Body-Aware Psychotherapy
Somatic Therapy for Women in Colorado
You’ve explained the anxiety to yourself perfectly and your shoulders still haven’t heard about it. Somatic therapy works from the body’s side of that, treating what your breathing and posture are doing as the way in instead of as a side effect.
Boulder • Denver • Fort Collins • Broomfield • Longmont • Online
Schedule a Therapist Match CallClinically reviewed by Amy Lowe, MSW, LCSW, LAC, Director of Clinical Teams • Last reviewed August 14, 2026
The Method
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy works from the body rather than the conversation, and it isn’t built the way most talk therapy is. Your therapist tracks breathing, posture, tension, and the small shifts that happen in your body when a subject comes up, and treats the body as the entry point rather than as something happening alongside the real work. There’s real conversation in a session, but a lot less of it than in most therapy, because the body is doing more of the work. Stress and trauma change how your nervous system responds, and those changes are usually easier to reach through the body than through explanation. Settling the body first is often what lets your thinking about something catch up to it.
Colorado Women’s Center is designed for women, so you won’t spend your first session explaining context that should already be understood. Somatic therapy for women is one of the approaches you’ll find among our therapy methods, and most women use it alongside other work instead of on its own. The practices are things you do yourself, like slowing your breathing, noticing where you brace, or changing how you’re sitting. You don’t need to be flexible, fit, or comfortable with movement.
Your body gets a say in this.
Our Promise to You
We Guarantee Our Therapist Matching
Paying close attention to your own body asks for a particular kind of trust, especially if your body hasn’t always felt like somewhere you wanted to be. You can’t force that with the wrong person. If the first match isn’t right, tell us and we’ll match you with another at no additional cost.
Request a Free ConsultationWhat This Works On
What Somatic Therapy for Women Helps With
Women reach for this work wherever the body is carrying something explanation hasn’t reached. None of it has to be a crisis before it’s worth bringing in. These are what women bring to it at Colorado Women’s Center.
Trauma
After something traumatic, your nervous system keeps reading ordinary things as threats, and that shows up in the body long after. Trauma and PTSD therapy using somatic work goes at that layer, at a pace you and your therapist set together.
Anxiety in the Body
Your chest tightens and your stomach turns before any thought arrives to explain it. Anxiety therapy for women with a somatic approach starts on the physical side, which is often where the anxiety is actually running.
Stress That Doesn’t Clear
The day ends and your system stays switched on. Stress therapy for women using somatic work gives your body a way to finish a stress response instead of carrying it into the evening.
Panic
Panic starts in the body and picks up an explanation afterward. Working on the physical side gives you something to do in the minutes when thinking is least available to you.
Freeze and Shutting Down
Going flat, blank, or very still is a nervous system response, not a character flaw or a failure of effort. Sessions treat it as something with a physical cause you can learn to work with.
Feeling Disconnected From Your Body
Numbness, or a sense of watching yourself from just outside, is common after a hard experience. You rebuild that connection in small amounts, and you decide how much and how fast.
Emotional Overwhelm
When a feeling arrives faster than you can handle it, your body is where the volume gets adjusted. Sessions build a way of staying with something strong without shutting it down or going under.
Chronic Tension
You brace in the jaw, the shoulders, the lower back, until it becomes a habit you stop noticing. Bracing like that responds to attention and to changing what you do with it. Pain with a medical cause belongs with your doctor, and this sits alongside that.
Trouble Settling at Night
A body that stayed alert all day doesn’t switch off because the light went out. The practices give your nervous system a signal it recognizes, which is a different thing from trying harder to relax.
Our Approach
How Somatic Therapy Runs at Colorado Women’s Center
The body leads here, and the conversation fills in around it rather than the other way around. Here is how it goes.
Start With a Match Call
You begin with a Wellness Coordinator. She asks what you’re looking for, including whether you want body-based work specifically. Then she matches you on that, on which office suits you, and on therapist training and experience.
Learn to Read the Signals
Early sessions are mostly noticing. You learn where you hold tension, what your breathing does when a subject comes up, and what happens in your body a second before you change the subject. Most of that has been there all along without registering.
Work Slowly, in Small Amounts
The work moves toward a difficult feeling a little at a time, then comes back out again. Your therapist watches the pace with you and stops well before it becomes too much.
Five Offices or Online
You can do this work in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Broomfield, or Longmont, or over secure video from anywhere in Colorado. Sessions run seven days a week, 8am to 8pm.
Methods We Offer
- Somatic Therapy
- EMDR
- Gestalt Therapy
- Mindfulness-Based Approaches
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Family Systems Therapy
Common Questions
Somatic Questions Women Ask Us
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No more than you want to. Somatic work can proceed from what your body is doing now, without a full account of the past. That’s part of why it suits women who have found retelling difficult or pointless. Your therapist needs enough to work with, and you decide what else gets said.
Is it true that the body keeps the score?
That phrase comes from a popular book, and it’s a metaphor more than a finding. What is well supported is that stress and trauma change how the nervous system responds, and that those changes show up physically, in breathing, muscle tension, sleep, and startle. Somatic therapy works on that, and none of it requires believing memory is stored in tissue.
Is this yoga or bodywork?
No. It borrows the same attention to the body that yoga and bodywork use, but what happens in the room is therapy, guided by a therapist rather than a teacher or practitioner. You don’t need to be flexible, fit, or at ease with movement. A session is quieter than most talk therapy, working directly with breath, posture, and sensation, with conversation woven in rather than leading it.
Does somatic therapy work online?
Yes. Your therapist can see your face and posture over video, and the practices are things you do yourself in your own room. Some women find body sensation easier to notice somewhere familiar. Sessions run over secure video anywhere in Colorado. Our online therapy page has the details.
How long does it take?
That’s decided between you and your therapist rather than set in advance. It depends on what you’re bringing in and on how your body responds once you start. Your therapist builds a plan with you early on and revisits it with you as things change.
How soon can I start?
Match Calls are usually available within 48 hours, often within 24. Most clients are with a therapist within about a week, depending on their own availability. Offices are open seven days a week, 8am to 8pm, and online sessions run the same hours. Call 720.810.2355 or use the form on this page.
Related Methods
Approaches That Sit Close to Somatic Work
This work is rarely the whole of a care plan. These two come up alongside it most often.
