Somatic Therapy in Victoria, BC: Healing Through the Body

Somatic Experiencing: Working With the Nervous System

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented approach to trauma and stress. It focuses on the biological and physiological responses to overwhelming experiences, and how those responses can get stuck in the nervous system long after the event has passed.

 

SE works by helping you gradually build awareness of physical sensations and gently titrate, or work in small, manageable doses, through experiences that feel stuck. Rather than reliving or re-telling traumatic events in detail, the focus is on what's happening in your body right now, and what movement or release wants to happen.

 

Melanie has completed training in Somatic Experiencing: Body-Oriented Approach to Trauma and Stress Disorders with Dr. Peter Levine, bringing this evidence-informed framework into her sessions with clients navigating trauma, PTSD, and chronic stress.

 

Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy: A Mindful, Body-Based Approach

Hakomi is a somatic psychotherapy model that combines mindfulness, body awareness, and relational neuroscience to support deep emotional healing. It is gentle, respectful, and collaborative, working with what arises naturally in the body rather than pushing toward a predetermined outcome.

 

In Hakomi-informed sessions, you might be invited to slow down and notice a physical sensation, an impulse to move, or a shift in your breath. These small moments of awareness can open up significant insight and healing that the thinking mind often bypasses.

 

Melanie is a Certified Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapist, having completed more than 300 hours of in-depth training and supervision. Her work is trauma-informed throughout, meaning sessions are paced to what your nervous system can handle, with safety and trust at the foundation.

 

Somatic Attachment Therapy: The Body and Your Relationships

How you learned to connect, or not connect, with others early in life shapes how your nervous system responds in relationships today. Somatic attachment therapy brings together attachment theory and body-based awareness to explore how relational patterns are held in the body and how they can shift.

 

This approach can be particularly helpful if you notice that your reactions in relationships feel bigger than the situation warrants, that you tend to shut down or pull away when things get close, or that anxiety or tension shows up in your body when you're in conflict with someone you care about.

 

By working somatically with attachment patterns, you can begin to build a sense of safety in connection, not just understand it intellectually, but experience it in your body.

 

Somatic Therapy for Trauma

Trauma, in all its forms, is one of the most common reasons people seek out somatic counselling. Melanie works with a wide range of trauma experiences, including:

 

• Childhood and developmental trauma

• PTSD and complex PTSD (C-PTSD)

• Experiences of violence, abuse, and sexual violence

• Health and medical traumas

• Covid and pandemic-related trauma

 

Somatic therapy for trauma doesn't require you to re-tell your story in detail to heal from it. In fact, for many people, talk-based approaches alone can feel retraumatizing or simply don't reach the place where the wound actually lives. Body-based work offers another pathway, one that works at the level of the nervous system, where trauma is stored.

 

Melanie's training includes Complex Trauma Certification (CCTP and CCTP-II) with Dr. Janina Fischer and Neuroscience and Constellations work with Sarah Peyton, giving her a well-rounded foundation for supporting complex trauma with care and skill.

 

What Somatic Counselling Can Help With

Somatic therapy is not only for trauma. It can be a valuable support for a wide range of experiences, including:

 

• Anxiety and depression

• Grief and loss

• Life changes and transitions

• Relationship challenges

• Chronic stress and burnout

• Feeling stuck, disconnected, or numb

• A desire to understand yourself more deeply

 

If you've tried talk therapy before and felt like something was missing, or if you're simply curious about what it might mean to include your body in the healing process, somatic counselling may be a good fit.