Some things never make it into words. You can explain what happened perfectly well — calmly, in order, with dates — and still find your chest tightening as you do it. You understand the thing. Your body has not been told it is over.
Somatic counselling starts from that gap. Instead of asking you to think your way out of something your nervous system is still living in, we work with what is happening in your body while you sit there: the held breath, the braced shoulders, the sudden urge to change the subject. These are not symptoms to be argued away. They are the most honest account you have of what you are carrying.
What the body keeps
Bodies are practical. When something is too much — a shock, a long fear, years of managing on your own — the body organises itself to survive it, and then it keeps that shape long after the reason has passed. People describe it in ordinary language: a knot that never unties, a jaw that aches by lunchtime, sleep that never quite arrives, being permanently ready for bad news.
You can spend years talking about why, and understand yourself very well, and still live in that braced body. Understanding is not the same as settling.
What we actually do
Less than people expect, and slower. We might pause on a sentence you rushed and notice what happened in your breathing as you said it. We might spend a few minutes simply finding out what steady feels like, so you have something to return to. You stay dressed, seated and entirely in charge — this is attention paid to the body, not treatment done to it.
The pace is the point. Nothing useful happens by pushing someone into more than their system can hold, and I have no interest in a dramatic session that leaves you shaky on your own doorstep. We work in small pieces, with time at the end to come back to the room properly.
This sits alongside the rest of my work rather than replacing it — person-centred, unhurried, with the same care I bring to grief or anxiety. Some people come specifically for body-based work; for others it is a handful of sessions inside something longer.
Who this helps
It tends to help most where talking has already been tried and has taken you as far as talking goes:
- Trauma, recent or very old, where the memory still lands in the body — see trauma counselling
- Anxiety that arrives in the chest and throat before any thought does
- Grief that has settled into exhaustion and a tight ribcage
- Long strain — illness, caring for someone, years of holding a household together
- Feeling numb or far away from yourself, which is the other direction the same protection can take
An honest word about what this is not
It is not a cure, and it is not fast. It does not erase what happened. I would be wary of anyone who told you a particular method undoes a life — I have been doing this long enough to have seen those promises made and not kept.
What I can tell you is that people are often surprised by how much shifts when the body is finally included in the conversation, and that I will be straight with you about whether the work is helping. If it is not the right approach for you, I will say so.
Sessions, online or in Fairmount
Body-based work translates to video call better than people imagine — you are in your own home, in your own chair, which is often exactly where a nervous system settles most easily. I see people across South Africa, the UK, Ireland and Europe, and in person at my practice in Fairmount, Johannesburg.
Sessions are 60 minutes at R750, or £40 / €45 internationally. Where this work is part of trauma counselling, sessions run to 90 minutes at R1,250 (£70 / €80) — trauma work needs the extra time to open something and close it again properly in the same sitting.