Sometimes I look at my social media and wonder:
If you only knew my work from what I post online, would you actually know what I do?
There is no proof from my 1:1 somatic sessions.
No camera recording while somebody talks about something difficult. No footage of a client shaking, crying or having a big emotional release. No before-and-after showing somebody arriving tense and leaving visibly “regulated”.
I rarely tell stories about what happens inside those sessions, even when I could anonymize them.
And furthermore, I don’t take photos during group classes, workshops or retreats either. There is no real proof that I work.
Partly because I forget, but mostly because when I’m working with people, I want to be with the people. And some things simply don’t belong online.
At the same time, I run a small business. Visibility matters. People need to know that I exist and have some understanding of what happens when they walk through my door.
Which creates an interesting tension:
How do you make work visible when some of its most important parts are almost invisible from the outside?
Somatic work doesn't always look like much
A lot of what happens in my sessions would make fairly terrible Instagram content.
Someone lies on the floor. We notice the support underneath their body.
There is a pause. A hand moves slightly.
Someone notices they have been holding their breath. We stay with a sensation for a moment rather than immediately trying to change it. Someone says, “Actually, I don't want to do that.” And instead of pushing through, we listen to that response.
Sometimes there is laughter. Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes movement becomes bigger, or a sound wants to come out.
But very often the shifts are much quieter.
A person notices something they previously couldn't feel. A position that initially felt vulnerable becomes a little more tolerable. Someone experiences having a choice where they previously felt they had to comply.
A breath becomes less controlled. The shoulders drop, not because I told them to relax, but because something in that moment allowed them to.
Although I take mental pictures, all of these moments are difficult to photograph. But that doesn't make them less meaningful.
When the most dramatic moment becomes the definition of the work
Scroll through social media and you'll find plenty of videos of body-based practices involving shaking, screaming, crying, trembling, intense breathing or bodies moving in dramatic ways.
I understand why. Visually, it is compelling. Something is clearly happening.
A person quietly lying on a mat for five minutes while noticing sensations inside their body probably won't stop many thumbs from scrolling.
And this is where I think we need to be a little careful. The problem isn't necessarily the practice shown in the video.
People cry. Bodies tremble. Anger can need expression. Movement can become big, messy and loud. I work with all sorts of responses too.
The problem is what happens when those moments become the dominant image of somatic work. Because over time, we can begin to confuse what is visible with what is important.
And perhaps even begin to expect our own experience to look like that.
Nothing dramatic happened. Did it work?
I didn't cry. Maybe I didn't go deep enough.
My body didn't shake. Am I still holding on to something?
Shouldn't I feel completely different after a trauma-release session?
This is where I become uncomfortable.
Your body doesn't have to perform its healing
I don't believe a difficult experience has to be screamed out of the body.
I don't believe trembling is proof that trauma is being “released”.
And I am very cautious with promises that one powerful breathwork session, emotional release or intense body experience will somehow empty the nervous system of stuck experiences.
That language is wonderfully marketable.
But human beings are more complicated.
Even in established PTSD treatment, the approaches with the strongest evidence are structured psychotherapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy, cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure; other recommended approaches include EMDR and narrative exposure therapy. None is based on the idea that recovery requires one large cathartic discharge.
Research into body-oriented approaches is growing, and there are promising findings. For example, randomized studies of Somatic Experiencing have reported improvements in PTSD symptoms, although the evidence base remains considerably smaller than for established trauma-focused psychotherapies and more research is needed.
There is also a long-standing assumption that expressing a strong emotion automatically gets it “out of the system”. But research on catharsis is much less straightforward. A review looking at emotional expression following trauma found that simply eliciting strong emotion was not inherently therapeutic; what mattered was how the experience was processed and integrated.
Even in the more specific area of anger, a large 2024 meta-analysis found that activities designed to reduce physiological arousal were more consistently helpful than arousal-increasing activities such as venting.
None of this means that tears, shaking, anger or strong emotional experiences are wrong.
They aren't. It means intensity itself might not the treatment and intensity is certainly not a reliable measure of depth.
Sometimes the work is learning that nothing dramatic has to happen
For some people, the unfamiliar experience isn't having a huge release.
It is experiencing gentleness without immediately becoming uncomfortable.
Resting without having to earn it.
Feeling a boundary and discovering that it can be respected.
Noticing activation without needing to get rid of it immediately.
Being able to pause. Being able to stop.
Feeling something without becoming completely consumed by it.
Allowing another person to be present without needing to perform, explain or take care of them.
Those can be enormous experiences. They just don't look enormous.
And this is one of the reasons I don't particularly like the promise of “fast trauma release”.
Sometimes people absolutely do feel lighter after one session. Sometimes there is immediate relief. Sometimes something clicks very quickly.
Wonderful.
But relief is not the same as resolution.
A nervous system isn't a container of stored stress that simply needs to be emptied hard enough.
Our patterns have developed through experience, learning, relationships, physiology and adaptation. Changing them can involve new experiences too -sometimes repeated many times, slowly enough that they can actually be noticed.
For some people, the meaningful moment isn't finally letting everything out.
It is discovering that they don't have to push themselves beyond their limits in order for something to change.
Social media is very good at intensity
This isn't only a somatic-work problem.
It is something I've been thinking about in yoga too.
I recently wrote “Is yoga dead?”, partly because the yoga world seems to be going through an identity crisis.
What gets people's attention has changed.
We live in a culture of optimization, measurable progress, transformations, challenges, hacks and increasingly spectacular wellness experiences.
And social media intensifies that.
A handstand is easier to show than increased body awareness.
A dramatic breathwork session is easier to show than somebody noticing they have enough capacity to say no.
A crying release is easier to show than a person discovering they can sit quietly with a sensation that once felt unbearable.
We naturally share the moments people can see, but if we're not careful, we start designing our practices around what can be seen.
And eventually, perhaps, we start believing that if it doesn't look impressive, it isn't doing very much.
There is also the question of privacy
There is another reason much of my work stays invisible.
My clients are not my content.
When somebody comes into a 1:1 session, I want the room to belong to them.
I don't want them wondering whether what they tell me could later become a story illustrating an Instagram caption.
They don't need to give me a testimonial.
They don't need to demonstrate what a successful session looks like.
They don't need to let me film their body in a vulnerable moment so that I can explain somatic work to somebody else.
Of course, there are ethical ways of sharing experiences, and I'm incredibly grateful when somebody independently chooses to write a review or allows me to share something.
But I think we should acknowledge the power relationship involved when somebody is coming to us for support.
Consent deserves more thought than simply asking, “Is it okay if I post this?”
So a lot of what happens in my room will stay there.
I am increasingly okay with that.
The difficult bit: I still need you to know what I do
And here is the contradiction. This is also my livelihood.
If I don't talk about the work, people can't find it.
If nobody sees it, nobody knows it exists.
Maybe that's part of why I'm writing more again.
A photograph can show you the room and a Reel can show you a movement. But writing gives me more room to explain the parts that aren't easily visible.
Why we sometimes slow things down.
Why I might choose not to push further.
Why “nothing happened” can still be valuable information.
Why a body doesn't have to shake for an experience to matter.
Why sometimes we work with movement, sometimes breath, sometimes touch, sometimes sound, and sometimes with almost nothing at all.
And most importantly why I don't want to promise you that one session will release your trauma, regulate your nervous system or transform your life.
I would rather offer you somewhere to become curious about your own experience.
Maybe invisible isn't the same as insignificant
I still want to make my work visible.
I want to explain it.
I want to share research, questions, things I'm learning and things that make me reconsider my own approach.
Occasionally I'll show you my studio, a class, an exercise or something happening behind the scenes. But I don't think I need to show you everything.
Some of the most meaningful moments in this work may happen between two people in a quiet room.
Some happen with a small group lying silently on mats.
Some don't become apparent until days later, when somebody encounters a familiar situation and suddenly notices:
I responded differently this time.
No dramatic release. No video. No proof. Just something subtly different.
Maybe my work is more invisible than good marketing says it should be.
But perhaps protecting a space where nobody has to perform - not even their healing - isn't separate from the work.
Perhaps that is part of the work.
