Holistic Counseling · Jackie Kono, LMHC

Somatic Experiencing

Trauma lives in the nervous system, not just in memory. Somatic Experiencing works at the level where it actually lives.

Rather than recounting traumatic narratives, we work through body sensations and impulses — addressing the incomplete survival responses that have become stuck. You move at your own pace. You maintain control throughout.

What Is Somatic Experiencing?

Somatic Experiencing® is a body-based approach to trauma healing and nervous system restoration developed by Peter Levine. It is grounded in the understanding that trauma is not only held in our memories or thoughts, but within the nervous system and physiology of the body itself.

When we experience overwhelm, shock, chronic stress, or threat, the body instinctively mobilizes survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. Sometimes these responses are unable to fully complete, leaving the nervous system carrying unresolved survival energy long after the event has passed. This can show up as anxiety, hypervigilance, chronic tension, emotional overwhelm, numbness, shutdown, difficulty feeling present, or a lingering sense that something inside never fully settled.

Somatic Experiencing gently works with the body's sensations, impulses, emotions, and rhythms to support the nervous system in slowly renegotiating and releasing what has been held. Rather than forcing catharsis or reliving trauma, the work happens gradually and with deep attunement to your system's pace and capacity. Through this process, the nervous system begins to develop more flexibility, resilience, and the ability to move out of survival patterns and back into regulation and connection.

This work is not primarily about retelling the story of what happened. It is about helping the body complete what it could not complete at the time and restoring the system's innate capacity to regulate, orient, settle, and feel safe again.

Over time, Somatic Experiencing can support:

Greater nervous system regulation
Increased capacity to feel emotions without overwhelm
Relief from chronic stress and trauma symptoms
A deeper connection to the body and intuition
Improved boundaries and relational capacity
More presence, vitality, and ease

Sessions are guided with care, collaboration, and respect for your unique process. Jackie works slowly and intuitively, creating a grounded and supportive space where your system can unfold organically and integrate at the level it is ready for.

How Jackie Uses Somatic Experiencing

Jackie works with Somatic Experiencing® as part of an integrative and intuitive approach to healing. Rather than following a rigid protocol, the work is woven organically into the session alongside Attachment-Focused EMDR, psychodynamic exploration, inner child work, EFT/tapping, and nervous system support — depending on what is most present and needed in the moment.

A central lens Jackie brings to the work is nervous system tracking. As the session unfolds, she is listening not only to the story being told, but to the body underneath it — noticing what is activating, what is overfiring, what is collapsing, and what deeper experience may be getting overridden beneath the surface pattern.

"Usually what happens is something overfires — and there's something underneath it that's being overridden. We stop the thing that's overfiring and then access what's underneath. Usually that's a core wound. And then there's a life force stuck there. We want to free that life force." — Jackie Kono

Jackie often uses the analogy of scar tissue when speaking about survival patterns. When the body experiences a physical injury, it creates scar tissue as a form of protection and adaptation. In the same way, the nervous system develops protective strategies — people-pleasing, hyper-independence, over-accessing anger, shutting down, caretaking, anxiety, numbness — because at one point they helped the person survive, belong, or stay safe.

Somatic work is not about fighting these patterns or pathologizing them. It is about understanding when and why they formed, honoring the intelligence behind them, and helping the nervous system develop enough safety and flexibility for those strategies to evolve.

As survival energy begins to release and the underlying wounds are processed, many people experience more access to vitality, clarity, connection, embodiment, and the parts of themselves that had been buried underneath protection and adaptation.

Who Is This For?

Somatic Experiencing is especially useful for people who have been in other forms of therapy and felt that something still wasn't fully moving — when the insight is there, but the body hasn't yet caught up.

It is for people whose trauma shows up through physical symptoms: chronic tension, patterns of bracing, disconnection, collapse, or a body that moves into overdrive in moments that don't seem to require it.

It is also supportive for people in spiritual work — awakening processes, dark-night experiences, embodiment practices — where nervous system patterns may be getting in the way of the expansion being asked of them.

If your system is stuck in high activation or collapse, somatic work helps bring what has gone offline back online. The goal is not to fix what is wrong with you. It is to understand what your system has been doing to protect you — and begin to work with it in a new way.

What to Expect

A somatic session begins with presence. Jackie tracks what your body is doing — not just what you are saying about what happened, but how your nervous system is organizing around it right now. What is alive? What is braced? What is trying to complete?

The work is slow, precise, and deeply attuned. Rather than staying only in the narrative, we work with sensation, impulse, emotion, and the incomplete responses the body has been holding beneath the surface.

Sessions often feel different from traditional talk therapy: more internal, more body-focused, and more connected to the deeper intelligence of the nervous system. Many people describe finally feeling in contact with parts of themselves they have been disconnected from for a long time.

Most people notice physiological shifts within the first few sessions. The body knows when it no longer has to hold everything alone.

Somatic work is not about fighting the patterns that formed to keep you safe. It is about understanding when they formed, why they were needed, and helping them evolve as your system no longer has to survive in the same way.

The goal is not to force change, but to create enough safety for the body to begin releasing what it has been holding — and allow more life force, connection, and presence to come back online.

Part of a Larger Whole

Somatic Experiencing is one thread in Jackie's integrative approach. In a session, it may be used alongside EMDR, EFT, or psychodynamic work — whatever is most alive and most needed in the moment. The modality serves the person, not the other way around.

Work with Jackie