How To Find A Somatic Therapist Or Coach
Choosing a somatic coach, somatic therapist, or somatic bodyworker is no easy task given that many practitioners offer work online. How do you know the people you meet with for your consultation are a good match for you?
If you’re looking to work with someone in person your options will be more limited simply due to practical constraints, but even then you may have several very distinct people (each with their own very distinct modality) available to you. There are all sorts of factors to take into consideration, so I have outlined a handful of ones I believe to be very important when making your selection. Some of these may be obvious, but I would bet that others are easy to minimize or gloss over when selecting a practitioner. Although I only offer somatic coaching and bodywork, I really believe the same criteria applies to selecting a therapist too.
How do they connect with you?
When you first speak with someone, feel your body and pay attention to how their tone, cadence, and intonation resonates with you. What’s the general mood you detect from this person? In general they should sound warm, inviting, upbeat. If you are meeting with them online or in person, notice the quality of their gaze and body language. Are they open and settled? Confident without being rigid? Warm without being patronizing or cloying? Make sure this is a person you can feel connecting with you in a way that is inviting and professional. Ideally, you sense something about their presence that has you thinking, “I want to have some of what that person has.”
Do they offer a sliding scale?
As someone who understands all too well the financial challenges of paying out of pocket for coaching, therapy, and bodywork, I’m a huge proponent of sliding scales. As a practitioner, I work with people who have large discrepancies in their budgets, and I want my offer to be accessible to most everyone. If your practitioner charges above market value, it’s not necessarily a sign they are more skilled. It does however mean that they probably only work with certain types of people who have access to a certain level of support. Make sure you can afford them and also make sure they work with a variety of folks; you want a practitioner who sees clearly across the spectrum of human experience. Furthermore, your budget could change down the road, and you wouldn’t want to prematurely end work together simply because your financial situation changes.
What sort of somatic work do they offer?
Somatics is about exploring the intelligence of our entire body. This is why in my work with clients we practice walking from center, breathing in ways to calm the nervous system, sitting practices, standing practices, and bodywork. If the practitioner you are considering only works with clients through seated conversation, be curious if this is the right match for you. This is because when we stand, walk, or lie down, we reorganize ourselves somatically, and different parts of ourselves come to life. There is simply no way to fully help someone develop somatically without seeing how they organize themselves physiologically in all of these orientations to gravity and all of these orientations to the relational space. I’m not saying a practitioner can’t do meaningful somatic work with people exclusively seated while in conversation, but if that is their only entry into the life of the body, they are limiting the range through which they can support you.
What sort of practices do they assign?
Remember change happens through a commitment to a daily practice. We can learn a lot in an hour with an experienced practitioner, but learning is not changing. Change requires lots of repetition of practicing things that are new for you. If your practitioner isn’t assigning lots of homework and daily practices to support the changes you want to see for yourself, run! OK maybe don’t run, but ask them how they can support the changes you want to develop in yourself if you are not actively practicing new habits.
Have they walked the path?
It is completely appropriate and encouraged to ask a prospective practitioner what sort of experience they have working with clients, as well as how much somatic work they have done on themselves with their own coaches and therapists. I can say from personal experience that while it is certainly possible to guide someone through a challenge you have not yourself personally gone through, it is much easier if you have. Importantly, I’m not saying that the details or exact context or content has to be the same between you and your practitioner, but they should be able to articulate how they developed somatically to overcome their own version of your issue. Don’t let someone guide you through something if they haven’t walked the path ahead of you.
If you would like to have a chat about somatic bodywork or somatic coaching, send me a message. I’m available for both remote and in person sessions.