Therapy that helps your body feel safe again
Somatic therapy works with the body, nervous system, emotions, and protective patterns that shape how you respond to stress, trauma, relationships, and everyday life.
Somatic therapy starts where talk therapy often stops.
Somatic therapy is a body-centered approach to emotional and psychological healing. Instead of focusing only on thoughts, stories, or insight, it also pays attention to what happens in the body: tension, breath, posture, impulses, numbness, shutdown, trembling, tightness, warmth, pressure, and subtle shifts in sensation.
This matters because stress and trauma do not only live in memory. They can also live in the nervous system. You may know logically that you are safe, but your body may still react as if something is wrong. Somatic therapy helps bridge that gap.
The goal is not to force catharsis, dig aggressively into the past, or override your body. The goal is to build enough safety, capacity, and awareness that your system can begin to release what it has been holding.
Your nervous system can react before your mind has time to explain.
Many people come to therapy because they understand their patterns but still feel stuck in them. Somatic therapy draws on polyvagal theory and the body’s own survival responses to work with what talk alone often can’t reach.
Fight
Fight energy can show up as irritability, defensiveness, anger, control, urgency, or feeling like you have to protect yourself even when you do not want to react that way.
Flight
Flight can feel like anxiety, overthinking, restlessness, perfectionism, busyness, avoidance, or always needing to stay one step ahead of what could go wrong.
Freeze or Shutdown
Freeze can feel like numbness, dissociation, exhaustion, collapse, fogginess, disconnection, or knowing what you “should” do but being unable to move toward it.
Fawn
Fawn energy can show up as chronic people-pleasing, over-apologizing, ignoring your own needs, managing other people’s emotions, or feeling responsible for keeping everyone else comfortable.
Somatic therapy, parts work, EMDR, and nervous system care
Isabella’s approach is integrative. Somatic therapy is supported by Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, parts work, EMDR, Lifespan Integration, and yoga therapy when clinically appropriate.
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing works with the body’s survival responses. Instead of forcing you to retell painful stories, it helps you gently track sensation, activation, settling, and unfinished protective responses.
Explore Somatic Experiencing →IFS & Parts Work
Internal Family Systems and parts work help you understand the protective parts of you that learned to manage fear, shame, grief, anger, collapse, or over-responsibility.
Explore Parts Work →EMDR Therapy
EMDR supports the brain and nervous system in reprocessing painful or traumatic memories so they feel less vivid, charged, or present in everyday life.
Explore EMDR →Lifespan Integration
Lifespan Integration can help the system recognize that past experiences are over, allowing different periods of life to feel more connected, coherent, and integrated.
Explore Lifespan Integration →Yoga Therapy
Yoga therapy may include breath, grounding, movement, posture, and body awareness practices to support embodiment and nervous system regulation.
Explore Yoga Therapy →Personalized Care
The method is never forced. Therapy is adapted to your pace, your capacity, and what your system is ready to work with in the moment.
Somatic therapy may help when symptoms feel bigger than logic.
Trauma & Complex Trauma
Support for trauma, childhood trauma, attachment wounds, relational trauma, emotional neglect, and long-term survival patterns.
Explore Trauma Therapy →Anxiety & Panic
Somatic therapy can help you work with racing thoughts, panic sensations, hypervigilance, tightness, urgency, and the body’s fear responses.
Explore Anxiety Therapy →Depression & Shutdown
For some people, depression includes nervous system collapse, numbness, fatigue, disconnection, or difficulty accessing motivation and vitality.
Explore Depression Therapy →Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
Support for rebuilding trust in your own perception after gaslighting, manipulation, coercive control, blame-shifting, or chronic invalidation.
Explore Narcissistic Abuse Recovery →Relationship Triggers
Somatic work can help with fear of abandonment, people-pleasing, shutdown during conflict, anxious attachment, avoidant patterns, and emotional flooding.
Explore Relationship Therapy →Stress & Burnout
Support for chronic tension, over-functioning, exhaustion, perfectionism, urgency, and feeling unable to fully rest.
“Your body has been trying to protect you. Somatic therapy helps it learn that it is finally safe to rest.”
What somatic therapy can look like in session
Somatic therapy is collaborative and paced. You do not have to perform, push through, or know exactly what to say.
Build Safety
We start by helping your system orient to the present, notice resources, and build enough internal steadiness before going deeper.
Track the Body
You may notice breath, tension, warmth, impulses, emotions, or shifts in posture. These body signals often reveal what the nervous system is holding.
Work with Parts
Protective parts may show up as fear, numbness, anger, skepticism, people-pleasing, or control. We approach these parts with curiosity instead of judgment.
Process Gently
When appropriate, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, or Lifespan Integration may support the processing of experiences that still feel active in the system.
Integrate
Integration helps your body and mind recognize what has shifted, so changes become more accessible outside the therapy room.
Practice Capacity
Over time, the goal is to increase your ability to feel, choose, connect, rest, set boundaries, and respond without being hijacked by old survival patterns.
Isabella Koepf, LMHCA
Isabella uses a somatic, trauma-informed approach that honors the connection between body, mind, emotion, memory, and the nervous system. Her work is especially supportive for people who feel like insight alone has not been enough to change how they react, shut down, connect, or cope.
Her primary modalities include Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems and parts work, and EMDR. She may also draw from Lifespan Integration and yoga therapy depending on your needs.
Sessions are paced with care. The goal is not to overwhelm the system, but to help you build enough safety and capacity to meet what has been stored, avoided, or carried for too long.
Somatic therapy helps turn understanding into felt change.
Talk therapy often begins with meaning.
Traditional talk therapy can help you understand your thoughts, beliefs, history, relationships, and emotional patterns. This can be powerful and important.
Somatic therapy also works with the body’s response.
Somatic therapy asks: what does your body do when you feel unsafe, ashamed, overwhelmed, abandoned, trapped, or unseen? That response is often where the pattern lives.
Insight is not always enough.
You may know why you people-please, freeze, panic, or shut down, but still feel unable to stop. Somatic therapy helps work with the survival response directly.
The body can learn something new.
Through careful pacing, regulation, tracking, and integration, your nervous system can begin to experience new possibilities: safety, choice, boundaries, rest, connection, and self-trust.
Somatic therapy & holistic wellness pricing
Online somatic therapy is available for Washington residents through secure telehealth, including Somatic Experiencing, IFS-informed parts work, EMDR, and Lifespan Integration.
Insurance Coverage
I am an In-Network provider for:
Premera • LifeWise • Blue Cross Blue Shield*
*Please reach out to confirm your specific plan’s coverage. I am currently out-of-network with Regence.
Yoga therapy and Ayurvedic consultations are non-clinical and available to clients worldwide through secure video sessions.
*Insurance is not accepted for Holistic Wellness services.
Book a Holistic Session →Common questions about somatic therapy
Is somatic therapy only for trauma?
No. Somatic therapy is often used for trauma and complex trauma, but it can also support anxiety, depression, stress, relationship triggers, grief, burnout, dissociation, and nervous system dysregulation.
Do I have to talk about everything that happened?
Not all at once. Somatic therapy does not require you to retell every painful detail before you are ready. The work can begin with what is happening in your body and life now.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a body-based approach that helps work with survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown. It focuses on gentle tracking, regulation, and completing unresolved stress responses.
How is EMDR used with somatic therapy?
EMDR may be used to help reprocess memories, beliefs, or experiences that still feel emotionally or physically charged. Somatic awareness can support pacing, grounding, and integration during that process.
What is parts work?
Parts work helps you understand the different protective responses within you. One part may want closeness, another may want distance, another may feel angry, and another may shut down. Therapy helps these parts communicate and soften.
Can somatic therapy be done online?
Yes. Online somatic therapy can include grounding, body awareness, parts work, EMDR preparation, regulation practices, and trauma-informed processing through secure telehealth.
What is the “window of tolerance,” and why does it matter?
The window of tolerance is the zone where your nervous system can handle stress without tipping into overwhelm (fight, flight) or shutdown (freeze). Somatic therapy helps widen that window, so more of daily life feels manageable instead of activating.
Do I need to know about polyvagal theory for this to work?
Not at all. Polyvagal theory is simply the science behind why your body shifts between calm, alert, and shutdown states. You don’t need to understand the theory. Isabella brings that framework into sessions so the pacing and tools make sense for your specific nervous system.