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 or 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.
Somatic coaching : coaching for the whole of you
The Greek word "soma" refers to "the living body in its wholeness". As a somatic coach, I see you as a whole, creative, adaptive and resourceful living being that has been shaped over time by the world around you.
Somatic coaching aims to wake up the untapped resources your body holds for living a more joyful & authentic life.
Coaching in this way aims to let the conscious mind take a step back guiding you towards a deeper connection with your whole self.
This isn’t to say we ignore the mind, but rather treat the body & mind as an integrated whole and create space for all of our parts to speak their wisdom.
Instead of asking ‘why’ something is the way it is, we are open to exploring our sensory perceptions and emotional responses and how they might have contributed to patterns of behaviour.
Traditional coaching works with the content of the story, what you say and the meaning of it.
Somatic coaching focuses on how the storyteller experiences the story and is process-oriented (journey and not goal driven)
In a session we might gently explore the places or patterns that might be keeping you stuck and allow time to let the body speak its infinite wisdom.
We create space to relearn how to listen to the rhythms & impulses of our body and trust them again. This work is patient and gentle, allowing time for integration and 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…
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.
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 help us cope with the unrelenting challenges around us. We can become stuck in fight (irritation, anger), flight (worry, anxiety), or freeze (immobility, hopelessness).
The process of healing, resolving trauma, and moving toward vitality requires restoring our ability to accurately perceive the present moment. Accumulated stress can reinforce our inclination to focus on the negative, potential threat, or what could go wrong, leading to 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 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.
How I coach…
EMBODIMENT AND SOMATICS CREATE THE CONTAINER FOR EMBODIED CHANGE;
The work of embodiment and somatics is centred around the relationship the body plays in understanding who we are and how we change. Through this lens, we’re invited to understand that we are an ecosystem: body, mind and soul are together, not separate.
Holding the perspective of unity & wholeness, we create the container for embodied change and transformation to happen.
Embodiment and somatics invite us to purposefully inhabit our bodies, relationships & lives so we can discover more EASE, AGENCY and SELF-TRUST
Working together could look like:
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.
All packages 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.
£600 for 6 sessions (3 payments of £200) *Longer payment plans available on request.
£1080 for 12 sessions (6 payments of £180) *Longer payment plans available on request.
investment
*People often ask me 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 offer that a 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 above please feel free to book a call and discuss what can support you.
Want to see if it’s right for you?
If somewhere in your body you felt the pull, but you’ve got questions or want to check we’re the right fit, you can book a time to speak to me or fill in an enquiry form below
OR
“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.
