Integrative Somatic Healing
Bottom-up nervous system work to create the conditions 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 safety and response, often outside conscious awareness. Even when we understand something cognitively, the nervous system may still function from unfinished protective patterns and respond automatically in the present.
In this work, we support nervous system reorganization and the completion of unfinished responses. Rather than forcing change, we create the conditions for safety and inner coherence so survival strategies can soften and new capacities can emerge. As the nervous system reorganizes from the bottom up, unbracing, presence, integration, and conscious choice become more available—allowing change to be lived, not just felt in session.
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 and nervous system, not just the thinking mind. When experiences overwhelm our capacity to process them, the system organizes around protection rather than presence. Through bottom-up, felt experience, the nervous system can complete what was interrupted and reorganize from the inside out, restoring safety, coherence, and choice.
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Somatic work is often reduced to exercises, techniques, or emotional release meant to “fix” symptoms quickly. That’s not how I work.
My approach prioritizes bottom-up nervous system reorganization, creating the conditions of safety and trust that allow unfinished survival responses to complete naturally. Without this foundation, tools may offer temporary relief but rarely lead to lasting change.
Sessions are subtle, relational, neuroplasticity-aligned, and carefully paced, guided by sensation and real-time nervous system cues rather than force or catharsis. As capacity builds, I integrate more developmental work so these shifts consolidate into identity, boundaries, and daily life.
My contemplative roots support depth and work with unconscious material; my nervous-system-specific training ensures precision, safety, and integration over time.
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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.
This work operates from a different model, beginning bottom-up, engaging sensation, emotion, and the autonomic nervous system, and integrating developmental and psychosynthesis-informed work as capacity builds, so that changes are lived. Rather than therapeutic or behavioral correction, the focus is on creating the internal conditions for the system to reorganize itself and to grow forward, inspired by the future.
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 trauma means restoring safety so unfinished responses can complete, allowing regulation, connection, and choice to return.
Not everyone has experienced explicit trauma. Similar protective patterns can also form through unresolved emotion, developmental adaptation, relational imprinting, and the shaping of identity over time, often outside conscious awareness. And not everyone who comes to this work identifies with trauma at all, many arrive from a growth-oriented place and find that these same implicit patterns, shaped by development, identity, and experience, are what limit their next layer of expansion.
For this reason, my work does not separate trauma resolution from developmental integration. As nervous system safety is restored and unfinished responses complete, presence, agency, and authentic expression emerge naturally.
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Sessions are either online from anywhere in the world via live Zoom, or in-person in NYC.
In-person sessions are in Midtown Manhattan on select days and carry a small additional fee.
Meet your somatic practitioner
About Me
Susan Reis is an Integrative Somatic Practitioner offering developmental nervous system–based work that supports nervous system reorganization and the cultivation of embodied presence. Her approach is relational, developmental, gently precise, and contemplative, working bottom-up through sensation and nervous system cues 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.