Somatic coaching
PERSONALLY TAILORED, TRAUMA-INFORMED SUPPORT FOR EMBODIED RESILIENCY
Imagine with me for a moment,
That sense you have in your body when you know you’ve got your own back.
A feeling of steadiness and support from deep within.
Maybe it arrives with the sensation of weight or groundedness in your belly and feet, the felt sense of gravity.
You’re in touch with your innate strength, yet you remain flexible and resilient.
You feel anchored in the knowledge that whatever life throws your way, you won’t abandon yourself when the seas get rough.
Coaching for the whole of you
The root word of somatics, “soma” translates from Greek to mean "the living body in its wholeness."
By this we mean the physical body but also the body as the place where we feel, sense, make meaning and engage with the world.
Somatics can also be interpreted as the study of our bodies, trauma and how our past experiences inform our beliefs, behaviours and the shapes and patterns our bodies hold.
Somatic coaching creates a safe and compassionate space to understand these patterns and shapes and develop awareness of our bodies.
A place to gently unravel what no longer feels helpful, and to tap into your innate resources so you can live a more joyful, authentic, and fulfilling life.
This work invites the conscious mind to take a small step back. Not to say we ignore the mind, but rather treat the body & mind as an integrated whole.
In a session, we might gently explore what might be keeping you stuck and use image, somatic tracking, mindfulness and elements of psychoeducation to help integrate your experience.
We create a space to relearn and listen to the rhythms & impulses of our body and trust them again. Allowing time to let the body speak its infinite wisdom.
This work is patient and gentle, prioritising safety & resource so you can cultivate the changes you long to make.
“This work is gentle and accessible, yet so powerful. The knowledge I’ve gained has given me huge insight into my nervous system responses, helping me understand the nuances of what I need when under stress. It’s self-care at it’s most foundational level: somatic awareness, self-worth, boundaries, ability to build capacity for the full spectrum of human emotions.”
— Esther Webb
Perhaps…
You’ve got a longing for ‘things to be different’, but you can’t quite put your finger on what ‘different’ looks and feels like.
Or you’re ready to cultivate a relationship with the part of you that knows what to do.
Maybe you realise you spend a lot of time disconnected from your body, overthinking and living from your head; you want to feel at home in your own skin,
You long to feel a sense of steadiness and resilience. You want to weather life’s storms and not get thrown into the deep water every time.
There are big changes you want to make, an impulse that’s pulling you to expand and evolve, but it feels achingly out of reach.
Your body isn’t the enemy
The idea of connecting with your body can feel daunting, especially if you’ve spent years ignoring its signs and signals—or if you find yourself stuck in a state of hypervigilance, analysing every twinge, ache, or sensation.
It’s often easier to get caught up trying to understand or intellectualise how we feel rather than allowing ourselves to simply feel.
But the truth is: your body—its sensations, the waves of your emotional landscape, and even the thoughts swirling in your clever, overworked brain—aren’t your enemy.
Everything your body does is rooted in protection, working tirelessly to keep you safe.
It takes time to tune into this innate wisdom, to learn your body’s unique language. And often, we need a little guidance to begin.
But when you become the interpreter of the language of your body you can learn to ride the waves of your capacity —knowing when to push forward, when to pause, and how to honor your emotional and physical needs.
As you uncover the intelligence behind your body’s responses, you’ll begin to feel a sense of safety and steadiness you may have thought was out of reach. Moving from feeling overwhelmed to tapping into a deep sense of “I’ve got this.”
From this place, the changes you long for can finally take root—gently, steadily, and at a pace that feels good.
Our healing nature : restoring resilience
Humans are incredibly resilient creatures, we have the ability to learn, adapt, and grow stronger following challenging and stressful experiences. However, with the systemic stressors we face today (oppression, climate change, racialised trauma), combined with the absence of many necessary supports including connection with nature, ancestral wisdom, and close family and community ties we can be left feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable to traumatic stress.
When we experience a threat to our well-being, the autonomic nervous system automatically responds with self-protective responses of fight, flight, or freeze. In a well-resourced nervous system, these responses are time-limited states that come to completion after the threat has passed.
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Unfortunately, many people experience chronic stress that can prevent them from returning to a felt sense of safety as a home base. This can lead to embodied management patterns that although help us cope with the unrelenting challenges around us aren’t supportive to our growth. We can become stuck in fight (irritation, anger), flight (worry, anxiety), or freeze (immobility, hopelessness).
The process of healing, resolving trauma, and moving towards vitality requires restoring our ability to accurately perceive the present moment.
Because accumulated stress reinforces our inclination to focus on the negative, potential threat, or what could go wrong, we develop cyclical patterns of negativity.
We get good at what we practice: In order to emerge from the imbalance of negativity bias, we have to practice the opposite; embodied awareness and the orientation to that which supports life, that which is easeful and enjoyable. This allows us to meet personal and global challenges with creativity, capacity, and resilience.
Many of us have become so disproportionately preoccupied with self-protection and avoiding potential threats that we neglect our experience of healthful pleasure or our felt-sense cues to approach that which nourishes us and sustains life.
As we retrain our attention to a more attuned perception of the current moment and environment and a balanced focus on both what to approach and what to avoid, we build resilience.
This helps our innate biological wisdom to digest the backlog of unprocessed stress and trauma with more ease, allowing us to integrate the resource from previously overwhelming experiences.
Overtime we can increase our capacity to creatively and powerfully respond, rather than react, to present and future challenges.
Some ways somatic coaching might be of benefit
Aligning yourself to what feels important and uncovering your embodied values so you can make the changes you’ve longed for.
Reestablishing and maintaining a sustainable work-life rhythm that feels good and gives you space to be you.
Breaking the cycles of intensity and crash that always seem to trip you up.
Understanding and identifying your needs so you can create the boundaries that keep you and those you love feeling safe and connected
Relieving the pressure and high expectations you place on yourself so you can cultivate self-compassion and the steadiness of self worth.
Relearning how to slow down and reconnect with ease to create a more mindful & sustainable approach to life and work.
Exploring why you aren’t doing the things you want to and working out how you can support yourself to take aligned action and create embodied change.
Learning to reconnect to your body and work with your nervous system. Move away from anxiety & overwhelm and towards feeling steady and grounded.
Connecting to the intuitive part of you that ‘knows’ what to do and feels empowered to move forward.
Coaching with me
Healing can’t take place when there’s urgency and pressure and establishing a space that allows you to access safety through attuned relationship, support and kindness and the ability to move at your own pace is my priority. You are always in choice with how our session looks and feels and any support or practices offered are with your consent.
Our sessions are 60 minutes long and held on Zoom. Our time together is responsive and you-led. I’m here to offer guidance, reflection and any supportive psycho-education or somatic practices that might support your integration.
ALL SESSIONS INCLUDE
Weekly email or Voxer check-ins between sessions
Access to a library of somatic practices, workbooks and tools and the support you need to integrate them into your daily life.
Free access to any movement classes or workshops I offer throughout our time together.
I’m often asked how long this work might take and unfortunately I can’t offer an answer that is concrete. We work at the pace of the body. This isn’t about fixing, hacking or correcting but instead about encouraging your system to rediscover supportive rhythms & responses and find ways to navigate towards embodied change that is you-paced.
I suggest minimum of 6 sessions is a good place to begin. This gives us time to create an arc of care that feels coherent. Your nervous system can remember the ways in which it feels easeful and supported and you get to work on the pieces of psycho-education that mean you can move forward from a place of support.
I am always open to conversation about how this work can fit with your life and am committed to staying as flexible as possible around how this can look for you. If your need doesn’t fit into the packages below please feel free to book a call and discuss what can support you
COSTS ARE AS FOLLOWS
£150 for a single 90-minute session (can be split into 2 payments)
£600 for six 60-minute sessions (3 payments of £200) *Longer payment plans available on request.
£1080 for twelve 60-minute sessions (6 payments of £180) *Longer payment plans available on request.
I am happy to offer a limited number of solidarity rate sessions each month (6 in total) at the rate of £35 per session. You are free to book as many of these sessions within a month as you like as long as there is space.
You’re invited to use the solidarity rate if you’re unpaid, lowly paid, in financial difficulty, or otherwise unable to afford the standard price without causing financial distress. Capitalist norms train us to try and extract as much as we can from one another. I want to be fair to you and I trust you to be fair to me.
If the solidarity rate is outside of your capacity but you feel you’d benefit from this work please always reach out, I endeavour to make this modality as accessible as possible to those in need.
Get in touch below
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“This 'work' has been transformative because it brings a deeper knowing of what is going in my body and marries it with the complexities of life. Sara has an exceptional breadth of expertise that helped me navigate more than I could ever have imagined possible by supporting both my body and my head!
I would absolutely recommend somatic coaching. In fact, I think this approach is so foundational to life that we all should be taught it in school. Sara provides such well pitched detail on how the nervous system works, you get a real sense of what the body is doing and why. We have become separated from this. as we increasingly think our way through life, losing touch of what our body can tell us.”
— Clare Baker
FAQ
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Our sessions last approximately 60 minutes, except for our first session,, which is 90 minutes.
Most clients find it helpful to allocate an additional 30-60 minutes a week to allow themselves to explore suggested resources and actions that may arise as a result of our sessions.
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Yes and no. My coaching sessions are bespoke for your individual needs. We may agree to explore some particular issues or topics in advance of a session, and we will usually work together (co-create) the sessions so that they are helpful for you at that moment and what is currently evolving for you, whilst also keeping your bigger goals or intentions in mind.
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My coaching days are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday day times (9-5UK time) I do not offer evening sessions.
I can occasionally offer earlier morning sessions dependent on availability.
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The nature of our time together means that each session will hopefully result in you moving towards embodied change. At the end of each session you’ll be invited to choose one or two intentions or actions you want to implement before the next session to support your process.
Where appropriate, I’ll l offer suggestions of practices, experiments and resources/worksheets to explore between sessions.
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Coaching is a process that takes place in partnership with clients to help guide them towards their inner wisdom and possibility. A coach does not tell you what to do but instead supports the client towards internal change or transformation. It is generative and future-focused. Coaching works on the premise that clients are “creative, resourceful and whole” and do not need fixing or healing.
A true coaching conversation will feel different to a conversation that you might have with a friend, colleague or even a mentor. It is not a coaches’ role to give opinions, answers or solutions, but instead to guide the client through their own process.
In contrast, counselling and therapy focus on healing difficulty, trauma and upset within an individual’s past or present.
You might want to work with a therapist or counsellor alongside coaching.
If you need to choose between therapy and coaching, start with therapy and come to coaching when you’re ready.
