Somatic and
Body-Focused
Therapy Sydney
Somatic and body-focused therapy with Chauncey Sjostedt, PACFA certified Gestalt Therapist in Surry Hills. Drawing on Somatic Experiencing and Polyvagal Theory, I work with the body as a primary source of information and healing, not just as the vehicle that carries the mind around.
PACFA Certified Practicing Member #29367 · Somatic Approach · Surry Hills & Online
What is
somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that includes the body in the therapeutic process. Rather than working only with thoughts, feelings and narrative, it pays attention to physical sensations, nervous system states, breath, posture and movement as they arise in sessions. The body is treated as a primary source of information about emotional and psychological experience, not simply as a vehicle that carries the mind around.
Much of conventional psychotherapy has historically treated the body as peripheral to the real work, which was assumed to happen in the mind. This has been increasingly challenged by research and clinical experience demonstrating that the body is not separate from psychological experience but is its primary substrate. Feelings are not just mental events. They are physiological ones, involving the whole body, the nervous system, the gut, the heart, the breath.
The word somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body. Somatic approaches rest on the premise that our emotional and psychological experiences do not exist only in the brain but are distributed throughout the entire body, including in the autonomic nervous system, in muscle tension patterns, in breathing habits, and in the way we habitually organise our physical presence. Understanding and working with these bodily dimensions of experience can reach something that talking alone sometimes cannot.
Somatic therapy is not massage, bodywork or physical treatment. There is no physical contact. It is a form of psychotherapy that includes the body as an active participant in the work rather than a bystander to it.
Trauma-informed therapy
Why the body
matters in therapy
People often come to somatic therapy because something is not working that they cannot reach through understanding alone. They know their patterns. They can articulate what drives them. But the knowing does not seem to change the experience. This is one of the most common and most frustrating experiences people describe in therapy, and it is precisely the gap that somatic approaches are designed to bridge.
One of the most significant developments in the understanding of trauma and psychological distress over the past thirty years has been the recognition that these experiences are not only cognitive or emotional: they are physiological. The nervous system stores experiences, holds patterns, and maintains states of alertness or shutdown that can persist long after the original cause has passed. Working only at the level of thought and narrative leaves much of this physiological dimension untouched.
The Body Keeps the Score
The phrase "the body keeps the score," drawn from the work of Bessel van der Kolk, captures something clinically significant: that difficult experiences are recorded in the body's physiology, in patterns of tension, breath, posture and nervous system activation, often long after the conscious mind has moved on. Many people who have tried talk therapy and found it helpful but incomplete discover that somatic work reaches something that verbal processing alone could not.
Sensation as Information
Body-focused work is woven through every session rather than being a separate technique applied on top of regular therapy. It is simply a way of attending more carefully, more broadly, and with more genuine respect for the body as an equal partner in the therapeutic process. Over time, clients tend to develop this quality of embodied attention in their lives outside sessions as well.
Physical sensations that arise during a session, a tightening in the chest, a sense of heaviness, a sudden warmth, a catch in the breath, are not incidental. They are data. Somatic therapy treats these sensations as meaningful expressions of your emotional and psychological experience and works with them directly rather than moving past them toward the next thought.
Completing Incomplete Stress Responses
When an experience is overwhelming or dangerous, the body mobilises a physiological stress response. If that response is interrupted or suppressed before it can complete, the energy remains stored in the body rather than being discharged. Somatic approaches, particularly Somatic Experiencing, work with gently tracking and completing these incomplete responses, allowing the nervous system to discharge what it has been holding and return to a more regulated state.
How body-focused work
shows up in sessions
Body-focused work does not look dramatic from the outside. It is subtle, slow and attentive. It happens alongside the verbal and relational dimensions of the work rather than replacing them. Here is what it typically looks like.
Noticing Physical Sensations
I might invite you to notice what is happening in your body as you speak about something, or to stay with a physical sensation that arises rather than moving past it into analysis. This is not about forcing feelings. It is about slowing down enough to attend to what is actually present.
Tracking Where Emotions Live in the Body
Emotions are not only mental events. Anxiety has a physical address, often the chest, the stomach, the throat. Grief lives somewhere specific. Anger has a texture and a location. Working with emotions somatically means tracking them as physical experiences as well as named feelings, which often allows them to be processed more completely.
Breath, Movement and Grounding
Breath and simple movement can support nervous system regulation in ways that are immediate and accessible. This does not mean formal breathwork exercises. It means attending to how you are breathing right now, noticing what changes when breath deepens or slows, and using simple grounding to help the nervous system find its way back within the window of tolerance when it has moved outside it.
This Is Gentle, Not Forced
Somatic work at its best is unhurried and follows the natural pace of the nervous system rather than pushing it. There is no expectation of catharsis or dramatic release. The work is often quiet and precise. Many people are surprised by how much can shift through small, careful attentiveness to what the body is already expressing.
Somatic Experiencing,
Peter Levine
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a trauma-healing approach developed by biophysicist and psychologist Peter Levine, based on the observation that animals in the wild rarely develop lasting trauma even after life-threatening experiences. Levine noted that this is because animals allow their bodies to complete the physiological stress response through trembling and movement that humans typically suppress.
SE works by gently tracking sensations in the body, titrating attention to manageable amounts of activation, and supporting the gradual completion and discharge of stored physiological energy. It is not cathartic or dramatic in practice. It is careful, patient and deeply respectful of the nervous system's own pace.
I draw on SE principles in my work, particularly with trauma, anxiety and overwhelming emotions. It provides the body-level tools that complement the relational and present-moment focus of Gestalt therapy. The combination of Gestalt and SE is a particularly powerful one because Gestalt provides the relational and meaning-making framework while SE provides the physiological tools for working with what the body holds.
SE also offers an approach to trauma that does not require revisiting or narrating the traumatic event in detail. For many people this is a significant relief. The work is with the physiological residue of the experience, not with the story of it.
Polyvagal Theory,
Stephen Porges
The application of Polyvagal Theory to psychotherapy has been one of the most significant developments in the field over the past two decades. It has transformed our understanding of why therapeutic relationship is not just a pleasant context for other work but is itself the primary mechanism of healing for many people, particularly those whose nervous systems were shaped by relational trauma.
Polyvagal Theory, developed by neuroscientist Stephen Porges, explains how the autonomic nervous system organises our responses to safety, connection and threat through three distinct physiological states. The ventral vagal state supports social engagement, connection and calm. The sympathetic state mobilises fight-or-flight responses. The dorsal vagal state produces shutdown, freeze or dissociation.
One of the most liberating aspects of Polyvagal Theory for many people is that it reframes their nervous system responses as intelligent rather than broken. Fight, flight, freeze and shutdown are not failures of character or weakness of will. They are the nervous system doing precisely what it was designed to do in response to perceived threat. Understanding this changes the relationship with those responses from shame and frustration to curiosity and compassion.
Understanding these states can be genuinely illuminating for people who have struggled to make sense of their own responses. Knowing that a shutdown response is a physiological protection rather than a character failing, or understanding why social connection is so restorative when the nervous system feels safe, reframes the experience of dysregulation in a way that is both more accurate and more compassionate.
In practice, Polyvagal Theory informs how I build safety in sessions, how I pace the work, how I read the room, and how I support clients in developing a greater capacity for regulation and connection over time. It also helps explain why the therapeutic relationship itself is so central: connection with a regulated, trustworthy other is one of the most direct routes back toward the ventral vagal state.
Sessions are available in person in Surry Hills on Saturdays and online on Wednesday afternoons (Glebe) and Saturday mornings (Surry Hills). For more on how somatic and trauma-informed approaches intersect, see the trauma-informed therapy page and the managing overwhelming emotions page. Details on the appointments page.
- Somatic therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that includes the body in the therapeutic process. Rather than working only with thoughts and narrative, it pays attention to physical sensations, nervous system states, breath and movement as they arise in sessions. The body is treated as a source of information about emotional experience, not just a vehicle that carries the mind around.
- Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a trauma-healing approach developed by Peter Levine based on the observation that animals in the wild rarely develop lasting trauma because they allow their bodies to complete the physiological stress response. SE works with gently tracking and completing these incomplete responses in humans, allowing the nervous system to discharge what it has been holding over time.
- No. Somatic therapy in a psychotherapy context does not involve physical touch. It involves paying attention to what is happening in your body during a session: noticing sensations, tracking where emotions live physically, attending to breath and posture. It is a form of talk therapy that includes the body, not a physical treatment.
- Somatic therapy is particularly useful for people who feel stuck despite having insight into their patterns, whose emotional experience lives more in the body than in words, who carry trauma or anxiety that talk therapy alone has not been able to fully reach, or who find themselves disconnected from their physical experience. It is also helpful for anyone who wants to develop a more grounded and embodied sense of self.
- Polyvagal Theory, developed by Stephen Porges, explains how the autonomic nervous system organises our responses to safety, connection and threat through three distinct physiological states: the social engagement system, sympathetic activation and dorsal vagal shutdown. Understanding which state you are in and why can be genuinely liberating, particularly for people whose nervous systems have been shaped by trauma or chronic stress.
Take the first step
towards feeling better
Book a somatic and body-focused therapy session in person in Surry Hills on Saturday mornings, or online via secure video on Wednesday afternoons (Glebe) and Saturday mornings (Surry Hills). Sessions are 50 minutes. No GP referral or Mental Health Care Plan required. A free introductory call is available before the first session if you would like to speak briefly before committing. I respond to all enquiries within 48 hours.