Somatic Therapy & Nervous System Regulation in Burnaby, BC
Somatic therapy at Harbour Counselling & Wellness supports nervous system regulation and somatic healing in Burnaby, BC — in-person or online — helping you reconnect with your body's wisdom and build the capacity to move toward what you value through Generative Somatics.
Somatics helps us listen inward. Generative Somatics helps us move forward
Our bodies are constantly communicating with us.
Through sensations, emotions, impulses, tension, movement, and patterns of response, our bodies carry valuable information about what we have experiences and how we have learned to move through the world.
Well intended, to keep us safe and protected, we can become disconnected from our sense of embodied agency, power and safety. We may override our needs, push through discomfort, struggle to identify what we are feeling, or find ourselves responding in ways that feel automatic, conditioned or outside of our control.
Somatic therapy offers a way to begin reconnecting with the wisdom of the body.
Somatic Therapy: Understanding the Language of the Body
Somatic therapy invites us to slow down and develop awareness of what is happening within the body.
We explore sensations, emotions, and nervous system responses - learning to recognize patterns such as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. We begin to understand the protective strategies that developed for a reason and how they may continue to show up in our relationships, choices, and everyday lives. We may avoid, numb, lash out, withdraw or distract. We might blame and shame ourselves or others for how we show up. And we know that doesn’t get us very far, right?
Instead of asking: “Why am I like this?”
Somatics invites the questions: “What is my body communicating, and what is it trying to protect or defend?”
Through building this awareness, we create more space between an experience and our response. We learn to listen to the body, work with what arises, and develop greater capacity to stay connected with ourselves through difficult emotions, sensations, and experiences.
How Somatics and Generative Somatics Connect
Somatics helps us understand the patterns, sensations, and protective responses within the body.
Generative Somatics builds from this awareness by asking: Now that we understand what is here, what do we want to create?
Generative Somatics: Moving Towards Change and Possibility
Generative Somatics is a methodology rooted in the belief that our bodies are not only places where experiences are held - they are also places where transformation, possibility, and new ways of being can emerge.
Through Generative Somatics, we explore how to move beyond simply understanding our patterns and begin practicing new ways of showing up in relationship with ourselves, others and the world.
This work invites questions like:
What matters deeply to me?
How do I want to live, love and relate?
What kind of relationships, communities, and future am I wanting to create?
What would be possible if I could meet unchangeable conditions, feeling more embodied, present, alivened, hopeful and grounded?
Together, we can explore how embodied awareness can support change - not by forcing ourselves to become someone different, but by building the capacity to move toward what we value with more choice, connection, and alignment.
For many people, this work is especially meaningful when they have spent years adapting, surviving, or meeting expectations that left little room for their own needs, desires, or becoming.
Somatics helps us listen inward.
Generative Somatics helps us move forward.
Together, they create space for deeper awareness, meaningful change, and a more connected relationship with ourselves and the lives we want to build.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime.
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We bring the body into the therapeutic process. We use words alongside tapping into your senses to support building embodied awareness. Part of change is slowing down. Part of slowing down is to feel into ourselves in real time to understand when and how to escalate, shut down, react or withdraw.
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Generative Somatics is an embodied approach that builds on somatics. We take the information your body is providing to us and then move towards your goals, commitments, values, longings and dreams. Not only are we focusing on what you want to heal; we are bringing deliberate attention to who you wish to become through this avenue.
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To put it simply: we are not walking heads. We are bodies. Made of histories, stories, hopes and lost, abandoned or stolen dreams. You deserve to reclaim that. The body is a portal of so much wisdom that helps you understand more deeply, with greater clarity and compassion, how much choice you actually have. What we intellectually know does not always translate into embodied new action. We must gently and lovingly recondition the body to organize in a new way. We cannot think our way through this process.
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We will have conversation and include moments to slow down and notice what’s happening in your body. We may stay with this if you feel open to it; I may invite a practice to deepen observation and noticing. Or we may reengage in conversation. There is not one right way to explore somatics. We move at the pace of what’s safe, not what’s fast. Your consent is centred throughout the session. And any practice I offer can be reimagined to meet your comfort needs. That’s the beauty of this work: it’s creative, and it can evolve.
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Not at all. Somatic exploration can help you build more capacity for what feels nourishing, empowering, alive, and pleasurable. We are not only working with and through what has been difficult. We are helping you cultivate an embodied state of resilience and joy.
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This work could be supportive if you understand your patterns intellectually but feel stuck or caught in them. You may struggle to identify or name your needs, boundaries or feel disconnected from yourself. You may over- or underfunction in relationships when conflict or tension arises. Somatics is tremendously supportive in building new ways of showing up that feel more aligned and true to who you wish to be. You don’t have to have prior experience; you don’t need to know a lot about somatics. Sheer curiosity and openness to exploring is enough!