Therapist Santa Monica | Somatic Therapy

I offer somatic therapy and body-centered healing support in Santa Monica, CA for adults who are thoughtful, creative, sensitive, and often deeply self-aware, yet still feel disconnected from their bodies. You may be moving through grief, chronic illness, trauma, creative blocks, or a life transition that has asked more of you than words alone can hold. My role in this community is to offer a grounded, relational space where you can slow down, listen inward, and begin practicing a more honest relationship with your body, your emotions, and your everyday life.

I have served clients across Santa Monica and the Westside of Los Angeles for years, supporting people who live, work, create, and recover in a city shaped by movement, ocean air, and layered emotional intensity. Santa Monica has its own rhythm, from Main Street and Ocean Park to Montana Avenue, Pico, and the neighborhoods near the beach. There is beauty here, but also pressure to stay functional, engaged, and externally well, even when something inside you feels tired, braced, or far away.

In Santa Monica, many people come to this work because insight has taken them far, but not all the way home to themselves. You may understand your patterns and still feel your body holding on. I offer support that is paced, embodied, and steady, helping you create enough space to feel, respond, and reconnect without forcing yourself to be calm or healed.

You may be thoughtful, creative, and deeply self-aware, yet still feel like your body is carrying more than your mind can explain. Grief, chronic illness, trauma, creative blocks, or a major transition may have left you feeling braced, distant from yourself, or unable to fully land.

You may have spent years understanding your patterns, naming what happened, or trying to stay regulated, and still notice that your shoulders tighten, your breath catches, or your body moves into protection before you can choose. What matters here is creating space for the parts of you that insight alone has not been able to reach.

Through somatic psychotherapy, we may explore sensation, pacing, emotion, memory, movement, creativity, and the places where your body has learned to hold on. When ocean air, Main Street, wellness culture, and a busy outer life still do not give your inner world enough room to breathe, this becomes a place to listen to what is actually present.

You may be someone who feels most connected to yourself when you are moving, creating, walking, dancing, stretching, or sensing your body from the inside, yet still find that movement can feel complicated. Grief, chronic illness, trauma, creative blocks, or years of pushing through may have changed the way your body feels available to you.

There may be parts of you that want to move and parts that tighten, brace, disappear, or become self-conscious the moment attention turns inward. This work matters because the body often holds stories, rhythms, limits, and longings that do not arrive through words alone.

In movement therapy, we may explore gesture, breath, weight, rhythm, sensation, stillness, impulse, and the places where expression has been interrupted. When your life moves between Main Street, ocean air, creative work, wellness spaces, and the pressure to feel okay, this becomes a place where movement can be honest instead of performed.

For adults who have learned to function while carrying more than they show, trauma can live in the body as tension, vigilance, numbness, or the feeling that rest is never fully available. Grief, illness, creative pressure, or earlier experiences may still shape how safe it feels to slow down.

There may be moments when you understand exactly why you respond the way you do, but your body still braces before you can choose differently. Trauma therapy can help create more space around those responses, so protection does not have to keep organizing your whole life.

We may explore sensation, memory, pacing, emotion, boundaries, and the places where your system learned to hold on. Around Main Street, ocean air, wellness culture, and the pressure to seem okay, this work offers room for what has been carried beneath the surface.

Certain memories may feel understood in your mind, but still active in your body. Grief, trauma, illness, or a painful transition may leave you bracing, shutting down, or reacting before you know why.

There can be relief in working with what still feels charged, not by forcing the past away, but by helping your system feel more distance, choice, and steadiness in the present.

In EMDR therapy, we may explore memories, body sensations, emotions, images, and beliefs that still hold intensity. Around Main Street, ocean air, and wellness culture, this gives space to what has not been fully put down.

When depression, grief, trauma, or chronic stress has made ordinary life feel heavy, distant, or hard to access, you may need a space that can hold more than words alone. Insight may be present, but relief may still feel far away.

Ketamine therapy can support moments of perspective, emotional movement, and renewed contact with parts of yourself that have felt shut down or unreachable. The work around the experience matters as much as the experience itself.

We may explore intention, sensation, imagery, emotion, integration, and what your body needs afterward. Around Main Street, ocean air, and a culture that can pressure people to feel well, this offers space for something slower and more honest.

The mind may keep circling around fear, doubt, health, morality, relationships, or whether something has been done correctly. Even when you know the loop is painful, your body may still feel driven to check, review, avoid, or seek certainty.

OCD therapy can help you build a different relationship with uncertainty, one that does not require constant reassurance or control. Relief often comes through more capacity, not more perfect answers.

We may explore intrusive thoughts, compulsive patterns, body sensations, anxiety, shame, and the fear of letting go. Around Main Street, wellness culture, ocean air, and the pressure to seem balanced, this work makes room for honesty without performance.

Living with illness can change your relationship with your body, time, energy, and identity. You may be grieving the version of yourself who could push through, while also trying to understand what your body needs now.

Chronic illness therapy can support the emotional reality of pacing, uncertainty, anger, fatigue, and adaptation. Relief may come from no longer treating your limits as failures.

We may explore body trust, grief, medical stress, nervous system overwhelm, creativity, and the pressure to seem well. Around Main Street, ocean air, and wellness culture, this work makes room for a body that does not have to perform health.

Leaving or questioning a high-control religious environment can affect your body, relationships, identity, sexuality, creativity, and sense of safety. Even after your beliefs change, fear, shame, or vigilance may remain.

Religious trauma therapy can help you untangle what was yours from what was imposed. Relief may come through more agency, more body trust, and less fear around your own desires and boundaries.

We may explore shame, consent, grief, anger, identity, spirituality, and the body’s learned responses to control. Around Main Street, ocean air, and wellness culture, this offers space for truth without replacing one performance with another.

My practice is based on Main Street, where I offer grounded, body-centered support for adults seeking more presence, clarity, and self-trust. I serve clients from Ocean Park, Pico, Mid-City, Montana Avenue, Venice, Mar Vista, and the wider Westside, with an approach rooted in pacing, attunement, creativity, and the belief that healing happens through relationship, not force.