Somatic Trauma Release
Breathwork
This practice combines conscious connected breath, a continuous flowing breathing style, with somatic work to support the excavation and release of unfinished emotions and survival responses, to soften fight-flight-freeze patterns, deepen our connection to our physical and emotion bodies, and restore regulation from the inside out.
Unlike most breathwork, this approach is grounded in trauma science, somatic experiencing, and relational attunement, paced carefully and held within a safe, attuned field. This is not just seeking overactivation, but an embodied and integrative means of inner transformation.
Through rhythmic breath, the intellectual mind can rest, and the nervous system can access preverbal and implicit or unconscious layers of experience, completing what was once interrupted and creating space for presence, clarity, creativity, and deeper connection with yourself and life.
This work is for you if:
You feel stuck in patterns of stress, tension, or overwhelm
Old emotions resurface but don't resolve
You want to soften fight-flight-freeze responses at the nervous system level
You're navigating grief, trauma, or significant life transitions
Other approaches have helped but something deeper remains untouched
Breathwork or altered-state experiences were profound but not integrated or lasting
FAQs
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Most breathwork either overstimulates the nervous system or produces profound transpersonal experiences without the support for genuine integration. The result is often temporary cathartic in the moment but not lasting healing or transformation.
My approach is grounded in trauma science, somatic experiencing, and careful relational attunement. Sessions are paced deliberately, with attention to containment, nervous system capacity, and what is actually ready to move. The aim is not just release but reorganization, completion of what was interrupted, held within a safe and integrative field. Conscious integration is embedded in any of the work together.
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Breathwork refers to intentional breathing techniques used to support regulation, presence, and healing.
The breath mirrors the nervous system: it is one of the few voluntary functions that also operates unconsciously, making it a precise entry point into implicit and preverbal layers of experience.This offering uses conscious connected breath, an intentionally activated rhythmic breathing style. When paired with somatic nervous system work, trauma science, and relational attunement, it supports not just temporary catharsis but genuine nervous system reorganization, often accessing preverbal and developmental layers of experience that other approaches cannot reach.
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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 bottom-up, felt experience, the nervous system can complete what was interrupted and reorganize from the inside out, restoring safety, coherence, and choice.
In my practice and full integrative approach, bottom-up nervous system work and top-down developmental and identity work operate together, because meeting experience fully requires both a regulated nervous system and a coherent sense of self to meet it with. -
Sessions are either online from anywhere in the world via live Zoom, or in-person in NYC.
In-person sessions are in Balance Arts Center in Midtown Manhattan on select days and carry a small additional fee. In-person breathwork sessions benefit from in-person healing touch or tuning forks for clients that consent and resonate with that work.
Private groups as well as couples’ sessions are also available for breathwork.
Meet your breathwork practitioner
About Me
Susan Reis is an integrative somatic practitioner based in New York City, specializing in nervous system work, developmental growth, and somatic trauma resolution. She is a Certified Biodynamic Breathwork & Trauma Release System (BBTRS) Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), DARe Practitioner, Brainspotting Practitioner, Certified Hypnotist, and Nejang Healing Yoga Teacher, while also currently completing a MS in Applied Neuroscience. Her breathwork sessions weave conscious connected breath with somatics, trauma science, subtle body dynamics, and relational attunement, paced carefully to support genuine healing rather than temporary catharsis. She works with individuals online and in-person in NYC.
Learn more about me and my approach.