Meet Anna Reyes, LCSW
– Somatic Therapist NYC

Although I didn't know it at the time, my path to becoming a somatic therapist began with a career in dance. After receiving my BFA in Dance Performance at The Boston Conservatory, 
I performed, choreographed, taught dance, and worked as a freelance personal trainer throughout Boston, NYC, and Austin. Throughout my artistic career, I grappled with how to continually hone my technique and develop my voice from a compassionate, curious place inside of me — as opposed to the rigid, perfectionistic, sometimes inhumane standards the dance world can hold.

After graduate school, I worked in hospital systems in New York City: first in the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program at New York Presbytarian/Weill Cornell, then as a primary care social worker at Mount Sinai's Adolescent Health Center, providing ongoing therapy to low-income, Black and brown, and queer-identifying young New Yorkers. The emergency room revealed itself quickly as a poor fit — I wanted to work slowly, equitably, intentionally and instead found myself as a catch-all for a broken mental health and housing system. The primary care role felt far more aligned, and it deepened my clinical voice in ways I'm still drawing from.

But even there, I didn't find the ease I'd imagined. I burned out juggling 90-minute suicide risk assessments alongside slow, somatic sessions — my body calcifying with stress while 
I tried to give clients the kind of unhurried, attuned care that actually heals. And then, as the second Trump administration commenced, the care we provided came under direct threat. We gathered in worried all-staff meetings, grappling with how to continue providing gender-affirming care to trans youth and comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Systems that once felt immovable revealed themselves as frighteningly flimsy.

Private practice is both my answer to that disillusionment and my commitment to doing this work differently. I provide deeper, higher-quality care when I follow my body's rhythms, work with who I'm called to work with, and structure my time in ways that sustain me. The artist in me — whose appetite for honing technique is insatiable, but trusts that technique only matters in service of attunement, compassion and play — needs that freedom to do this well.

I believe that as a therapist and artist, my work is to courageously seek and express truth alongside my clients — truth that is dangerous to oppressive systems, and life-affirming for the people I serve.