Somatic therapy: a plain-English definition

Somatic therapy is an umbrella term for body-centered approaches to mental health that use physical sensation, breath, and movement, not only talk, as a direct route into working through stress and trauma. Common forms include Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Practitioners are licensed mental health professionals with added, specialized training.

How is somatic therapy different from talk therapy?

Most talk therapy works mainly through conversation and thinking. Somatic therapy starts from the body instead. A 2023 Harvard Health overview describes a therapist guiding you to notice sensation, posture, and breath, often before talking through what happened. From there, a session might add grounding, slow breathing, or small guided movements, paced gradually so feelings don’t overwhelm you.

Who created somatic therapy, and what does it include?

Somatic therapy is an umbrella term, not one single method. Many different somatic approaches fit under it, each with its own name and technique. Its best-known form is Somatic Experiencing, which psychologist Peter Levine began developing in the 1970s. Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, laid out in the 2006 book Trauma and the Body she co-authored with Kekuni Minton and Clare Pain, is another widely taught form.

Both approaches, and others like them, treat bodily awareness as data, not noise. Payne, Levine, and Crane-Godreau’s 2015 paper in Frontiers in Psychology grounds this in interoception and proprioception: your brain’s ongoing read on your internal state and your body’s position in space.

Is somatic therapy backed by research?

Evidence is still developing, and most of it covers Somatic Experiencing specifically, not the whole umbrella category. A 2021 scoping review in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology screened 83 studies on the approach. Only 16 met the researchers’ inclusion criteria, and most were small. Those studies pointed to real benefits for PTSD-related symptoms and general well-being, though the researchers were careful to call the findings preliminary.

A 2017 randomized controlled trial added stronger evidence: 63 people with PTSD who received Somatic Experiencing improved significantly more than a waitlist group. Other somatic approaches, like Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, have even less dedicated research behind them. Across the board, researchers call for larger, more rigorous trials before ranking somatic therapy alongside established treatments like CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) or EMDR.

How does somatic therapy connect to EMDR?

EMDR isn’t a form of somatic therapy, but the two overlap more than you’d expect. One of EMDR’s eight phases is a body scan, where a clinician checks for physical tension still lingering after a memory has been reprocessed, per EMDRIA. Its core technique, bilateral stimulation, also relies on body-and-emotion pathways rather than words alone, putting it closer to Somatic Experiencing than to pure talk therapy. The two remain distinct methods, though, each with its own protocol.

EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, offers a guided version of bilateral stimulation at app.emease.com, a wellness practice inspired by EMDR therapy, not a form of somatic therapy itself. For a fuller side-by-side, EMDR vs Somatic Therapy breaks down where the two overlap and where they part ways.