What is somatic therapy?

In short

• Somatic therapy works through the body, not just through talking. It rests on the idea that stress and trauma leave a physical trace that conversation alone does not always reach. It uses breath, movement, posture or close attention to bodily sensation alongside ordinary talk therapy.
• The research points the same way. In the first randomised trial of Somatic Experiencing for PTSD, 44.1% of participants no longer met the criteria for PTSD after 15 weekly sessions. A 2021 review of the whole field called the results promising.
• At Renewed Life Center, somatic work sits inside the same programme as CBT, schema therapy and DBT. Kerry Dominie-Williams runs Tension and Trauma Release Exercises on site. Dr Ruby Weber, who leads the psychological side of the programme, has a particular interest in how trauma sits underneath addiction.

Wondering whether body-based work could help you, or someone you love? Book a free, confidential call. Twenty to forty minutes, we reply the same day.

“What is somatic therapy?” is usually the second question people ask. The first is why months of talking about it changed so little. Or why the calm from a session evaporates the moment they are back in traffic, back with family, back reaching for a drink. Somatic therapy starts from a different premise: whatever happened lives in the body as well as the mind. Words alone do not always reach it.

If talking has helped you understand the problem but not feel any different, this page is for you. It covers what somatic therapy is, what the research shows and how it fits into getting free of alcohol or pills.

What is somatic therapy?

Somatic therapy is an umbrella term for psychotherapy that works through the body, not just through conversation. It uses breath, movement, posture, touch or close attention to physical sensation alongside talking. The premise is that stress, fear and trauma leave a physical residue that thinking and analysis do not fully clear.

Talk therapy asks what happened and what you make of it now. Somatic therapy adds a second question: what is happening in your chest, your shoulders, your stomach, right now, while you talk about it. A trained therapist tracks small physical signals: a held breath, a tightening jaw, a leg that will not stop moving. They work with these directly, rather than only with the story attached to them.

The two are not rivals. Most somatic work happens inside an ordinary course of psychotherapy, with a therapist who also talks, asks questions and builds a relationship over time. The body work is an additional channel, not a replacement for one.

What is Somatic Experiencing, and where does it come from?

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is the best known somatic method, developed by Peter Levine and built specifically around post-traumatic stress. It treats trauma as an unfinished physical response: the body braced to fight or flee but never able to complete the movement. The work lets that response finish safely, sometimes years later.

Levine’s idea grew partly out of watching how animals in the wild shake off a threat and carry on. People, by contrast, tend to freeze the response in place and hold it for decades. SE sessions track that stored activation in small, careful doses. That way, the nervous system can discharge it without the person being overwhelmed by the original memory.

Somatic Experiencing is one modality under the somatic umbrella, not the whole field. Others include sensorimotor psychotherapy and body-oriented work drawing on yoga and breathwork. Tension and Trauma Release Exercises, covered further down this page, is a separate technique again. It is actually practised at Renewed Life Center.

What happens in a somatic therapy session?

A session usually opens with a check-in on what is present in the body right now, not a review of the week. The therapist then guides slow attention toward sensation, using breath, gentle movement or brief stillness. They pause often to ask what is noticed, and stop well before anything feels too much.

None of this requires retelling a traumatic event in detail. You do not have to relive it in words. The nervous system can work through what happened without a detailed retelling. That is why people who find talk therapy too heady, or too raw, often find this easier.

What does the research say about somatic therapy?

The research is recent, and it points the same way. The strongest single study, a randomised trial of Somatic Experiencing for PTSD, found large improvements in symptoms and in depression that held at follow-up. A 2021 review of the whole field called the results promising. Body-based work is used alongside talking therapy, not instead of it.

The trial appeared in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 2017. In it, 63 adults who met full criteria for PTSD were split between 15 weekly one-hour sessions of Somatic Experiencing (33 people) and a waiting list (30 people). The treated group improved in both PTSD severity and depression. 44.1% no longer met the criteria for PTSD after treatment, and the gains held up at follow-up.

A 2021 scoping review in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology gathered everything published on the method and analysed 16 of 83 identified studies in detail. Its authors describe the results on effectiveness as “promising”.

Movement-based work shows the same direction. A review of eight randomised trials of yoga for substance use found that seven showed a significant benefit for anxiety, pain or use itself. Its authors described yoga as “strong evidence” as a complementary treatment. Taken together, this is a body-based approach that earns its place in the room alongside CBT and the other established therapies.

Why does the body hold onto stress, and why did a drink or a pill switch it off?

The body reacts to danger first and processes it later: heart rate rises, muscles tense, breath goes shallow. If the danger passes before that activation completes, some of it stays. Alcohol, benzodiazepines and opioids are all, among other things, extremely effective at switching that activation off. That is exactly why so many people reach for them.

This is not a willpower story. The autonomic nervous system runs largely outside conscious control. A body that has learned to brace does not simply decide to relax because the danger is over. For years, sometimes decades, that bracing shows up as a tight chest, a jaw that will not unclench, sleep that never goes deep, a startle at ordinary noise.

A drink slows exactly that system down. A benzodiazepine does the same, faster and harder. For a lot of people, the first drink or the first pill was not really about getting high. It was the fastest way anyone had found to turn the volume down on a body that would not stop bracing. That relief is real. It is part of why stopping is so much harder than deciding to. The substance was doing a job. Somatic work is one of the few approaches aimed directly at the system that job was covering.

Working with that bracing directly, rather than only talking about it, is what our TRE practitioner does day to day. Kerry Dominie-Williams runs Tension and Trauma Release Exercises at Renewed Life Center. She works with the body’s own tremor mechanism to help release tension that has been held for years.

If tension in the body has always been part of your story, talk to us, free and confidential. We reply the same day.

What is TRE, and how is it different from Somatic Experiencing?

TRE, short for Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises, is a set of simple physical exercises designed to trigger the body’s natural tremor response. That is the same shaking mechanism seen in animals after a threat. The aim is to discharge stored tension. It is a specific technique, not a form of talk-based psychotherapy. It works differently from Somatic Experiencing, though both start from the same idea of stored physical activation.

Somatic Experiencing is delivered one to one by a trained psychotherapist over a course of sessions. TRE, by contrast, is a set of exercises, usually taught individually or in a small group. A person can learn it and eventually use it alone. Research on TRE is younger than on Somatic Experiencing: a scoping review from the University of Pretoria has already gathered 18 studies on TRE. People value it because it is simple and can be practised alone once learned. It gives the body a direct way to let go of tension that talking does not reach.

TRE is one part of a wider programme here, used alongside therapies with a longer track record, not offered on its own as a treatment for addiction.

How are trauma and addiction connected?

Childhood adversity and later substance use track together closely, and the connection strengthens with each additional adversity. The foundational CDC-Kaiser ACE Study followed more than 17,000 adults and found a graded, dose-response relationship. The more adverse childhood experiences someone had, the higher their risk of a wide range of negative outcomes in adulthood, addiction among them.

The CDC’s own estimate of what that means in practice is stark: preventing adverse childhood experiences in the first place could cut prescription pain medication misuse by as much as 84%. Looking at the overlap the other way round, 35% of US adults with another mental disorder also have a substance use disorder, according to NIDA.

That does not mean trauma causes addiction in a simple, direct line. It means the two show up together often enough that treating the substance on its own is not enough. If nobody looks at what it has been managing, the more likely cause of relapse stays untouched. If working through what sits underneath ever brings on thoughts of not wanting to be here, that is worth taking seriously right away. The Suicide Crisis Helpline is 0800 567 567, day or night.

Assessing where trauma sits under a substance problem is not something to work out alone, or from a form. At Renewed Life Center, Dr Ruby Weber leads the psychological side of the programme. She has more than two decades in the addictions field, with South African and international clients. She also has a particular interest in how trauma intersects with chemical and behavioural addiction.

If trauma and substance use have always felt tangled together for you, book a free assessment. Twenty to forty minutes, no obligation.

Where can you get somatic therapy in Cape Town?

At Renewed Life Center in Lakeside, somatic techniques, TRE and yoga are part of residential addiction treatment, with a TRE practitioner on site. Somatic work is easiest somewhere the nervous system is not already on alert. Renewed Life Center is in Lakeside, in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs, with a mountain ridge directly behind the property and staff on site 24 hours a day. That matters for work that asks people to notice their own bodily sensations without bracing for the next interruption.

The day has a shape built around that quiet: mornings start at 06:30, the house settles by 22:30, and the group programme runs Monday to Friday. There is room either side for the slower, physical work: yoga, TRE, sound bath sessions. A nervous system that has been on alert for years needs an environment that does not ask something of it too. Being away from a home routine built around using gives people that, for the length of a stay.

International clients travel here specifically for that distance, and airport transfers at Cape Town International are included both ways.

How is somatic work built into addiction treatment at Renewed Life Center?

Somatic work here runs inside the same treatment plan as talking therapy, not off to one side of it. Somatic techniques, TRE and yoga sit in the weekly schedule alongside CBT, schema therapy and DBT, with a sound bath and trauma-informed care threaded through the wider programme. The body-based and the psychological work reinforce each other this way, rather than running on separate tracks.

In a typical week that means individual psychotherapy, group therapy most days, and body-based sessions worked in around them rather than bolted on at the end. Trauma-informed care runs through the whole programme rather than sitting in one slot. Where trauma is a central part of the picture, EMDR is available alongside the somatic work.

The aim is not to choose between talking about what happened and working with how the body carries it. Both run at once, on the same plan, with the same team. Nobody has to decide which approach is the real treatment and which is extra.

Why do people choose Renewed Life Center for trauma-informed, body-based care?

Because the body work is not separated from the clinical team treating the addiction underneath it. Kerry Dominie-Williams runs TRE on site as part of the weekly programme, and Dr Ruby Weber leads the psychological side of the work with a specific interest in trauma. A psychiatrist selects medication where it is needed, all inside one house rather than a referral chain.

Body-based work sits inside the clinical plan, not beside it. Somatic techniques, TRE, yoga and a sound bath are part of the same weekly schedule as CBT, schema therapy, DBT and trauma-informed care. The same team that manages the rest of treatment runs all of it.

Named people, not a rotating roster. Kerry Dominie-Williams leads TRE, and Dr Ruby Weber leads the psychological work. A resident GP and nurses cover the medical side around the clock.

One programme rather than a chain of handovers. Medical detox where it is needed, primary treatment, the later phases and sober living all run inside the same programme. Nobody explains their history to a new provider partway through.

Payment is direct, so the clinical picture, not a scheme’s day limit, decides how long someone stays. The house is in Lakeside, with the mountain behind it and Muizenberg beach about two kilometres away. Airport transfers are included both ways for anyone flying in.

How do you start?

Start with a free conversation of twenty to forty minutes, by WhatsApp, video or phone. A clinical assessment of 45 to 90 minutes follows within three days. Admission can be immediate, typically within three days of first contact.

Write to us about what has been going on in the body, or book a free, confidential call straight away.

Questions people ask

This article is general information, not medical advice.

Sources

1. Brom et al., Somatic Experiencing for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Outcome Study, Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2017
2. Kuhfuss et al., Somatic Experiencing: effectiveness and key factors of a body-oriented trauma therapy, European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2021
3. Yoga as an Effective Treatment Modality for Substance Use Disorder, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 2021
4. Scoping review of Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), University of Pretoria repository
5. CDC, About the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study
6. CDC, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
7. NIDA, Co-occurring Disorders and Health Conditions