Therapist Mar Vista | Somatic Psychotherapy

I offer somatic therapy and body-centered healing support in Mar Vista, CA for adults who are thoughtful, creative, sensitive, and often used to holding a lot quietly. You may be navigating grief, chronic illness, trauma, parenting, creative disconnection, or a life transition that has made it harder to feel settled in your body. My role in this community is to offer a steady therapeutic space where you can slow down, listen inward, and let more of your experience have room to exist.

I have supported clients across the Westside for years, including people in Mar Vista’s residential streets, creative households, local businesses, and neighborhoods between Venice, Palms, Culver City, and Santa Monica. Mar Vista has a grounded, lived-in quality, with families, artists, professionals, gardens, farmers markets, and people creating quieter lives within the larger pace of Los Angeles. It is a community where everyday responsibility and deep inner complexity often sit side by side.

In Mar Vista, many clients seek support when they realize they have been adapting for so long that they no longer know what their body actually needs. You may be functional, insightful, and caring, but still tired from staying in control. I offer body-centered support that helps you soften the grip gradually, build capacity, and reconnect with a sense of aliveness that does not have to be forced.

You may be someone who holds a lot quietly. Creative, caring, reflective, or highly responsible, you may also be navigating grief, chronic illness, trauma, parenting stress, creative disconnection, or a transition that has made your body feel tight, tired, or hard to access.

You may notice what everyone else needs, keep things moving, and adapt before anyone has to ask. Over time, that kind of attunement can become exhausting when there is not enough space for your own body, grief, anger, desire, or fatigue to be heard.

Somatic psychotherapy can help us explore what has been held beneath self-control, responsibility, and the habit of pushing through. Beneath farmers market mornings, family rhythms, creative households, gardens, and quieter Westside routines, this work creates room for the parts of you that have had to stay tucked away.

You may be someone who carries responsibility in your body before you ever name it. Caring for others, managing family rhythms, holding grief, navigating illness, or trying to stay creative through daily demands can leave your body tight, tired, or hard to access.

Movement can help create space for the emotions, impulses, and sensations that have been tucked away beneath usefulness and self-control. This work can support more honesty, more breath, more capacity to pause, and a less pressured relationship with what your body needs.

Through movement therapy, we may explore gesture, rhythm, grounding, stillness, emotion, and the places where your body has learned to hold everything together. Beneath farmers market mornings, gardens, creative households, parenting rhythms, and quieter Westside routines, this work gives what has been held too tightly somewhere to move.

Responsibility can hide trauma well. You may be the person who notices what others need, keeps things moving, and holds steady, while your own body carries grief, anger, fear, or exhaustion that rarely has enough space.What once helped you stay oriented may now feel like chronic tension, self-control, caretaking, or difficulty knowing what you actually want. 

Trauma therapy can help you soften the grip without losing the parts of you that helped you survive.

We may explore sensation, memory, emotion, boundaries, anger, and the protective responses that formed over time. Beneath farmers market mornings, gardens, family rhythms, and creative households, this work gives what has been held too tightly somewhere to soften.

You may be the steady one, the caring one, the person who keeps going, while certain memories or body responses remain quietly unresolved. Responsibility can hide how much your system still carries.

There may be relief in no longer having to explain why something still affects you. The work can help your body feel less alone with what it learned to hold.

With EMDR therapy, we may explore memory, sensation, emotion, and the beliefs that formed around painful experiences. Beneath family rhythms, gardens, farmers market mornings, and creative households, this creates room for what has been tucked away.

When you have been responsible for a long time, depression, grief, trauma, or illness can settle quietly beneath caretaking and daily routines. You may keep functioning while feeling far from your own inner life.

There may be moments when something tender, vivid, or previously inaccessible begins to surface. The work is to meet it slowly, with enough support for it to become integrated rather than overwhelming.

Ketamine therapy may explore intention, body sensations, emotion, imagery, memory, and post-session meaning. Beneath family rhythms, farmers market mornings, gardens, and creative households, this creates space for what has not had enough room.

OCD can hide beneath responsibility, care, and the desire to do things right. You may check, review, overthink, avoid, or seek reassurance because the cost of making a mistake feels unbearable.

This work can help loosen the grip of perfection and fear without dismissing how real the anxiety feels. More space can open for rest, connection, and choices based on values rather than compulsions.

Through OCD therapy, we may explore intrusive thoughts, shame, uncertainty, body cues, and the patterns that keep anxiety fed. Beneath family rhythms, gardens, farmers markets, and daily responsibilities, this gives you room to stop managing every possibility.

Caretaking, family rhythms, and daily responsibilities can make illness feel like something you have to manage quietly. You may be tired of explaining your limits or trying to function through symptoms.

The work can support grief, anger, pacing, and self-trust. Instead of overriding your body, there can be more room to listen before it has to get louder.

In chronic illness therapy, we may explore fatigue, pain, identity, medical experiences, nervous system overwhelm, and the emotional weight of adaptation. Beneath gardens, farmers market mornings, parenting rhythms, and creative households, this gives your body’s needs room to matter.

Religious trauma can hide beneath caretaking, responsibility, and the habit of being good. You may still feel pressure to please, stay small, avoid conflict, or earn belonging through self-denial.

The work can help you grieve what was taken while reconnecting with what is yours. Anger, confusion, tenderness, and longing can all have a place without being judged as wrong.

In religious trauma therapy, we may explore shame, boundaries, grief, anger, desire, family systems, and body trust. Beneath gardens, farmers markets, parenting rhythms, and creative households, this creates room for a self that does not have to be controlled to be worthy.