Somatic Therapy and the Power of Pacing: Safety, Nervous System Regulation, and Healing

By Amy Rae Johnson, LCSW 

You’ve been doing the work and now talk therapy has reached a plateau. You know your stressors and understand your patterns but still don’t feel different. This can be especially true when anxiety is experienced not only as thoughts, but also as physical sensations in the body. Somatic therapy can help with issues that traditional talk therapy may not fully resolve. If you’re curious about this approach or started somatic therapy and wonder why the pace feels slow, this is for you.

We’ll explore the following areas:

• What is somatic therapy and who is it for?
• The power of pacing in somatic therapy
• The importance of skills for nervous system regulation and trauma healing
• Skills to build a somatic toolbox
• Questions to ask a somatic therapist before starting services

Starting somatic therapy can feel strange and different at first. This is especially true if you’ve never done therapy, or if your only experience has been in traditional talk therapy. This approach is about quieting thoughts, because when the mind quiets, the body has a chance to speak. And when the body speaks, we often gain new insight the mind simply cannot access.

Instead of thinking and talking about problems in a cognitive way with the brain, somatic approaches focus on feeling physical sensations in the body. Feeling our physical senses, interoception, uses a different process that helps us make new connections. In psychotherapy, using felt sensations from the body to inform awareness is a bottom-up approach, while using logic and reason from the brain is a top-down approach. This is the main difference between somatic therapies like Somatic Experiencing or Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Processing (AEDP) and talk therapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Psychodynamic Therapy.

You may be at a point in your emotional wellness journey where you’ve gained insight into your issues but still react in a way that leaves your body feeling out of control. You may feel ready to address deeper issues like past abuse, attachment wounds to caregivers, or medical trauma. This approach is a good fit when you want to:

• Feel safer in your body
• Regulate your nervous system
• Improve your mind-body connection
• Heal emotional wounds from traumatic events or relationships

So, you’ve done the research and decided somatic therapy is a good fit. Great! You schedule a session excited to try something new. As you move through the session, you realize the therapist slows you down a lot. It’s important to understand that while somatic pacing may feel slow, change is often accelerated because healing is happening on the nervous system level. The slower pace of somatic therapy may be challenging, but it’s intentional and best practice.

Somatic therapists prioritize a slower pace to prevent flooding of the nervous system—becoming overwhelmed and panicked or shut down and zoned out. A skilled somatic therapist will help you find the right pace for your nervous system so you can manage the emotional experiences in sessions. This is often described as staying within the window of tolerance, where emotions and sensations feel manageable enough to process.

We experience a range of emotions while inside our window of tolerance, but generally we feel calm, grounded, socially connected with others, and able to handle stress. When we leave our window of tolerance, we can feel overwhelmed and flooded with emotions (hyperarousal), or we can feel disconnected and numb (hypoarousal).

One goal of somatic therapy and trauma healing is to extend our window of tolerance to handle a wider range of emotions without becoming dysregulated. We do this by slowing down and pacing sessions to gently expand the edges of what we can tolerate. Intentional pacing builds a strong foundation to support safety, healing, and integration (our ability to apply changes in therapy to real life situations).

Because somatic therapy is about practicing safe ways to feel physical sensations, we need a toolbox of somatic skills for everyday use. Having access to somatic skills for nervous system regulation is important so we can self-regulate when difficult emotions arise. 

Think of it like this: We’re in the ocean and see a big wave coming in. If we don’t know what to do, we may panic and find ourselves caught in strong waters. But if we remember to take a deep breath, stay calm, and go under the water, we’ll still experience the wave, but it won’t overpower us.

With regular practice, somatic skills become tools to move through emotional waves without feeling consumed or out of control.

Learning and practicing somatic skills are a great way to shift your focus from thinking to feeling. Here are four skills to improve nervous system regulation as you learn the body’s way of speaking.

The skill of resourcing (also known as a resource or resource state) is a positive and calming visualization practice that helps us feel safe and connected. Resourcing in somatic therapy helps to ground us if a physical sensation takes us outside our window of tolerance. The resource may be a relaxing place we’ve visited (the beach or a beautiful park), a space we remember that feels safe and cozy (being wrapped in a fluffy warm blanket), or even an imaginary place that feels magical and filled with wonder. Visualize your resource and breathe into the positive sensations you feel. Do this for 2-5 minutes or until you feel calm.

BONUS TIP: Imagine taking a “screenshot” of how you feel in your body to reconnect with this resource as needed.

Body scanning is a highly effective tool to notice what’s happening inside our bodies in the current moment. Starting from the top of the head, focus your attention on one body part at a time. Notice which sensations are there, or which ones aren’t. There is no right or wrong way to be while body scanning. Try to just notice and avoid judging or using critical language to describe what you feel. When we speak critically to ourselves, the body registers this as a threat which increases tension and stress. Instead, use curiosity to notice physical sensations. Curiosity will help soften the muscles and ease the critical voice.

Bilateral (which means having or relating to both sides) stimulation is something we do naturally every day without realizing it. When we go for a walk, we engage in bilateral stimulation alternating movement from one leg to the other. When we scan a landscape’s horizon, our eyes move in a bilateral way, shifting from left to right. We can intentionally practice bilateral stimulation by placing each hand on the opposite shoulder (so arms are crossed over the chest). One at a time, gently tap each hand on each shoulder. This engages both sides of the brain and body to improve self-regulation. Tap for at least two minutes or until you feel calm.

Another bilateral skill, eye rolling, uses our eyes to help the body and brain assess and establish safety in our environment. Keeping your head and neck still, roll your eyes fully left. Hold for 30-60 seconds. Let your gaze softly return to center, pausing briefly to look straight ahead. Next, move your eyes to the right and hold for 30-60 seconds. Shift your eyes left to right for 2-5 minutes, pausing between sets to rest the eyes. Notice any subtle changes in the body—this might be several blinks, a yawn, sigh, or even swallowing. When this happens, it usually means your nervous system has downshifted into a calmer state.

If you’re interested in somatic therapy for improved mind-body connection, nervous system regulation, or trauma healing, consider asking these questions during your consultation call. (Generally, most therapists offer free 15-minute consultations before starting services.)

• What happens if something feels too strong or an emotion becomes too much?
• Do you provide somatic tools or skills to practice between sessions?
• How do you encourage focusing on felt senses rather than talking?
• What can I expect from a typical somatic therapy session?
• How will I know if I’m making progress in somatic therapy?

Just as we move through different seasons of life, therapy can also have different seasons for different reasons. If you’ve tried talk therapy but it feels like your nervous system still needs more support, you might try somatic therapy. This powerful approach gives the body a voice and the mind a rest.