Experience Somatic Therapy in New York City
Learn to reconnect with the wisdom your body already holds — so you can feel lighter, clearer and more courageous.
I work with queer New Yorkers and New Yorkers of the global majority (BIPOC) who are ready to access the joy, lightness and relief they imagined their achievements would bring.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy invites you to explore, experience and celebrate your emotional life. Traditional talk therapy often asks folx to
“sit with” their emotions, like sitting beside a lake, observing
the surface. Somatic therapy invites you to get in the water,
at whatever pace feels right: learning to sense, experience and interpret the language your body uses to communicate with you.
Our bodies hold non-verbal maps – of who we are, of how others have (or haven't) met our needs and of how the world works.
These maps form beneath our conscious awareness, at the nervous system level, long before our thinking minds get involved. Somatic therapy helps you identify which of those maps need updating, so you can not only understand yourself more clearly
but actually feel clearer, lighter and more resilient.
Who is Somatic Therapy for?
You’ve learned to override your emotions. Though others might not see it, anxiety, fear, and uncertainty sit just under surface as a high performer, threatening to boil over at any moment. But the same skills that built your ascent are now getting in the way of enjoying the life you've built because you're stuck in a pattern of over-doing for others and under-doing for yourself.
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Talk therapy gave you insight and self-knowledge, but you couldn't figure out how to translate that knowledge into actually feeling better.
You experience anxiety, depression, or burnout in your body: numbness, heaviness, tightness, a racing heart, disrupted sleep, or irregular appetite.
You operate in two modes: hyperdrive and crashing out. You're exhausted by the absence of any middle ground.
Life is moving so fast you can barely keep up. You're craving a space that feels spacious, where you don’t have to rush, and you’re encouraged to slooooow down.
Uncertainty makes your skin crawl. You want to build your capacity to feel present and self-assured even when you don't have the answers.
You're ready to heal "Big T" and "little t" trauma at the nervous system level, so you can respond to life with choice and agency — rather than from old, reactive patterns.
What does it Help with?
Somatic therapy is especially effective in working through symptoms and challenges that feel complex, layered, and stuck in specific patterns, such as:
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Hypervigilance, racing or looping thoughts, a constant low-grade dread with no specific source.
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Low energy, low motivation, going through the motions, feeling present but somehow not there.
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Both "Big T" (abuse, neglect, assault) and "little t" (the cumulative moments where your needs weren't met).
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Difficulty knowing — let alone communicating — what you need; high distress at the thought of disappointing others; taking on more than is yours to carry.
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Feeling both attached to and oppressed by your own high standards; chronic resentment when others don't clear the same bar you consistently do.
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Exhaustion, hypervigilance and resentment from navigating white, cis-het spaces not built with you in mind.
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Numbing through substances, or a felt sense of disconnection from yourself or the world around you.
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Constantly questioning whether your emotions are "valid," struggling to sort out what's yours, what's your partner's, and what belongs to the relationship itself.
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Chronic fight-or-flight activation at work — even when nothing is technically wrong; your nervous system hasn't gotten the memo that you're safe.
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Feeling frozen, flooded or reactive in response to small interactions; difficulty staying calm and present with the people who know you best; the chronic exhaustion of making yourself small just to keep the peace.
What you can Expect from Somatic Therapy
As we begin to build trust, I'll guide you in slowing down and tuning into your inner world: how your emotions show up in your body, what it's like to let yourself fully experience them and what it means to be genuinely witnessed in what's happening inside you.
As we go deeper, we'll work together to decode what those emotions are communicating and how to respond without drowning in them or shutting them out.
Over time, you'll also encounter the unexpected. Our bodies hold stories that can contradict the ones our minds have always told — and reaching those deeper layers is where profound healing lives. Through sustained work, you'll develop a richer, more legible sense of who you are, what you need, and how your body communicates that to you.
About my Approach
Hi I’m Anna, a licensed clinical social worker and former professional dancer who has spent my life in deep relationship with the body. As a bisexual, Latiné woman, eldest daughter, and artist, I've learned — across many dimensions of my identity — to tap into my body's wisdom and prioritize it over the "shoulds and shouldn'ts" I'd internalized that kept me small. I experience both deep pride and deep humility in supporting my clients who want to do the same. I'll guide you in relearning your inner cues, making sense of old survival strategies and reconnecting to the part of you that already knows how to stay grounded, courageous and clear.
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Let’s face it - American society was founded on anti-Black racist beliefs that harm all people of color / the global majority. I believe that anti-Black racist beliefs perpetrate harm from micro- to macro-levels: from person to person, within our communities, within our workplaces and educational institutions, how they are baked into and enacted through legal policy, and even the beliefs we’ve internalized about ourselves.
I am committed to the life-long learning of anti-racist practice and unlearning of white supremacist implicit biases and beliefs. In the therapy room, this means I’m critically investigating how power, identity, and implicit biases may be showing up or impacting our work.
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Sexuality feels like a taboo subject to many, even in the therapy room. I view each person’s experience of their sexuality as uniquely their own, and an integral part of being human.
I approach talking about sex in an open, non-judgmental, and inclusive way, and believe that exploring sexuality can be a window into unspoken wounds, deep relational desires, and that fantasy offers your mind-body’s creative solutions to healing those wounds and fulfilling your needs.
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Through both training and my work with those who have experienced severe, big T trauma (sexual assault, childhood abuse and neglect, for example), I have learned that the impact of trauma can shape almost all parts of your life - beliefs about the world and yourself, to how you feel in your body, to even how you experience time.
I understand how to work with and improve post-traumatic symptoms, such as depersonalization, panic, or hypervigilance. I also understand how to approach your care in a way that honors your experiences with compassion, does not push you anywhere your system isn’t ready to go, and cultivates your sense of agency and efficacy.
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I see gender identity and expression as a spectrum that is highly individual to each person, and recognize that trans and non-binary people have always faced very real threats to their safety, rights and personhood that are alive and well today.
As a cis-gender provider, I believe that continually educating myself re: the trans experience is an ethical responsibility, I also believe that naming power dynamics in the therapy room is an important step to establishing psychological safety and trust.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Talk therapy operates on the premise that insight creates change — that understanding your thought patterns, behavioral patterns, and relational history will eventually lead to doing things differently. Many of my clients arrive having done exactly that work, and done it well. They have real self-knowledge. They just don't feel better.
In order for change to happen, our systems have to take in and process new information. The main difference between somatic therapy and talk therapy is prioritizing bottom up (body → mind) processing over top-down (mind → body) processing. In other words, instead of starting the stories and thoughts you have about life, we focus instead on what emotions those stories evoke and how they show up in your body.
Letting your physical and emotional experience lead the way, as opposed to your cognitive one, often allows us to get to the root of the issue much more quickly, which often comes with surprising associations that evade the mind (or that the mind defends against!). It also comes with both knowing more and feeling better.
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This varies a huge amount from person to person, and as a trauma-informed therapist, I never, ever push my clients to speak about topics they aren’t ready to discuss. In general, traumatic memories get stored in your body and psyche differently than regular ones: they’re like shards of glass, dormant and hidden until you accidentally step on one (“getting triggered”).
Healing from trauma means reprocessing those memories so the shards can be put back together: integrated into your body and mind, with the meaning of the experience rewritten. I think of it like Kintsugi, the Japanese art form in which broken pottery is repaired with gold, silver or platinum — highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them, transforming brokenness into wholeness, into something that carries both history and beauty. The goal isn't to erase what happened. It's to carry it differently.
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It's a common misconception that somatic therapy involves massage, physical touch or movement. It doesn't.
Sessions typically begin with you sharing whatever is on your mind. While you talk, I'm listening on multiple levels — not just to the content of what you're saying, but to your body language, your tone of voice, what you're leaving out, and my own physical and emotional response to you. I'm tracking for moments that evoke strong emotion, that hint at a desire to transform, or that offer an opening to experience something together rather than alone — which is itself a powerful antidote to trauma.
When my clinical intuition says it's right, I'll invite you to slow down, turn your attention inward, and notice what you're feeling — emotionally and physically. Early sessions are often focused on simply practicing this skill, which can feel a little murky at first. As you get better at tracking your internal experience moment to moment, we follow that thread together: processing emotions you've never been able to hold with someone else, undoing the aloneness that pain creates, and making new meaning of experiences — from the most painful to the most joyful, and everything in between.
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A consult call is a chance for you to explore just that!
Sign up for a complimentary, 15 minute phone call so we can discuss:
What’s going on in your life and what you’re hoping to change
I will share a bit about me and how I work
You can ask me any other questions you have
We’ll discuss rates, availability, and scheduling
Ready to Begin?
Book a free 15-minute consultation call –
no commitment, just a conversation.