Where science meets soul
Have you ever noticed how your shoulders tighten before a difficult conversation, or your heart races when you receive a challenging email, or the tightening in your throat when you feel angry?
Our bodies are constantly responding to the world around us, sending us signals through sensations and feelings.
Somatic coaching begins here, with the understanding that the body isn’t just a vessel that carries us through the day, but a source of wisdom, memory, and intelligence. And the science now backs this up.
The body and brain connection
For decades, personal development focused mainly on the mind - on mindset, beliefs and behaviour. While these are powerful, they tell only part of the story. Neuroscience now shows that our thoughts and emotions are deeply influenced by what’s happening in our nervous system and body.
When we experience stress, the body activates a survival response which we’ve likely all experienced at some point - tightening muscles, quickening breath, increasing heart rate - it’s our fight/flight response kicking in. These signals shape how we think, communicate, and show up. If we stay in this state too long, however, it can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, or burnout.
Somatic coaching helps people recognise these body-based patterns and gently retrain the system to respond with more balance and resilience.
Polyvagal Theory: Safety as the foundation
One of the most influential frameworks behind somatic coaching and my training is Polyvagal Theory, developed by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges. This theory explains how our nervous system constantly scans our environment for cues of safety or threat - a process known as neuroception.
When we feel safe, our parasympathetic system activates. We can think clearly, connect easily, and communicate with empathy.
But, when our body senses danger (even if subtle or imagined - it could just be a prickly unexpected email from a work colleague!), we move into fight, flight, or freeze responses, often without realising it.
Somatic coaching helps clients build awareness of these states and learn practical tools to return to regulation, so they can lead, relate, and live from a place of grounded presence.
Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing®: Completing the stress cycle
Psychologist Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing®, discovered something profound while studying animals in the wild. When faced with threat, animals instinctively shake, tremor, or discharge energy after the danger has passed. Completing the stress cycle and returning their nervous system to balance.
This short video shows this process in action:
Unlike this impala, us humans often override these natural impulses. We’ve been conditioned to “hold it together,” to appear calm, to stay productive, to smile and say “I’m fine”, even when our bodies are signalling distress. We will avoid, run from, suppress, dismiss, distract ourselves from feeling any uncomfortable sensation.
As a result, the energy from those incomplete stress responses can remain stored in the body, showing up as chronic tension, fatigue, anxiety, or emotional numbness.
Somatic coaching draws on Levine’s work to help clients gently reconnect with their body’s natural ability to release and reset. Through guided awareness, movement, and nervous system regulation techniques, we create space for the body to complete what it once had to suppress — leading to more vitality, clarity, and calm.
Science meets transformation
Somatic coaching isn’t about talking your way through change; it’s about feeling your way into it. By including the body in the coaching process, we access a fuller picture of who you are and how you respond to life.
Research in neuroscience, biology, and trauma studies shows that when we work with the body rather than against it, we can create change that lasts, not just mindset shifts, but deep, embodied transformation. And as I’ve come to learn, that’s the real magic!
Clients often report feeling calmer, clearer, and more connected, not because life suddenly became easier, but because their nervous system did.
“It’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling”
Final thought…
The science is clear: our bodies aren’t barriers to change; they’re the gateway to it. Somatic coaching brings together evidence-based insights and embodied wisdom to help you restore regulation, expand emotional capacity, and reconnect with your natural resilience, so you can thrive in work, relationships, and life.