About Somatics
“Adaptiveness is the capacity to respond to external stressors without rigidity, with flexibility & creativity…”
Gabor Mate
If you’ve already read my story you know that I am the founder of Transformational Somatics™, a holistic, and solutions-focused oriented approach to traditional coaching and “talk” therapies.
As a Somatic Psychotherapist and Certified Professional Coach, I created Transformational Somatics™ as a unique blend of therapeutic healing practices and everyday coping skills. By blending the most constructive, powerful elements of personal coaching with my experience as a mental health professional, Transformational Somatics™ embodies a proactive and possibility-oriented approach to alleviating symptoms of daily stress, dysregulation, anxiety, overwhelm, pain, grief, and trauma.
If you’re curious to learn more — and to explore Transformational Somatics™ for yourself — read on!
Below, I’ve answered some of my clients’ most pressing questions about this healing modality and what it’s like to work with me, whether in person or remotely.
Thank you, and I wish you full wellness on your journey!
Trudi Howley
Licensed Professional Counselor
Somatic Psychotherapist
Certified Professional Coach
Trauma Healing Specialist
What is Transformational Somatics™?
Transformational Somatics™ is a modality of personal healing work developed by Trudi Howley, that blends therapeutic healing practices and coping skills to help clients alleviate symptoms of chronic or situational stress, dysregulation, overwhelm, pain, and trauma while proactively building optimal health and wellness.
An important core tenant of Transformational Somatics™ includes my training as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) observing and exploring key nervous system responses to discomfort, anxiety and past traumas, which manifest symptomatically in the body as self-protective responses.
When you respond to stress, anxiety, trauma, or uncertain life events, your body is ultimately reacting to a perception of danger. This ancient self-protective mechanism is activating your fight, flight, or freeze responses. While it’s a beautiful “programming” that has helped our species survive for millennia, the truth is that your personal response to perceptions of danger may be causing you to feel held back, stuck, or living out an old story that no longer represents your present — let alone, guiding you toward your envisioned future.
That’s why an ongoing thread of client sessions involves incorporating new awareness for how the body expresses nonverbal communication of tension, uncertainty, stress in everyday decisions and behaviors. Over time, our goal is to help you develop the capacity to find it easier to move into a regulated state of being.
What Inspired Transformational Somatics™?
Transformational Somatics™ is inspired by a wide variety of healing modalities, personal experiences, and professional expertise.
In particular, Transformational Somatics™ is especially thankful for Somatic Experiencing®, developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, who created for the world a truly wonderful gift to understand the naturalistic process of how survival energies can get stuck in the body. As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), I have learned how to use Somatic Experiencing® to help discharge stuck patterns so the body can be restored to balance.
Following the experience of trauma, the subtle chemistry of our brains and our instinctive responses to feelings of danger can trigger deep, impulsive, sudden reactions to situations that are symptomatic of a past event. In other words, our brain chemistry can “hijack” what might otherwise be an innocent or non-threatening event in the present moment, but our minds perceive it as a new traumatic trigger.
Transformational Somatics™ expands on my SE™ training and incorporates solution-focused approaches, creative problem solving, narrative therapy, current neurobiopsychosocial research, career development, holistic approaches, guided imagery, and a focus on executive and performance outcomes.
Through this unique combination of skills, Transformational Somatics™ empowers and supports clients in navigating their goals through a collaborative and client-centered approach. Whether for short-term and brief interventions or continuous and longer-term support, this approach can benefit your unique needs.
How is Transformational Somatics™ Different?
Forms of modern coaching and conventional “talk” therapy may neglect to incorporate awareness and observations of the physical body, such as nervous system responses to stress, anxiety, prior truama, major changes to career and relationship, and other such life transitions.
Many mental, emotional, and physical symptoms emerge through rapid and instinctive responses in our central nervous systems. In particular, expressions from the nervous system like body temperature, tone of voice changes and eye movement can be indicators of subtle, nonverbal expression for past physical or emotional trauma.
These subtle sensations usually occur so quickly that we miss them. This means that precious clues and hints are often lost in traditional talk settings.
In Transformational Somatics™, however, clients can expect to integrate deeper awareness for how their bodies react, respond and feel to given situations. By empowering the natural intelligence of the body and incorporating body-centered wisdom into the healing process, we embrace a more holistic approach to relationships with the self and others.
How Does it Work?
My goal as your practitioner and collaborator in transformational somatic work is to help you read the signals that your body is providing so that you can discover, practice, and integrate non-stressful responses.
In the course of routine explorations and conversations, we’ll attempt to understand the connection between your stress responses, the everyday interactions and events that trigger them, and coping skills to move forward and beyond them.
In Transformational Somatics™, every emotion and experience is respectfully allowed and explored, and yet, you will be gently guided into more efficiently regulated stress responses so that you may alleviate spikes of emotional reactions over time.
We will explore questions like, “How is this showing up in your body today? How is it being communicated through your nervous system?” My job as your practitioner and collaborator is to help guide your understanding of your present symptoms — and, how the symptoms you’re feeling are outdated coping patterns — so that your healing and self-growth can endure!
Is this right for me?
My approach integrates regulated activities and curiosity as orientations for our conversations. Emotional, behavioral, and somatic responses to trauma, loss, and stress can vary across each person’s lifespan and are different for every unique individual. Over time, I believe everybody can develop the capacity to find it easier and easier to move into a regulated state, even when encountering daily or event-based stressors.
I believe that Transformational Somatics™ may be the missing link in your journey of personal-growth. As an experienced mental health specialist, I’ve witnessed significant transformation thanks to Somatic Experiencing® work and understand the many subtle ways that the human body retains trauma and stress.
In the course of sessions with my clients, I often hear things like, “How did you know what I was feeling?” or “How did you sense that I just experienced a shift in how I felt?” The truth is that I have learned how to read energy, presence, and nonverbal communication for many years thanks to my history as an equestrian.
I spent decades working with large, powerful animals that can’t speak but constantly communicate how they’re feeling and how they’re responding to people around them. You have to regulate yourself when working with horses, which are highly sensitive beings, who constantly relay and mirror the energy of their environment. By being present, attempting to regulate the body, and learning how to read and communicate with horses, I’ve developed an ability to witness energy and presence on a highly attuned physical level.
By engaging with the life force of horses for so many years, I’ve developed this keen intuition and ability to see their ways of communicating through nonverbal responses. Now, I teach clients how to do that! I aim to help you develop a connection to yourself and others so that you can gradually witness your own presence, and nervous system responses — not just mentally and emotionally, but physically, too.
Take the next step.
I offer complimentary 30-minute
To reserve your no-obligation session and explore if working together feels like a good fit for us both, click here.
Thank you for being so invested in your health, wellness, and the authorship of your life’s design!
~ Trudi
PS: You can also read more about me and learn how I got into this work on my About Me page, or explore the different ways in which I work with clients on my Work With Me page. Thanks!