping it shift out of chronic stress patterns and back into regulation.
The Science in Simple Terms
Your nervous system has two main branches:
Sympathetic: mobilizes energy to respond to threat (fight or flight)
Parasympathetic: supports rest, repair, and connection
When trauma is unresolved, these systems can get stuck in overdrive or shutdown.
Through mindful tracking, pendulation (gently moving between activation and calm), and resourcing, SE helps your system complete what was once incomplete — bringing integration and relief at a biological level.
Somatic Experiencing helps you heal from the inside out — through awareness, compassion, and the language of your own body.
Dr. Peter Levine talks about the effects of trauma on the nervous system, and his philosophy of treating trauma.
Dr. Peter Levine talks about what led him to the creation of Somatic Experiencing.
