Somatic Therapy

Somatic Psycotherapy with Stephen Higgins of Dragon Rises Center for Wellness

Feel stuck in patterns that you can recognize cognitively but can’t seem to break out of? Having a hard time figuring out how you feel and what you want? Need a supportive healing container to hold you through tough times and healing from past traumas?

By slowing down and mindfully studying your in-the-moment experience, you will uncover the underlying beliefs and body sensations that drive you. Ultimately, you’ll get to know - and be - your best self, whether in school, at work, or in your relationships with others.

Somatic Therapy is therapy for your whole self. Through my training in methods like Hakomi Therapy, Primary Attachment Psychotherapy, and parts work (akin to “Internal Family Systems” or IFS Therapy), I’ll help you attune to what your body and mind are telling you. We’ll help you move past just understanding your patterns and behaviors to actually thinking, feeling, and engaging with life in new and different ways .

Book A Free 30-minute Discovery Call Today!

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Counseling, Hakomi Therapy

The Hakomi Principles: Non-Violence

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Counseling, Hakomi Therapy

According to Ron Kurtz, the progenitor of Hakomi therapy, “To work nonviolently, we must drop notions about making clients change and, along with that, any tendency to take credit for their successes… that doesn’t mean we have to be passive; nonviolence is not inaction. We can work without using force or the ideas and methods of a paradigm of force.”

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Counseling, Hakomi Therapy

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy

The Hakomi Principles: Mindfulness

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy

Mindfulness is the fourth of the core Hakomi principles. In this context, the word “mindfulness” simply means the ability to have an experience and notice it at the same time. As Ron Kurtz, the progenitor of Hakomi therapy said it in his book Body-centered Psychotherapy (1990), “In psychotherapy, nothing is more useful than mindfulness”.

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy

The Hakomi Principles: Mind-Body Holism

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy

“It is common in Western thinking to separate the mind and body. This separation, proposed by René Descartes, has not stood up well in recent centuries in philosophy, and has been thoroughly disproven by research in neuropsychiatry and psychoneuroimmunology.”

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy

The Hakomi Principles: Organicity

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy

Organicity is the belief that we are organic; that each of our parts is interconnected and that we are ultimately seeking greater wholeness and healing.

Somatic Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Hakomi Therapy