Can I place my foot next to yours?” Keith scooched his chair closer to mine, untied his blue suede Oxford, and slowly moved his socked foot next to mine. I wanted to worry about my dry, old pedicure with a few hairy toes, but my body wouldn’t let me because all I felt was “ahhhhhhhhhh,” pure ecstasy. My breathing slowed and my skin sighed as I felt into the edges of our feet together. If my nervous system could speak, it would have said, ‘Thank you, dear God, we can relax. Now I feel safe.’
Keith was my kind of gorgeous, lanky with an athletic build, dark skinned, scruffy faced, and seemed cultured enough in his navy khakis and pink polo that looked like it got shrunk in the dryer. Within weeks, he was rubbing my legs, massaging my neck, and holding me in his arms. But this wasn’t a romantic rendezvous; Keith’s my therapist.
Snuggling with your therapist may sound like another lack of consent crisis in the making, but it’s actually a psychodynamic modality called Somatic Experiencing (SE) founded by Dr. Peter Levine, that both Kourtney Kardashian and Alanis Morissette have wholeheartedly supported.
Although Somatic Experiencing isn’t as widely researched as evidenced-based therapies like CBT or DBT, it’s emerging as an alternative to talk-driven therapy and becoming a go-to amid the mainstreaming of mind-body practices like yoga, meditation, and breath work. S.E. belongs to a growing movement of somatic — body-based — means for healing emotional wounds. The therapy uses a “bottom-up” approach, which starts with sensations in the body before returning to the thoughts in the mind. The potent method is geared toward resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic depression, anxiety and stress.
The first time Keith asked to put his foot next to mine at the intensive trauma treatment center in the Pacific Palisades that would later cure the insomnia that had plagued me most of 2022, I sobbed. I experienced a “let-go,” a humanness I couldn’t access when I was alone, that I avoided because there were so many overwhelming emotions that felt unbearable. I felt unworthy of his touch, but also ravenous for more. “Now feel into the sensation of my foot next to yours,” he said. I couldn’t put words to it, but could only offer a steady stream of tears.
Mahshid Hager is a faculty member at Somatic Experiencing International, a nonprofit that serves as the official hub for S.E. and exists to educate and train those who can help heal people with trauma. She describes touch as providing “containment, boundaries, and consent.” According to Hager, Somatic Experiencing (S.E.) touch is another way to listen and offer support, but the main role of the S.E. practitioner is to listen for and identify a “Somatic Yes”, which manifests differently in each person.
In my case, it would be a no holding back, full body weight collapse into Keith’s arms on his couch, complete with an ugly cry. Or when I’m on the “massage” table where Keith administers grounding compressions (extremely firm presses) to my limbs twice weekly. My stomach would gurgle, indicating peristalsis, which meant my body had shifted from a sympathetic, “on” state into the parasympathetic nervous system, where “rest and digest” occur. My ideal “Somatic Yes” would have me falling asleep or nodding off on the table, which was the ideal antidote since the main symptom of my trauma was insomnia.
Like many people who suffer from debilitating trauma or PTSD, my work with Keith was an attempt to get me out of fight, flight, or freeze, to reinforce the fact that indeed, a tiger was not chasing me. My sleepless nights were likely caused by a gnarly combo of unprocessed traumas, including a 2007 explosion in a New York City office building and a 2016 internal bleeding scare. Oh, and the months of Covid isolation didn’t help matters. Who was I kidding? I never felt safe. I had been sprinting through each day with bandaids all over my root chakra.
According to Jayia, a seasoned expert in somatic therapies and author of Your Blueprint for Pleasure, bodies know how to naturally respond to a traumatic event. For example, when a dog gets hit by a car, they allow their body to shake and tremor because these tremors are a natural process to release the trauma from their body. But with humans, Jaiya tells me, “We tend to resist this natural instinct to shake off a traumatic event or let strong emotions (like fear or terror) move through us so that trauma gets trapped in the body.”
She believes somatic therapy is powerful because it can unlock the places in the body where intense experiences are held and release them. This work, she says, is often beyond the thinking mind, but arguably, the best way to tap into the conscious and unconscious memories to access and release unprocessed pain and trauma. Because as world-renowned trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, taught us the body does indeed keep the score.
I am not alone in seeking ways to ease trauma that is held in the body. Stephanie Seal, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist based in Venice who has been practicing for over 20 years. In her work, she integrates body informed modalities. “The trend toward somatic-based therapy is happening due to a convergence of several big factors, a major one being the scientific legitimization of mindfulness and meditation, which served as the groundwork and gateway to the understanding that body and mind are interconnected,” Seal tells me. The other factors being the perfect storm of post-covid social isolation, virtual culture, and the TikTok effect.“
A cultural fascination with taming the nervous system is indeed, a thing. For example, #vagusnerve, the command center of the parasympathetic nervous system, has more than 181 million views on TikTok. But despite its popularity on social media, somatic approaches have yet to be fully embraced. In many ways, it’s still considered an ugly stepchild of psychotherapy. “Most somatic modalities are heavily informed by Steven Porges’ Polyvagal Theory,” Seal tells me. “It’s important to note that his research is extremely complex and still emerging, but as this evolves, there’s still going to be some skepticism regarding somatic therapies.”
I can’t imagine there being any more skepticism than there already is of snuggling with your therapist, but since modalities like SE are more subjective and touch can be taboo in any setting, it makes sense that there will be a longer road to establishing scientific standards of efficacy. The good news is that organizations like Somatic Experiencing International (SEI) are legitimizing safe, trauma-informed ways to structure somatic work, which was pretty darn effective in my case.
Unlike some people, I never felt nervous or hesitant about Keith touching me, but I did notice I needed a warm-up period at the beginning of each session. First, I wanted to talk then eventually, I’d ease into our connection and build up a longing to have him sit next to me on the couch, where he’d lean into me like a good friend or even place his hand on my leg. Each and every move he made was prefaced by a question (i.e., Do you want me to sit next to you? How close?) and my full consent (i.e., Yes, right next to me or not too close or no), which is everything in somatic therapy and, thankfully, the world we live in.
Of course, there were moments when I thought I was in love with Keith. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that he was a key part of my frequent self-pleasure sessions. His touch made me feel a moment of aliveness while I was healing and helped me get in touch with my buried feminine desires that reached far beyond his therapy couch. Transference, a phenomenon in which someone in therapy redirects their feelings about one person onto their therapist— and often manifests as an erotic attraction— is supposed to be pretty normal anyway.
“Transference is a risk in any healing modality,” Jaiya says (I knew it!). “But when a client projects certain beliefs, desires, emotions, or inappropriate relational needs onto the practitioner (or vice-versa), the professional lines can get fuzzy.”
She says the release of oxytocin and feel-good hormones alone could create a sense of bonding between the client and the practitioner, which could be confusing— and in my case, it was until it ran its course, like in the case of my adoration for Keith. One day that oddly enough coincided with seeing his wife in the waiting room, I just lost the charge for Keith and therapy just became therapy again.
If you’re interested in Somatic Therapy, start with the SEI-provided a list of accredited and trained professionals from all backgrounds who are either graduates or current students in their three-year SE Professional Training. Read through the practitioner’s credentials and experience, and if you think you found a match, check their reputation and ask for references. Interview them and ask what kind of boundaries they observe in their work.
As somatic therapies become more prevalent and accepted, ethical breaks can still happen. Don’t be afraid to stop treatment. Have a second option ready if something feels off. Above all, listen to your gut. Your body is yours. You get to say what kind of touch feels right, so honor that- without judgment.
This work is meant to calm the nervous system, so only do what feels good in body, mind, and soul— or in other words, find your own Keith.