Somatic Relational Healing & Attachment Repair
My Somatic Relational Healing works directly with the nervous system to transform the deep, implicit patterns that shape how we connect. Often formed in the earliest moments of life, before words, these patterns live in the body’s subcortical and limbic systems, unconsciously driving survival responses like fight, flight, or freeze in our relationships. But you are not an attachment style: these are adaptive behavioral patterns and they can be repatterned.
Through attuned, body-based practices, we bring these implicit memories into conscious awareness, supporting the nervous system in moving from reactive subcortical states into the prefrontal cortex where choice, compassion, and healthy connection become possible. This is not a traditional therapy approach about endlessly cognitively analyzing the past, but about creating new embodied experiences of safety, trust, and openness in the present.
Sessions weave somatic tracking, mindful presence, conscious attention, and attachment repair processes to dissolve physical bracing, soften protective strategies, and restore natural relational flow. I integrate modern nervous system science and attachment neurobiology along with transpersonal integration, ultimately expanding the sense of self beyond old roles and wounds so you can meet yourself and others from a place of wholeness.
This work meets you where you are and supports lasting change from the inside out: grounding safety in the body, opening the heart, and restoring the capacity at your core for deep, authentic connection, and a secure sense of self.
Connect to yourself, others, and all things.
The relationship with self, largely formed from pre-verbal experiences, reflects outwards in our relationships with others.
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It’s a body-based, neuroscience-informed approach to transforming the deep, often unconscious patterns that shape how we connect to ourselves and others. We work with the nervous system and implicit memories - held in the subcortical and limbic brain -to restore safety, regulation, and authentic connection, moving toward a more secure attachment style.
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Attachment styles are not fixed labels: they’re patterns of relating that developed as adaptive survival strategies in response to early experiences. Importantly, you are not your attachment style and most of the language on attachment in pop culture and social media has very much superficialized a very deep and rich topic.
Most people have a mix of patterns that can show up differently in different relationships or life areas.
The four primary patterns are:
Secure – Comfortable with closeness and autonomy; able to trust and be trusted.
Anxious (Preoccupied) – Tends to seek high levels of closeness and reassurance, often fearing abandonment.
Avoidant (Dismissive) – Tends to downplay closeness and rely heavily on self-sufficiency.
Disorganized (Fearful-Avoidant) – Simultaneously desires and fears closeness, often feeling conflicted in relationships.
Because these styles are adaptations, they are changeable. With somatic and relational repair, these patterns can work towards reorganizing for greater safety, flexibility, and secure connection.
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Talk and traditional therapy works “top-down,” starting with the thinking mind. This work is “bottom-up,” starting with the body’s signals and sensations to access and resolve the roots of relational patterns. Many attachment wounds are preverbal and live below conscious thought, so working through the body allows for healing without needing to relive or retell every detail of the past.
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Each session is guided by attuned presence, gentle inquiry, and somatic techniques to track sensations, shifts in breath, micro-movements, and emotional tones. We might use resourcing practices, guided awareness, somatic tracking, expression techniques, or relational exercises to create safety and repair old patterns in real time.
My sessions are exploratory & experimental and collaborative & confidential. The work is a mix of reflective self-inquiry with bodily connection.
Like all my somatic work, my session process is: we listen, we feel, we integrate.
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Somatic healing is based on the understanding that the body, not just the mind, holds memory, emotion, and lived experience. Unresolved trauma or overwhelm can live in the nervous system, shaping how we feel and relate, often without us realizing it.
Notice how we get butterflies in the belly when nervous, teary eyed when sad, flush when angry? These are the body’s physiological responses to emotions moving through us.
Emotions are physiological. But when we're overwhelmed, that natural flow gets interrupted, and the nervous system can become stuck in survival states. Somatic work helps complete what was once interrupted, supporting the body’s innate ability to release, resolve, and return to presence.
Somatic healing is “bottom-up” using movement, breath, sensation tracking, co-regulation, and compassionate awareness to restore safety and alignment from within (whereas talk therapy, for example, is a top down approach).
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Trauma isn’t a pathology, It’s an adaptive, protective response wired for survival. Healing trauma means restoring a sense of safety so you can be present with yourself again. Presence is the gateway back to your true self, because trauma creates barriers to the heart, which is inherently self-healing.
While trauma can stem from acute events (“big T”), trauma healing work also works with chronic, developmental, or relational wounding (“small t”) - the subtle yet lasting ways we disconnect from ourselves to survive. These survival strategies become protective identities that mask the authentic heart.
True healing supports the completion of what was once interrupted: stored impulses, repressed emotions, and unresolved stress. As we meet those parts with compassionate presence, the nervous system can slowly restore its natural flow.
Not everything in us is a trauma response, and it’s important not to reduce ourselves to that. But by honoring the ways your body and psyche once protected you, you can now choose a new path, grounded in safety, wholeness, and self-trust.
Whether or not you identify with the word trauma, you may relate to chronic stress, emotional suppression, or grief. Whatever the name, healing means returning to the body, to presence, and to your innate resilience.
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Sessions are either in-person in New York City or online via live Zoom from anywhere in the world.
Sessions are all 1-hour.
See here for more FAQs.
Book a free 20-minute consultation via Zoom to learn more or get started.
Meet your practitioner
I’m Susan Reis, a somatic trauma practitioner, certified hypnotist, and integrative healing guide based in New York City. My work is rooted in the understanding that our earliest relational experiences — often held in the body as implicit and visceral memory — shape how we connect with ourselves and others.
I integrate somatic healing, attachment science, and contemplative presence to help clients transform deep-seated relational patterns. Drawing on modern neuroscience, I guide the nervous system from subcortical and limbic reactivity into the prefrontal cortex, where clarity, compassion, and choice can flourish.
My approach honors the body as the gateway to healing and the heart as the source of connection. I hold a space that is attuned, safe, and collaborative, so you can reclaim your natural capacity for trust, intimacy, and authentic relationship — with yourself, others, and life itself.
I’d be honored to support you on your journey.
