Somatic Therapy in Los Angeles
Come back into relationship with your body, yourself, and the people who matter to you.
When you’ve done the thinking, understand the patterns, and still find your body bracing, shutting down, or pulling you into familiar ways of relating, somatic therapy can help you find another way through. In-person in Highland Park, Los Angeles and online throughout California.
What is somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy includes the body and nervous system in the healing process alongside thoughts, emotions, and relationships. It can help you notice and gently work with patterns such as bracing, shutting down, people-pleasing, dissociating, or becoming overwhelmed when insight alone hasn’t created the change you want.
Sometimes knowing the ‘why’ isn’t enough to help you feel differently.
You might understand your patterns, know where they came from, and still find yourself feeling activated when something hits a nerve. Your body can react before you’ve had a chance to think your way through what’s happening.
Somatic therapy helps us get curious about these moments. By bringing your body into the work alongside talking and reflection, we can begin to understand what your nervous system has learned about safety, closeness, conflict, and connection and how those patterns show up in your relationships.
Our somatic therapists in Los Angeles help you listen to these responses rather than fight against them. Together, we make room for more ease, greater wellbeing, and the freedom to show up more fully as yourself, both in your life and in your relationships.
Submit a contact form to let us know you’re interested in learning more.
Relational Somatic therapy for trauma, attachment & relationships in los angeles
your relationship patterns don’t only live in your thoughts.
Attachment is embodied.
Our relationships teach us a lot about what to expect from other people: Is it safe to need something? What happens when someone is upset with me? Can I say no and still belong? Can I let someone get close without losing myself?
Over time, these experiences may become more than thoughts or beliefs. They can show up as automatic responses in your body and nervous system, often before you have time to consciously understand what’s happening.
Maybe you go quiet or numb during conflict. You feel an urgent need to repair things when someone seems distant. You scan faces and voices for tiny signs that something is wrong. You automatically agree when you want to say no, take responsibility for someone else’s feelings, or pull away just when you’re starting to feel close.
You may even deeply want intimacy while noticing that closeness itself can make your body brace.
Relational somatic therapy gives us another way to understand these patterns. Instead of frustratedly asking, “Why do I keep doing this?” we can become curious about what your body is communicating, what your nervous system has learned to expect, and what these responses tell us about your relationships and the contexts you move through.
Somatic therapy for C-PTSD and relational trauma
Somatic therapy can help people living with C-PTSD, relational trauma, and attachment wounds understand how past experiences continue to shape present-day nervous-system responses. The goal is not to force your body to calm down, but to build greater safety, choice, and connection over time.
For people healing from C-PTSD, complex trauma, relational trauma, or attachment wounds, these patterns can feel especially deeply rooted. You may understand where they came from and still find your body responding as though an old relational threat is happening right now.
Somatic therapy and embodiment practices give us a way to work with these responses in the present, without needing to endlessly retell or relive what happened. We can notice when your body braces, disconnects, reaches urgently for connection, or signals that something doesn’t feel safe, then explore what that response is protecting and what it can tell us about what’s happening now.
your body can help us find another way forward.
When we slow down enough to notice what’s happening inside, we have more information to work with. A tightening in your chest might help you recognize a boundary before you have words for it. The impulse to disappear might tell us something about what happens when you feel misunderstood. Feeling yourself brace when someone gets close might help us understand why intimacy can feel both deeply wanted and strangely threatening.
Embodiment is about learning to stay curious about these experiences rather than overriding them. We’re not looking for the “right” way for your body to respond. We’re creating enough space to notice what’s happening, understand it in context, and have more choice about what you want to do next.
The goal isn’t simply to make activation go away. By listening to your body with curiosity, we can create more room for authenticity, connection, and ways of showing up that feel more aligned with who you are and what you want from your relationships.
Ready to get curious about what your body is telling you?
Get paired with a relational somatic therapist who can help you bring together insight, embodiment, and relationship.
A free 20-minute call to talk about what’s going on, how we work, and whether working together makes sense. No pressure to commit.
we’re not trying to regulate your nervous system into submission.
Our bodies respond to the world we’re living in, too.
Nervous system regulation can be helpful. But at Kindman & Co., the goal of somatic therapy is not to make you calmer, quieter, easier to manage, or better able to tolerate what is harming you.
Sometimes your anger is telling you that something is profoundly unfair. Anxiety may be alerting you to an environment that actually doesn’t feel safe. Tension might emerge around a boundary that keeps getting crossed. The urge to pull away may be important information about a relationship where you don’t feel respected, seen, or free to be yourself.
And sometimes what gets labeled “dysregulation” makes a lot more sense when we consider the world your nervous system is navigating.
Racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, economic precarity, state violence, chronic invalidation, and other forms of systemic oppression are not simply individual stressors for you to learn to cope with more effectively. They are conditions that affect bodies, relationships, safety, belonging, and our capacity to move freely through the world.
Your embodied distress, anger, grief, fear, and rage can carry essential information about those conditions. They can help you recognize what feels unsafe, what violates your values, what needs a boundary, what needs to change, and what you may want to take action against.
Relational somatic therapy gives us space to ask: Is this an old protective pattern showing up? Is my body responding to something happening right now? What is this sensation or activation asking me to pay attention to?
Sometimes healing means helping your nervous system discover that the present is safer than the past.
And sometimes healing means trusting yourself when your body is telling you that something is not okay.
talk therapy and somatic therapy belong together.
we can understand the story and what your body learned from living it.
Insight matters. Understanding your history, relationships, identity, and the context surrounding your experiences can be transformative. We don't believe understanding and embodiment have to compete for space in therapy.
Relational somatic therapy lets us explore why a pattern developed while also getting curious about what happens inside you as it unfolds. What changes in your body when you set a boundary? When someone is disappointed in you? When you say what you actually want? When you allow yourself to receive care?
This gives us another way to know you. Not mind or body, but the fuller experience of being you.
Really good at thinking about your feelings?
Sometimes insight becomes another way of keeping our experiences at a safe distance. Read our blog about intellectualizing, embodiment, and why understanding your trauma isn't always enough.
regulation is often relational.
sometimes what helps isn’t another coping skill. it’s connection.
We often talk about nervous system regulation as though it’s something we should be able to accomplish entirely on our own. But human nervous systems develop in relationship, and we often find our way toward greater steadiness there, too.
You might notice your shoulders soften around someone you trust. Your breathing changes when you hear a familiar voice. You feel more present when your dog curls up beside you. Sometimes simply having another person stay with you while something feels hard changes the experience.
The therapeutic relationship offers this kind of information, too. What happens when your therapist stays present with an emotion you usually hide? When you disagree and the relationship remains intact? When you ask for something and aren’t rejected? When you receive care without immediately taking care of the other person in return?
Relational somatic therapy lets us notice these experiences as they happen between us. Therapy can become a place to practice staying connected without abandoning yourself, experience repair after disconnection, and discover what it feels like to be more fully yourself in relationship.
Ready to show up more fully as yourself?
If this resonates with you, the next step is a complimentary match call & will help you find a therapist whose style, personality, and experience with somatic and relational work feel aligned with what you’re looking for.
You don’t need to arrive knowing exactly what your body is telling you or even what kind of therapy you need. We’ll start with where you are and help you find a therapist who can get curious alongside you.
We’re here to help you feel more at home in yourself, more authentic in your relationships, and more free to move through your life with connection, choice, and ease.
Match with the relational somatic therapist for you.
Schedule a complimentary 15–20 minute match call using the calendar below.
Tell our Care Coordinator, Clarissa, a little about what’s bringing you to therapy and what you’re looking for. She’ll help connect you with a therapist whose approach to somatic work, embodiment, relationships, and identity feels like a good fit.
No pressure, no need to have it all figured out. Just a real conversation about what you need and who on our team might best meet you there.
In-person somatic therapy in Highland Park, Los Angeles, and virtual therapy throughout California.
Not quite ready to book a call? You can text us at 213-933-9047 and we’ll help you figure out next steps.
Common questions about Relational Somatic Therapy
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Finding a somatic therapist can feel like a lot. We simplify the process by starting with a complimentary Match Call. Our Care Coordinator acts as your advocate to help you find the therapist who fits your specific personality and needs.
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Somatic therapy at Kindman & Co. still looks a lot like therapy. We’ll talk, reflect, laugh, get curious, and build a real relationship. We’ll also pay attention to what’s happening in your body as we talk.
Your therapist might notice that your breathing changes when you mention someone, invite you to get curious about tension that appears during a story, or slow things down when you notice an urge to pull away, make yourself smaller, or immediately take care of someone else.
Sometimes we’ll stay with a sensation. Sometimes we’ll explore what it might mean. And sometimes the most useful thing may be to keep talking.
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Not at all. In fact, you might be coming to somatic therapy because you’re really good at thinking about your feelings but have a harder time experiencing them.
Embodiment is something we can explore together, without forcing you to feel something you’re not ready for or expecting you to perfectly name every sensation.
Really good at thinking about your feelings? Read more about intellectualizing, embodiment, and why understanding your trauma isn’t always enough.
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It can be especially helpful to get curious about the ways anxiety shows up physically, like tension, restlessness, a racing heart, shallow breathing, nausea, or feeling keyed up even when your mind knows you’re okay.
Rather than treating those sensations as something your body is doing wrong, we can explore what your nervous system may be responding to and what helps you feel more choice in those moments.
Read our guide to why anxiety can feel so physical and how somatic awareness can help.
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No. While somatic therapy can be especially useful for C-PTSD, relational trauma, and attachment wounds, you don’t need to identify as having trauma to benefit from paying attention to your embodied experience.
We find that somatic and embodied approaches are also very helpful at learning more about your relationship with yourself and others.
We might use somatic work to explore anxiety, boundaries, people-pleasing, conflict, intimacy, identity, grief, chronic stress, or simply the feeling that you understand yourself intellectually but still find yourself falling into the same patterns.
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No. Somatic therapy does not require you to repeatedly recount painful experiences in detail.
We can work with what’s happening in the present: what you notice in your body, what happens between you and your therapist, and how familiar protective responses show up in your relationships now. You’ll remain an active participant in deciding what we explore and how quickly we move.
You may discuss with your therapist how it could be helpful to process historical trauma, but you’ll collaborate together on what this looks like and move at a pace that feels good to you.
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We offer in-person somatic therapy in Highland Park, Los Angeles, as well as virtual somatic therapy throughout California.
Somatic work can happen in either setting because embodiment isn’t dependent on being in the same physical room. Your therapist can help you notice sensations, responses, movement, boundaries, and what happens between you relationally whether you’re meeting in person or online.
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You can schedule a free 20-minute information session with our Care Coordinator to see if we feel like a good fit. There’s no pressure to move forward. The call is a space to ask questions, share what’s been going on, and get a sense of what working with a therapist at Kindman & Co. might feel like.
You don’t have to choose between understanding yourself and feeling more like yourself. Your thoughts, emotions, relationships, identities, and embodied experiences are all part of you.
Relational somatic therapy at Kindman & Co. is offered in Highland Park and across Northeast L.A. Explore our relational therapy approach, couples therapy, grief counseling, and our diverse team of therapists.