Integrative Somatic Healing
Depth-based nervous system and developmental work for real change.
Emotions are physiological: notice how you get butterflies in the stomach when nervous, tears when sad, or flushed cheeks when embarrassed?
Unprocessed emotion, early relational experience, chronic stress, and trauma can shape how the nervous system organizes around protection, often outside conscious awareness. Even when we understand something cognitively, the nervous system may still respond automatically from unfinished protective patterns, as if the past were still present.
In this work, we create the conditions for safety and inner coherence so those patterns can soften and new capacities can emerge naturally. As the nervous system reorganizes from the bottom up, unbracing, presence, and conscious choice become more available. Change becomes lived and felt,
Is this work right for you?
You may be here because something in you is ready to grow, integrate, or open further to life:
You want a deeper sense of presence, agency, and inner coherence
You feel called to live from a truer, more integrated, and authentic self
You sense untapped emotional, relational, or creative capacity
You want to lead, relate, and move through life acting from who you actually are
You're seeking conscious growth that is embodied and lived, not surface-level or temporary
…or because something feels stuck or overwhelmed:
You feel caught in fight, flight, freeze, or numbing out
Stress, exhaustion, or emotions feel hard to regulate
Grief, loss, or past experiences still shape your nervous system
Relationships repeat old patterns or intimacy feels difficult to navigate
Sleep disruptions, chronic tension or pain persist despite other work
Frequently Asked Questions
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Somatic nervous system work engages how experience lives in the body at its most implicit levels, in the patterns of activation, protection, and organization that form beneath conscious awareness. When experiences overwhelm our capacity to process them, the system organizes around protection rather than presence. Through mind-body bottom-up, felt experience, the nervous system can complete what was interrupted and reorganize from the inside out, restoring safety, coherence, and choice.
This is not fitness or movement-based or touch-based bodywork, which somatics has come to be reduced to. It is deep capacity building work, operating at the level of the nervous system itself, where experience, identity, emotions, and the capacity for presence are actually held.
In my practice, somatic work is one foundation of a broader integrative approach. Bottom-up nervous system work creates the conditions for top-down developmental and identity work to take root, so that what shifts in the body becomes integrated into how you relate, who you believe yourself to be, and how you live.
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Most somatic approaches assume something needs to be released. That there is something trapped, and the work is to let it out. Many people spend years doing exactly that, and find themselves cycling through the same patterns.
Lasting change is not about discharge. It happens when the nervous system develops the capacity to be present with what it previously couldn't tolerate. That presence is not a technique. It is the reorganization itself.My work creates the conditions for that capacity to develop, through bottom-up nervous system safety along with top-down development and integration, so that what shifts in the body becomes woven into how you relate, who you believe yourself to be, and how you move through your life.
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I am not a licensed therapist and work from a different model. I am a certified somatic practitioner, meditation teacher, and psychosynthesis coach. My approach is somatic, developmental, relational, and contemplative, and does not involve diagnosis or medical treatment.
Rather than behavioral correction, this work focuses on creating the internal conditions for the system to reorganize itself and grow forward. That happens in both directions at once: bottom-up, through sensation, emotion, and the autonomic nervous system, and top-down, through developmental and psychosynthesis-informed work that supports identity, meaning, and the evolution of self. Neither direction alone is sufficient. Together, they allow change to become fully lived.
Most clients find their way here after other paths that have offered support in different ways. Sessions are responsive and individualized, and I will always communicate transparently if this approach is not the right fit.
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My ideal client is someone who has already done some form of inner work, and senses that something deeper remains untouched. They may understand their patterns intellectually but feel them continuing to run beneath that understanding. They are not looking for symptom relief, quick fixes, coping strategies, or for someone to do something to them but for something more fundamental: a genuine shift in how they inhabit themselves and meet life.
They may be in an active period of healing, or they may be in a growth-oriented phase, feeling called toward a more integrated, authentic, and expansive way of living. Often both are true at once, and the work moves between them naturally.
What unites my clients is a genuine willingness to meet their inner world with honesty and care. This work asks something of you. It is subtle, relational, developmental, and contemplative by design. If you are looking for that quality of depth, you are likely in the right place.
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Trauma is not a pathology but an adaptive survival response. When experiences overwhelm our capacity to process them, the nervous system organizes around protection rather than presence. Healing means restoring safety so unfinished responses can complete and regulation, connection, and choice can return.
Similar patterns form through unresolved emotion, developmental adaptation, relational imprinting, and the shaping of identity over time, often outside conscious awareness. Many arrive from a growth-oriented place and find that these same implicit patterns are what limit their next layer of expansion.
For this reason, my work does not separate trauma resolution from developmental integration. As safety is restored and unfinished responses complete, presence, agency, and authentic expression emerge naturally.
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Sessions are available online via live Zoom from anywhere in the world. You need a private space you're comfortable in, a video camera, and internet access. Video must be on with the chest upward visible.
In-person sessions are also available in Midtown Manhattan, NYC, on select days with more limited availability and carry a small additional fee.
Meet your somatic practitioner
About Susan Reis
I’m an Integrative Somatic Practitioner offering developmental nervous system–based work that supports nervous system reorganization and the cultivation of embodied presence. My approach is relational, developmental, gently precise, and contemplative, working bottom-up through sensation and nervous system cues and top-down through self-development to build capacity that can be lived in daily life. She works at the intersection of emotional resolution and developmental integration, supporting both healing and conscious growth while meeting each client exactly where they are.
Learn more about me and my approach.