Moving through the day on autopilot, rushing, or tightening without noticing. You may catch your jaw clenched, your breath high in your chest, your shoulders tightening, or your mind already racing before you’ve had a chance to catch it.
...or waking up already tired. You might find yourself more reactive with the people you love — getting pulled into fights you never meant to start, or feeling overwhelmed by things that didn’t used to feel so big.
...struggling to make decisions, holding everything together on the outside, or collapsing as soon as you’re alone. These patterns make sense. They’re often the body’s way of trying to keep up with a life that has asked a lot of you.
Your system has been adapting.
Tightening, shutting down, speeding up, people-pleasing, or over-functioning often began as intelligent strategies that helped you get through demanding seasons. Your system learned to stay alert, take care of others, or move quickly to avoid overwhelm.
When we slow down enough to understand the body’s logic, shame begins to loosen. What once felt random becomes clear.
And from clarity, choice becomes possible.
Your patterns make sense. They came from somewhere.
And they can shift.
You may find yourself pausing before snapping, staying steadier during tough moments, and actually hearing what you feel and need instead of getting swept up in the moment.
Your breath settles, your body softens, and there’s space to respond from the part of you that remembers who you are — not the part that had to adapt just to get through.
This is where choice returns. You can meet what’s happening with more clarity and less overwhelm, and your responses begin to reflect the person you’ve always been underneath the stress: steady, aligned, and grounded in what matters.
How We Work
Somatic coaching is a body-based approach that helps you shift the reactions, tension patterns, and emotional loops that keep showing up in your daily life. This includes things like snapping when you don’t mean to, shutting down during conflict, overthinking a simple decision, or feeling flooded by stress before you can catch your breath. Instead of trying to “think” your way out of these patterns, we include the body — the place where these reactions actually begin.
This work is not talk therapy. And it’s not about forcing yourself to relax.
It’s about helping your system feel safe enough to respond differently.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
one
Not “take a deep breath.” That often makes things tighter.
Your body is always listening to your breath. It uses the pace, depth, and ease of your breathing to decide whether you’re safe or whether it needs to brace, speed up, or protect you. When your breath is tight, shallow, or fast, your system goes into alert. When your breath steadies and drops lower, your system finally gets the message that it can settle.
Together, we gently retrain the breathing patterns that keep you stuck in reactivity. As your breath shifts, your emotional and physical reactions shift with it — not because you’re forcing calm, but because your body is receiving a different signal about what’s happening inside and around you.
two
I guide you to notice what’s happening inside in real time — the shoulders rising, the breath catching, the stomach tightening, the wave of emotion building.
But you’re not asked to “sit with it” alone. You learn how to stay present with yourself in a way that feels supportive. Instead of shutting down, pushing through, or shaming yourself, we practice meeting what you’re feeling with curiosity and compassion.
Over time, this lets you hold space for your emotions rather than being swept away by them. You’re able to meet what you feel with compassion instead of fear or shame, and you begin to hear the message or need behind the emotion — what it’s trying to signal or protect.
With that kind of awareness, you have more power to respond skillfully. You can choose what supports you, what boundary is needed, or what action feels true, instead of reacting on autopilot. This is where self-trust begins to repair itself.
three
This is where deeper change takes root. When your body gets to complete a stress cycle it had to pause long ago, it no longer needs to repeat the same reactions — the snapping, the bracing, the shutting down, the rushing, the overwhelm.
This is what it really means to “move through” emotion or stress:
your body finally releases what it has been carrying.
There are two simple ways we do this:
Through slow, intentional movements — like pushing, twisting, or shaking — your body completes the physical response it once had to hold. When this happens, the reactions you repeat most often begin to loosen from the inside out.
When your mind is spiraling or overstimulated, we use grounded practices such as guided visualizations, breath awareness, or anchoring your attention in sensation. This moves you out of mental loops and into somatic presence — the place where regulation can actually happen.
four
As your system feels safer and less caught in survival mode, you naturally have more room to think, feel, and choose. When you’re not fighting your own stress responses, clarity returns. You can finally hear yourself again — how you want to feel, how you want to show up, the kind of relationships and daily life you want to build.
From that steadier place, we explore:
• the way you want to feel in your body and in your life
• how you want to relate to your partner, kids, friends, and work
• the qualities you want to embody — steady, present, grounded, open
• the kind of life you want to create, not the one you’ve been pushed into
• goals that feel meaningful and possible, not pressured or performative
Once your system has enough capacity, we translate this vision into practical next steps. We build supportive practices that help you follow through — the everyday ways you keep choosing the person you want to become. These steps are simple, doable, and designed to keep you connected to yourself.
This is where the gap shortens between how you want to be and how you’re actually responding.
With more capacity, you reconnect with the part of you that knows what you want, trusts your desires, and feels ready to take action on a vision you once felt scared to claim.
You begin moving forward from Center — steady, aligned, and true to yourself.
The High Performer Who’s Overwhelmed at Home
Capable everywhere else, but reactive or shut down with the people you love.
The Fixer
You absorb stress instinctively and carry more than you name.
The Sensitive Achiever
Always “on,” anticipating and managing without an off switch.
The Numb-but-Functioning Parent
You’re here, but not fully here — doing everything, feeling very little.
The One Who’s Done the Work
You’ve done therapy, read the books, practiced the tools, but it hasn’t translated into the nervous system capacity to meet your feelings with steadiness.
The Spiritually Disconnected One
You long for a felt sense of connection — to yourself, to others, and to something larger than you — that doesn’t feel distant or out of reach.
These are grounded shifts that often emerge as your nervous system gains capacity and safety. No promises — simply what becomes possible when your system is no longer operating in constant protection mode.
• Breath settles lower and steadier
• Jaw, chest, and abdomen soften with less chronic bracing
• You stay in your body in moments that used to feel too intense
• Sleep often improves because your system can downshift
• Energy becomes more even, less spike-and-crash
• Become aware ofphysical tension and how to release it
• Overthinking quiets as your system stops signaling threat
• Attention feels clearer and less compressed
• Decisions come with more ease
• Self-doubt loosens as you reconnect with internal cues
• You hear your own voice beneath the noise
• A steadier sense of self comes forward
• Choices reflect what truly matters to you
• You feel oriented instead of lost or pulled in every direction
• A quiet inner guidance becomes accessible
• You feel connected to yourself in a way that’s real
• Fewer blow-ups with kids; more room before reacting
• Clearer communication with your partner
• Staying present instead of shutting down or spiraling
• Boundaries come from the body, not guilt
• Over-functioning begins to loosen
• Mornings feel less like bracing for impact
• You’re less reactive in transitions, traffic, or unexpected stress
• Evenings don’t end in collapse
• Less dependence on caffeine or numbing strategies like alcohol and screens
• Difficult days feel manageable instead of destabilizing
• Acting from your values instead of survival mode
• Feeling congruent — the inside matches the outside
• No longer abandoning yourself to keep the peace
• Seeing yourself as capable, not failing
• Feeling more like someone you recognize and trust
The Process
Stage 1
(Sessions 1–3)
Most people arrive feeling disconnected — from their body, their signals, their needs, or their sense of self. You may be moving fast, shutting down, over-functioning, or unsure what you feel. These are intelligent adaptations to stress, not failures.
In this stage, you begin reconnecting with sensation, breath, posture, pace, and internal cues. You learn the foundations of nervous system awareness, how your patterns developed, and why they make sense.
We also begin clarifying what matters to you. Through gentle exploration, a grounded declaration or intention emerges — not a performance, but an embodied sense of direction rooted in your values and the life you want to move toward.
You begin to:
understand your patterns with curiosity
reconnect with your body’s cues
build safety and trust with yourself
clarify what truly matters to you
Stage 2
(Sessions 4–7)
This is the heart of the work. You learn how to stay with emotions and sensations without shutting down, numbing, speeding up, or abandoning yourself. As your capacity grows, so does your sense of internal steadiness and trust.
Old patterns begin to loosen. You explore boundaries, needs, desires, and relational patterns with more clarity. You practice responding differently in real-life moments — at home, work, and in relationships.
Your declaration or intention becomes more embodied here, showing up in small choices, in how you speak, and how you navigate pressure.
You begin to:
stay present without overwhelm
access more options and choice in how you respond
soften old reactive patterns
feel your limits and honor them
show up how you wish you would
Stage 3
(Sessions 8–10)
Here, you begin acting from Center — a grounded, aligned place within you. You practice holding Center even under pressure and staying connected to what matters when life gets intense. You strengthen boundaries, communication, presence, and self-trust. You become more responsive to your emotions, needs, desires, and limits.
Instead of reacting from old survival habits, you begin acting in ways that serve what you care about now — what has had space to grow as your system has softened and opened.
When you are in this stage, you begin to:
navigate challenges from steadiness rather than reactivity
act from your values, needs, and deeper Knowing
hold boundaries and communicate clearly
stay connected to yourself under pressure
trust your choices and the direction you’re moving
live into your declaration with grounded, embodied action
return to Center more easily when life intensifies
This stage anchors your work so it holds outside of sessions. You leave with practices that help you stay aligned with the life you’re building.
Pricing
90 minute sessions
Embodied transformation takes time to unfold, so this work is offered within a 10-session commitment to support depth, continuity, and meaningful progress. Your first session is paid at the single-session rate and counts as Session 1 of 10. After that, you may continue paying individually for the remaining sessions or apply your first payment toward the 10-session package for a reduced rate.
You’ll have the option to choose the tier that works for you (learn more about pricing tiers here):
Earth — Rooted & Supported
For those with limited financial flexibility. This tier keeps the work accessible while supporting your growth and allowing you to be held by the greater whole.
River — Steady & Sustaining
For those who can consistently invest in their well-being. This tier reflects the true cost of the work and helps keep the system nourished and sustainable.
Sky — Expansive & Generative
An expansive contribution that helps make this work accessible to others who need additional support.
Single-session pricing is available at each visit while honoring the 10-session commitment.
If this work resonates, let’s have a 30-minute Connection Call, a space for us to understand what you’re seeking and what’s bringing you in right now. I’ll share how I work with body, breath, attention, and present-moment awareness to support resilience and skill-building, and we’ll clarify whether this approach is the right fit for your needs.
We’ll also discuss what working together could look like and outline any next steps if we decide to move forward. This is not a coaching session, and there’s no pressure to decide quickly.
...often holding things together in ways no one fully sees.
And you don’t have to keep moving through life feeling tense, overwhelmed, overstimulated, exhausted, or disconnected from yourself.
There is a steadier way to live — a way that doesn’t feel so tight, urgent, or overwhelming, and that lets you respond with more clarity and intention. And you don’t have to get there by yourself.
Give yourself permission to get the support you’ve been needing.
Trust the part of you that knows things can be different.
Choose a path that genuinely helps you live the way you want to live.
Testimonials
“I didn’t know what the hell somatic coaching was when I started—and honestly, my expectations were low. But it’s been a life changer. My life will never be the same. I came in with self-hatred, anxiety, depression, and fear of everything. Now I’m more present than I’ve ever been, I understand what my emotions are trying to tell me, and I see stress as a force for good rather than chaos.”
“Melissa’s somatic techniques were more organic, real, and concrete compared to the cerebral approaches I’d tried before. I feel much calmer and can move past stress more easily. During one session, I used somatic awareness to focus on good sensations in my palms—something that actually helped lower my blood pressure from around 150/90 to 110/68 at the doctor’s office.”
“Working with Melissa has been life-changing. From the very first session, her calm presence created a space where I felt safe exploring how my body holds tension. Through gentle movement and awareness, I learned how to release it. The results have been profound, including better sleep, greater emotional balance, and a deep sense of peace in my daily life.”
“I had a hard week when past trauma hit me like a bolt of lightning... This group helped me make quicker, better decisions. In the past I would’ve isolated and ended up locked up, but now I know there are people who want to support me.”
Disclaimer:
Services are educational and not a substitute for therapy or medical care.