Is Somatic Therapy Just Energy Healing? The Truth About Real, Body-Based Healing
- 🍃The Body Sanctuary🍃
- Apr 28
- 7 min read
Is Somatic Therapy the Same as Energy Healing?
If you’ve ever heard of, or looked briefly into somatic therapy, you might have wondered…
What exactly Is somatic therapy? Is it a form of energy healing?
It’s a fair question. And one i've been asked several times by new and prospective clients before they've done a session, so i thought i'd write a little about it to help clarify it for people :).
There’s sometimes a lot of overlap in the language - words like “healing,” “energy,” “regulation,” “release.” And if you’ve experienced something like Reiki or other energy-based healing modalities before; or seen somatic type videos on facebook you might assume somatic therapy works in a similar way: i.e something is done to you, you receive energy, blockages are dissolved, your energy is shifted, and you leave feeling different… (hopefully).
But deep somatic therapy is really something quite different.
And for many people - especially those who have tried a lot of other approaches and still feel stuck or trapped in old patterns, blockages and wounds - it can be the BIG missing piece.
Somatics ~ breifly, is the bridge between mind and body, we'll talk a bit more about that later.
What Energy Healing Can Offer (And Where It Stops)
Before I go further, I want to say that this is not a competition piece.
They are simply two different types of work, that work in different ways and suit different people at different times.
Many people find energy healing relaxing, effective & powerful, and enjoy a more passive approach. It may be very calming and soothing to recieve. It can create space to slow down, reflect, and feel more connected. It can bring powerful experiences and shifts for some. But the emphasis is often on 'the healer' & them being the 'transmitter of energy'. The source of that energy, for some, can be a point of caution.
In somatic therapy, “energy” isn’t chanelled by others beings/ sources, & it isn't something external - it refers to the body’s own bio-physiological activation within the nervous system. When we experience stress or trauma, survival responses such as fight, flight, or freeze activate in our nervous system to help us 'survive'. These natural functions can become incomplete, leaving residual activation held in the body as patterns of tension, sensation, or emotional charge. Somatic work supports the safe discharge and integration of this stored bio-energy, allowing the nervous system to return to regulation and restore its natural capacity for flexibility, balance, and wellbeing.
Wheras energy healing has more esoteric, new age conotations or beliefs behind it, somatic therapy is well grounded in scientific and neurological study. There is a solid practical science behind it.
For myself personally, energy healing was a nice or interesting experience, but it wasn't 'enough' for me to understand HOW to truly heal, because i wasn't part of the process and i had nothing tangible to work with & integrate conciously after a session. I had experiences of emotional release, or felt high and elevated for a day or two, but i never saw real lasting changes for deep relational patterns or traumas that i was desperate to heal.
Somatic Therapy Isn’t Passive or Something Done to You
A couple of the biggest misconceptions I hear is:
“Ah so it's like Theta healing? or - "So… you’re going to move energy around in me?”
And the answer is no.
In somatic therapy, I’m not transmitting energy into your body from an external source. I’m not fixing you, clearing you, or doing anything to you. I'm not aligning your chakras, or reading your energy body.
Instead, I'm listening, & we’re working with something far more powerful:
your body’s own built-in intelligence.
Your nervous system already knows how to heal. It was ingeniously designed that way.
What I do is guide you into a deeper relationship with that intelligence - so you can begin to access it for yourself.
Why Somatic Healing Is an Active, Co-Created Process
Somatic therapy is not something you passively receive.
It’s a co-created process.
You’re not lying there wondering if something is happening - you’re actively involved ( gently and safely ) noticing sensations in your body, following the pathways that will arise, and building deep awareness of your own inner world.
This is where a key part of real change begins.
Because you leave sessions with an empowered, embodied awareness of the shifts that have taken place in you - not as an abstract idea, but as a living, accessible, felt experience in your own body and nervous system. This then becomes something you can continue to consciously integrate into your everyday life, relationships, mental perspective, belief systems etc. This mind - body linking is key.
"The Body Holds Truth ( & the Mind Can Deceive )" 😊
I often say: " The mind can weave a thousand lie's, but the body will always tell you the truth" - and honestly this is one of the reasons i love somatic work so much!
In sessions, we’re not just talking about your struggles & experiences, as in counselling or psychotherapy - with an attempt to analyse and understand. Instead, especially with the type of deep somatic work i offer, we are led to a completly new & different place than our mental perspectives, beliefs & identity.
We’re listening for what your body is saying underneath them.
Through simple, guided awareness, something powerful happens:
the body reveals core truths.
Usually, it's not the story you’ve been telling yourself - but something deeper.
For example, I once worked with a client who believed her money struggles were rooted in her beliefs. But as we slowed down, dropped deeper into her nervous-system, and followed what her body was showing us, something else emerged entirely.
The deeper imprint came from her early relationship with her father and fear - deeply buried, early wounds that I now often affectionately call our “ wounds of love.” We all have them, and they shape our lives and identites in ways we have long forgotten.
That kind of realisation ( & the resolution ) doesn’t come from analysing.
It comes from listening. To the truths that live in our bodies.
How the Nervous System Creates Lasting Change
At the core of somatic therapy is our nervous system. It's not an abstract theory but the biological and pyschological way we are programmed to survive, and attach to each other - to survive.
Your nervous system is constantly tracking safety, connection, and threat. Many of your patterns today are shaped by how your unique system learned to respond in the past.
So, for example - on the mental surface level you may deeply desire connection and love. But your nervous system may have, in early life, equated experiences of connection and love with danger/ threat, and formed survival responses to protect you.
Everytime you come close to having the connection or love you desire, something may seemingly arise ( internally or externally ) that sabotagues it. You may have long since forgotten what that early survival strategy was - and yet it is still dictating your life.
This can cause so so much pain, internal warfare and additional layers of wounding, that can end up feeling like a trap. - A common feeling in those of us suffering the after-effects of trauma: That we are somehow held captive in a pattern, or cannot fully live the lives we were meant to live & move on properly.
In somatic work, we don’t force change.
We listen, we respect, we validate, we honour the wisdom of each part of us, and we support the nervous system to gently heal & update itself. Naturally.
A big part of this is the re-regulation of your nervous system - that happens when the body feels safe enough.
And co-regulation - myself offering support to your nervous system by “lending” my own inner regulation, through presence and pacing, - giving your system something steady to connect with. The same way we feel co-regulated / more at peace in nature, or sitting by the sea.
So many of our 'wounds of love', and trauma's are created in relationship, and so often they need to be re-imprinted in relational ways.
From there, from a place of safety, your body begins to do what it’s already designed to do:
release - what is no longer necissary or taking up excess energy in your system
reorganise - itself into more efficient ways of using bio-energy
restore - itself to optimum health and wellbeing
Our bodies are nature, designed to seek equilibrium and work in harmony, not war. When we bridge body and mind to understand what is happening at deeper levels, then we can free our entire system to find better, healthy ways to fuction.
Healing Isn’t About Fixing Yourself
Somatic therapy doesn’t come from the belief that you’re broken.
It recognises that you’ve adapted - intelligently - to your experiences.
Healing is not about becoming someone new.
It’s about coming back to who you were before those adaptations were needed.
Back to something more true. Pure. Easy.
More whole.
Why This Work Feels Different
One thing I hear often is:
“This is really deep work! It feels different… I actually get it.”
That’s because you’re not just having an experience - you’re understanding it as it happens.
You’re learning how your body works.
You’re recognising your patterns.
And that creates a kind of embodied empowerment that stays with you long after the session ends.
A Quiet, Deeper Layer of Healing
For me, this work is also held within something deeper.
It is sacred work - because, with many clients, it has a spiritual dimension.
We are 'peeling the layers of the onion'/ identity that mask the truer self.
I do not see myself as the healer.
I see healing as a return: to truth, to Love, to our core essence - who we really are as an identity, beneath everything we’ve carried or identified with as a survival strategy.
Recently, my own life has unexpectedly led me in a new direction - walking in relationship with Jesus - not in a religious or preachy way, but he as a bridge & example of Love, surrender, and deep truth. My own healing journey has gone to a whole new level, and the work in my sessions also.
Before each session, I consecrate the process over to be in service of Love.
And what unfolds is exactly what’s needed.
So, Is Somatic Therapy Energy Healing?
No.
But it is incredibly deeply powerful.
Not because something is being given to you.
But because something essential within you is being remembered.
Your body already holds what it needs.
Sometimes, it just needs the right kind of attention - and support - to show you.
If You’ve Tried Other Healing Methods…
If you’ve explored different types of healing and still feel like something hasn’t quite shifted…
It may not be that healing isn’t possible.
It may be that your body hasn’t yet been fully included in the process.
To find out more about working together and if my work would be a good fit for you, please send me an email with some details about youself and what you are looking to work on:
Or drop me a direct WhatsApp message here:
Love Laura
xx
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