Kelowna Somatic Therapy
Trauma lives in the body. That’s where healing begins.
“You don’t have to know the facts of your story to be able to reprogram the symptoms or the outcomes.”
— Peter A Levine, PhD
What Is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a body-based approach to healing trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, and emotional dysregulation. Unlike traditional talk therapy that works “top-down” through thoughts and feelings, somatic therapy works “bottom-up” — by helping your nervous system regulate itself,, and finally feel safe again.
At Empowered Solutions, we offer Kelowna somatic therapy sessions rooted in the principles of Somatic Experiencing®, developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine. This approach is especially effective for people who feel stuck in patterns of:
Hypervigilance or freeze responses
Emotional overwhelm or shutdown
Panic, irritability, chronic fatigue
Trauma symptoms that don’t resolve with talk therapy alone
Why Does Somatic Therapy Work?
Because trauma isn’t just a memory — it’s a survival response stored in the body.
When your system is overwhelmed, it can get “stuck” in fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. You may not even realize your body is on constant high alert — but your symptoms might include:
Trouble sleeping or relaxing
Digestive or immune issues
Chronic tension or pain
Mood swings, dissociation, or emotional numbness
Feeling disconnected from yourself or others
Somatic therapy gives your body a chance to complete the survival responses that were cut off during past stress or trauma — helping you move forward with more safety, ease, and resilience.
What Happens in a Somatic Session?
Somatic sessions are gentle, non-invasive, and guided at your pace. You’ll be supported in noticing physical sensations (like tightness, heat, breath, or numbness) while staying grounded and safe. These sensations are the body’s language — and tuning into them is how we begin to heal.
We may use:
Grounding and tracking techniques
Movement or breath awareness
Imagery, boundary exercises, and nervous system education
Safe exploration of fight/flight/freeze states
Integration through reflection, curiosity, and compassion
Trauma Is Stored in the Nervous System — Not Just the Mind
Many people come to somatic therapy saying, “I understand what happened… but I still feel awful.” That’s because insight alone doesn’t heal the body’s survival response. Somatic therapy gives us a missing piece — the ability to regulate from the bottom up.
Heart to Heart with Kim
“Somatic work changed the way I see trauma. It helped me understand that trauma isn’t just what happened to us — it’s what got stuck in us.
Sometimes, clients come to me and say, ‘I’ve done the work. Why don’t I feel better?’ That’s where somatic therapy offers something different. It doesn’t push. It listens to the body. It works with the nervous system, at the pace your system can handle. And that’s where the healing really starts.”
— Kimberly Castle, M.T.C., R.C.S
Currently completing Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Training – expected Jan 2026
What's Your Primary Nervous System Response Quiz
Explore how your body and mind tend to respond under stress or threat.
It’s quick, free and easy!
The Science Behind Somatic Experiencing
Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can seriously impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease, and live in the here-and-now.
Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, racial discrimination, oppression, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear, conflict, and chronic shaming.
In addition, the Somatic Experiencing approach releases traumatic shock, a key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. Somatic Experiencing offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, freeze, or collapse responses, and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated psycho- physiological triggers.
When acutely threatened, we mobilize vast energies to protect and defend ourselves. We duck, dodge, twist, stiffen and retract. Our muscles contract to fight or flee. However, if our actions are ineffective, we freeze or collapse. This “last ditch” innate defense of shutdown, when observed in animals, is called tonic immobility and is meant to be a temporary state of paralysis. A wild animal exhibiting this acute physiological shock reaction will either be eaten, or if spared, resume life as before its brush with death.
Humans, in contrast to other animals, frequently remain stuck in a kind of limbo, not fully reengaging in life after experiencing threat as over- whelming terror or horror. In addition, they exhibit a propensity for freezing in situations where a non-traumatized individual might only sense danger or even feel some excitement. Rather than being a last- ditch reaction to inescapable threat, paralysis becomes a “default” response to a wide variety of situations in which one’s feelings are highly aroused. For example, the arousal of sex may turn unexpectedly from excitement to frigidity, revulsion or avoidance.
Although humans are also designed to rebound from high-intensity survival states, we also have the problematic neocortical ability to override the natural regulation. Through rationalizations, judgments, shame, enculturation, and fear of our body sensations, we are able to disrupt our innate capacity to self-regulate, essentially “recycling” disabling terror and helplessness. If the nervous system does not reset after an overwhelming experience, sleep, cardiovascular, digestion, respiration and immune system function become disturbed. Unresolved physiological distress can also lead to an array of cognitive, emotional and behavioral symptoms.
Somatic Therapy in Kelowna or Online
You can access Kelowna somatic therapy in-person at our Lower Mission office, or from anywhere in BC through our secure online counselling platform.
Whether you're navigating long-standing trauma or simply trying to feel more at ease in your own body — we're here to walk with you.
Book Your Kelowna Somatic Therapy Session
In-person in Lower Mission or Online across BC