Body-Based Therapy · Trauma · Nervous System · Chronic Illness
Somatic & Trauma Therapy in Miami
In-person in Coconut Grove · Telehealth throughout Florida
When the Body Carries What Words Cannot Hold
Psychotherapy can make room not only for what can be spoken and understood, but also for what is carried in the body. You may have tried to understand what happened to you, to make sense of it, to move past it, to put it behind you through sustained effort and self-awareness. And yet something remains.
A vigilance that never fully lifts. A tightness that returns without warning. A way of reacting that surprises even you. Perhaps you notice it in your relationships, how certain moments call up a response that feels larger than the present moment warrants. Or in your body, a chronic tension, an inexplicable fatigue, a feeling of being slightly outside of yourself even in ordinary life.
Traumatic experience is not held only in what we consciously remember. It can also be expressed through the nervous system, in learned patterns of protection, and in the ways the body continues to brace against experiences that have not yet been fully integrated.
“The body has its own language — one that speaks before words arrive.”
— Pat Ogden
When Insight Alone Doesn’t Create Change
Many people who seek therapy arrive having already done significant work. They understand their history. They can name their patterns. They have insight. And yet understanding something intellectually and feeling genuinely different are not always the same thing.
This is not a failure of insight. It reflects something important about the complexity of emotional experience. What we have lived through is not expressed only through narrative memory or conscious understanding; it can also appear in sensation, emotion, relationship, patterns of protection, and involuntary responses. This is one reason we can understand something about ourselves and still find ourselves responding in familiar ways.
In my work, somatic awareness is woven into an ongoing process of depth-oriented psychotherapy. We talk, explore your history and relationships, pay attention to patterns and meanings, and remain curious about what may be outside of conscious awareness. Alongside this, we may notice what is happening in the body—sensation, tension, breath, posture, or shifts in activation—as another source of information about your experience. The body does not replace the conversation; it becomes part of it.
You May Recognize Yourself in Some of These:
- Anxiety that is persistent and difficult to trace to a single cause
- Emotional responses that feel larger than the moment warrants
- Disconnection from your body or from your own experience
- Difficulty feeling safe or at ease even when you know you are safe
- Patterns in relationships you understand but cannot seem to change
- A sense of being stuck despite genuine effort and self-awareness
- Physical symptoms — such as fatigue, pain, or tension — that seem connected to stress or emotional experience
- A history of adverse childhood experiences, relational trauma, or complex PTSD
- Living with a chronic health condition that seems affected by stress or emotional experience
- A feeling that something in you carries a weight that is not entirely your own
My Approach to Somatically Informed Psychotherapy
My approach is depth-oriented and trauma-informed, with somatic awareness woven throughout. The work is relational and exploratory rather than protocol-driven — a space in which we can attend to you as a whole person, at a pace that feels genuinely yours.
My background includes training in psychodynamic and relational psychotherapy, ongoing psychoanalytic training, and many years as a registered yoga teacher. I have also completed BodyDreaming Training — a three-year post-graduate program developed by Jungian analyst Marian Dunlea that integrates Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory, Attachment, Jungian, and Feminist orientations. Together, these influences inform an approach to psychotherapy that attends to both psychological and embodied experience.
In practice, this means we attend to multiple dimensions at once: the story of what happened, the patterns that formed around it, the way the nervous system learned to respond, and the psychological meanings held in the body. We work at the depth of insight and at the level of felt experience — because lasting change tends to require both.
Relational Depth
Healing occurs in relationship. The attunement, presence, and honesty between us is not incidental to the work.
It is the work.
Psychodynamic Inquiry
We explore the unconscious patterns, early relational experiences, and inherited dynamics that continue to shape your present — including those that may be expressed through the body.
Somatic Awareness
We pay attention to what the body is communicating, not to fix or manage it, but to listen. Sensation, breath, and physical experience can offer another way of understanding what is emerging within the therapeutic process.
Trauma-Informed Pacing
We work at a pace that feels genuinely safe. Regulation before activation. Presence before processing. The nervous system heals through the felt experience of safety — not pressure.
What This Work Might Include
Every person’s process is shaped by their history, relationships, embodied experience, and what they are ready for. There is no predetermined sequence or protocol. That said, our work may move across several dimensions.
Building a Genuine Foundation of Safety
Before we approach difficult material, we invest in developing a sense of safety within yourself, in our relationship, and in the space between us. This is not a phase to move through quickly. It is the ground on which everything else rests.
Developing Awareness of the Body
We gradually build a curious, non-judgmental relationship with your physical experience, noticing what happens in the body across different emotional states. This awareness becomes another way of listening to and understanding your experience.
Attending to Patterns of Activation and Regulation
Through mindful awareness and the quality of our relational presence together, we may begin to notice patterns of activation, withdrawal, tension, or disconnection as they emerge. Over time, therapy can create greater capacity to remain present with a wider range of emotional and embodied experience.
Exploring the Psychological Dimensions of Trauma
Psychotherapy also gives us space to explore the meanings, beliefs, unconscious patterns, and relational dynamics that may have formed in the context of difficult experience. What did you come to believe about yourself? About safety? About what you deserve? These beliefs continue to shape the present in ways that can be understood and, over time, transformed.
Chronic Illness, Health Conditions, and the Body
Living with chronic illness or pain can have profound psychological and embodied dimensions. Stress, uncertainty, grief, changes in identity, and the experience of living in a body under strain can all become part of the therapeutic work. Rather than reducing physical symptoms to psychological causes, therapy offers a space to explore how physical and emotional experience intersect, and what it means to live with a body whose needs may have changed.
Intergenerational and Ancestral Patterns
Our lives are shaped not only by our individual experiences, but also by the families, relationships, histories, and cultures into which we are born. Ways of relating, protecting, grieving, belonging, and surviving can be carried across generations—sometimes explicitly and sometimes in patterns that are much harder to name. When something in you seems to carry a weight that is not entirely your own, we can bring curiosity to that, too.
Integration
The goal of this work is not symptom reduction alone. It is integration — a return to coherence, a deeper capacity for presence, a life that feels more genuinely yours.
Who Tends to Seek This Work
You do not need to have experienced a single dramatic event for trauma or embodied experience to become meaningful parts of psychotherapy. Complex trauma can emerge through the cumulative effects of chronic stress, early relational difficulty, neglect, or ongoing adversity. In our work, these experiences can be explored through conversation, relationship, insight, and attention to the body rather than through a separate somatic treatment.
I offer psychotherapy rather than stand-alone somatic sessions. Somatic approaches are integrated into our ongoing therapeutic work when they are useful and appropriate.
This work may be particularly relevant if you are:
- A professional, creative, or high-functioning adult managing well externally but struggling internally
- Navigating the long-term effects of childhood adversity, neglect, or relational trauma
- Working through the aftermath of an acute traumatic experience
- Living with a chronic health condition whose emotional and psychological dimensions have gone unaddressed
- Noticing patterns in yourself that seem to carry the weight of previous generations
- Experiencing anxiety, emotional dysregulation, or a persistent sense of disconnection
- Seeking depth-oriented work that addresses not just symptoms but underlying patterns
- Looking for a thoughtful, relational approach — not a protocol or a structured method
Available in Miami and Throughout Florida
I offer in-person psychotherapy at my office in Coconut Grove, Miami. I also work with clients throughout Florida via secure telehealth —
the same relational depth and unhurried presence, in a virtual format.
Sessions are 50 minutes. Longer sessions are available when clinically appropriate.