Somatic Healing and Integration

Welcome to Somatic Healing and Integration

Welcome to Zuzzie's trauma-informed somatic practice, where she draws from over a decade of experience working with individuals. Zuzzie’s approach is grounded in respected evidence-based somatic modalities, including Dr. Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing and Dr. Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. She incorporates somatic movement and body-based therapies, as well as insights from Dr. Allan Schore’s Affective Neuroscience and Trauma Theory.

Zuzzie emphasizes relational healing through co-regulation and guided connection with nature, often integrating eco-somatics into her sessions with clients. She encourages self-discovery through creative arts, archetypal role-play, and therapeutic storytelling—modalities commonly utilized within mental health treatment settings. Zuzzie is knowledgeable in the frameworks of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and refers to them when appropriate to support her clients.

About Somatic Healing and Integration

What is Somatic Healing and Integration?

Somatic Healing and Integration sessions provide you with a space to develop somatic awareness and cultivate a supportive relationship with your body. By learning the language of your emotions, these sessions validate your experiences and empower you with skills to navigate and respond effectively. You will become familiar with your somatic landscape, practice essential self-regulation techniques for daily life, and strengthen your ability to tolerate distress while establishing healthy boundaries. This journey promotes self-discovery and nurtures a mindful, compassionate approach crucial for trauma healing and integration. Sessions are grounded in evidence-based clinical practices widely utilized in mental health treatment settings.

The Importance of Regulation

Many individuals navigate the world carrying tension in their bodies, often due to daily stressors and sometimes from unprocessed trauma. Somatic Healing and Integration acknowledges that feelings of dis-ease and chronic pain frequently indicate imbalances within the body. These tensions often originate from the body's protective response to perceived threats, keeping individuals in a state of heightened alertness and unresolved tension. Sessions are crafted to support clients in releasing these tensions and energetic blockages through guided meditation, visualization, breathwork, movement practices, and techniques for emotional release. 

Core Principles

• Self-Regulation Skills: Learn to distinguish between regulated and dysregulated states, and use breathing, somatic awareness, and cognitive skills to self-regulate.

• Positive Skills Assessment: Essential before commencing trauma healing work. Progress is tracked by assessing self-regulation abilities.

• Evidence-Based Practices: Sessions incorporate techniques from Somatic Psychotherapy and Expressive Arts Practices.

• Step-by-Step Guidance: Zuzzie guides you through a process to access internal resources and build reliable self-regulation skills.

Therapeutic Modalities

• Mindfulness Meditation: Cultivating present-moment awareness and acceptance.

• Somatic Experiencing (Dr. Peter Levine): Techniques to resolve trauma symptoms and relieve chronic stress.

• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Dr. Pat Ogden): Integrating body awareness and movement in the therapeutic process.

• Body-Mind Centering (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen): Using developmental movement patterns for self-awareness and healing.

• Contemplative Movement: Incorporating mindful movement practices to connect body and mind.

• Eco-Somatic Relational Intelligence: Exploring the relationship between body and nature to enhance well-being.

• Creative Expression: Using art, writing, movement, and sound for storytelling and emotional release.

Session Details

What to Expect

• Focus Areas: Somatic Awareness, Regulation Skills, Distress Tolerance, Expanding Window of Tolerance, Language of Emotions, Healthy Boundaries, Body Image, Self-Compassion and Acceptance.

• Therapeutic Models: Rooted in Somatic Psychotherapy, informed by ACT, DBT, and CBT.

• Expressive Practices: Integrates expressive, relational, and eco-somatic practices as needed.

The Depth of Somatic Work

Understanding the Process

The somatic work delves into your body’s responses to past and present stressors. It’s a journey of learning to discharge and release built-up tension, fostering a state of balance and integration.

Grounding and Resourcing

You will learn to safely expand your sensory acuity through the practice of interoception, utilizing guided somatic awareness techniques. Gradually, this leads to building an unshakable trust in the language of your body, where the felt range between “yes” and “no,” comfort and discomfort, safety and danger become very clear. Sessions will provide practice for you to get in touch with your needs, support you in distinguishing your personal space, and cultivate an embodied sense of self (“where do I begin and where do I end”), in order to develop the capacity to uphold personal boundaries in daily life. You will become more effective in dealing with life’s challenges by building confidence in your internal resources. Through ongoing practice, you will develop the foundation to safely begin trauma healing work, if desired.

Trauma Healing Work

Once the above skills are in place, sessions will progress to gradually connect to places of physical pain and discomfort. Zuzzie will walk you through a compassionate exploration, using mindfulness and somatic awareness techniques. Physical sensations offer a doorway to examine deeper what information these places of tension hold. You will have a space to drop in and allow your imagination to flow, while in dialogue with Zuzzie. You can share the images, emotions, and stories that surface in association with the sensations in your body, while observing shifts and changes as Zuzzie offers relevant cues to pay attention to. Additional bridging modalities to facilitate deeper reflection may be used in a session, such as expressive arts techniques: improvised movement, voice activation, free-form drawing, and therapeutic writing. Each session concludes with a guided self-regulation practice and a harvesting of “takeaways.”

Benefits of Somatic Healing

• Self-Regulation: Develop essential skills for managing emotions and stress.

• Body Awareness: Learn to read and respond to your body's signals.

• Emotional Resilience: Build the capacity to process and integrate past experiences.

Getting Started

Interested in working together? Please, express your interest here, and Zuzzie will respond with rates and availability. Sessions are offered both in-person and remotely.

About Zuzzie

Zuzzie Kapas is a highly skilled Somatic Integration Specialist and Complementary Health Therapist. She holds a Master’s degree and post-master’s specialization in Somatic Psychotherapy from Antioch University in Santa Barbara, California. She is currently affiliated with PCH Treatment Center: Psychological Care and Healing in Los Angeles, CA since 2021. Zuzzie has been offering her services at mental health treatment facilities since 2019 and, to date, has been an integral part of treatment teams across eleven mental health programs.

Zuzzie sources from her training informed by evidence-based somatic modalities, such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training, in addition to over a decade-long experience working with somatic movement therapies, such as Body-Mind Centering and Authentic Movement. Zuzzie utilizes her understanding of Epigenetics and Behavioral Neuroscience acquired through her undergraduate and post-graduate research of addiction and brain neuroplasticity at the University of California in Santa Barbara and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Who Can Benefit:

Zuzzie’s Somatic Healing and Integration sessions have been helpful to clients in recovery from eating disorders, traumatic dissociation, c-PTSD, OCD, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and substance induced psychosis. Sessions are also helpful in preparation for psychedelic-assisted therapy and post-session integration. As a Somatic Integration Specialist, Zuzzie works in cross-collaboration with licensed therapists and has a list of referrals, in case her clients need additional psychotherapeutic services or don’t yet have a provider of their own. Zuzzie is happy to point clients in the right direction, if their needs don’t fall under the scope of her practice.

Thank you for visiting Embodied Art of Life. If you wish to connect with questions regarding the sessions, please reach out using the Get In Touch form. For professional networking, please use LinkedIn.