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Integrative Somatic Therapist

For when understanding your story has not been enough

The primary, ancient symbol for breath is the Sanskrit character Om (ॐ) or Prana, representing life force, consciousness, and

A gentle place to land

Awakening through the body to find aliveness, healing and liberation

Perhaps you have explored talking therapy, recovery, meditation or yoga, and if you are anything like me, you have probably got bookcases filled with self-help and personal development books! You understand a great deal about why you feel the way you do, and yet your body still reacts in the same old ways.

You may have made big changes, such as getting sober, or experienced shifts in meditation or a spiritual awakening, and you sense that you are ready to go deeper. Underneath it all, many people who find their way here feel disconnected from their body, from the people they love and from life itself, even when they look as though they are coping well, and they long for real connection and intimacy with all three.

Somatic work offers a way back to that connection through the body, where it was first lost and where it can be found again. It unfolds gently, through safety and small, manageable steps, at a pace your body can manage.

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How is your body responding right now?

Somatic therapy starts with the body

For when insight alone hasn’t been enough

What is somatic wellness? Somatic wellness is the felt sense of being at home in your body. It is the capacity to feel what you feel, to settle after stress and to live from presence rather than protection, so that body, mind, heart and spirit can move together as one.

What is somatic therapy? Somatic therapy listens to how experiences live in the body, as well as how we think about them. When stress, trauma or overwhelm happen, especially early in life, the body adapts to survive. Over time, those survival patterns can show up as anxiety, emotional numbness, people-pleasing, perfectionism, addiction or functional freeze, and because the body holds what the mind cannot reach, they can persist even after years of insight.

My therapy is holistic, which means it works with the whole person, body, mind, heart and spirit together, rather than treating thoughts, feelings, physical symptoms or spiritual experiences as separate problems. It integrates somatic therapy with NeuroAffective Touch, a polyvagal-informed practice that works directly with the body through attuned therapeutic touch.

What is NeuroAffective Touch®? It is particularly relevant for experiences that formed before language, such as early relational wounds held in the tissues and nervous system rather than in conscious memory, which talking alone often cannot reach.

Rather than analysing or reliving the past, we work gently in the present moment. Healing happens through safety, slowness and small, manageable steps, never through diving into overwhelm, so we build safety first within the therapeutic relationship and your body can become safe enough to feel, to slow down and to say no. The body has its own intelligence, and this work honours that by inviting collaboration between your lived bodily experience and your capacity for reflection.

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Hi, I'm Laura

I am the founder of the Somatic Wellness Hub and a social worker turned somatic therapist, with over 25 years' experience across mental health, trauma and substance misuse. Alongside my professional training, I bring lived experience. For much of my life I survived through functional freeze, appearing capable on the outside while feeling numb, anxious and disconnected inside, and alcohol, overworking and perfectionism became my ways of coping. Despite a great deal of insight and spiritual curiosity, my nervous system never truly felt safe.

Everything began to change when I found a somatic path. Through sobriety, a late ADHD diagnosis, a profound spiritual awakening and years of contemplative practice, my body began to soften, and awareness moved out of my head and into lived, felt experience. I know from the inside what it is like when something opens and there is nowhere obvious to take it. Healing became less about striving and more about listening, and today I support others to find that same grounded, embodied reconnection.

Wondering if this kind of work might support you?

You feel stuck, even though you understand yourself well and have already tried a great deal.

You are looking for integration after spiritual shifts or an awakening, and are not sure where to take what has opened in you.

You are living with burnout, anxiety or a sense of having held everything together for too long.

You identify as sensitive or neurodivergent, perhaps after a late diagnosis.

You are in recovery from alcohol, overworking or other ways of coping, and are ready for something that goes deeper.

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“Laura was a revelation. For the first time I learned how to truly recognise the patterns in my body and what it feels like to be deeply relaxed.”

Sally

When understanding isn't quite enough

When your self-aware and still-stuck

Many people arrive here having already done a great deal. Therapy, reflection, reading, honest self-inquiry..... often over many years. There is real insight and genuine self-awareness, and still something persists, or remains just out of reach.

That is not a failure of the work you have done. It is often a sign that the work has reached the edge of what language and thinking alone can touch.

The body holds its own kind of knowing, and it does not always respond to understanding, however deep. It responds to presence, safety and a different quality of attention. This work begins from where you already are. It does not ask you to go back over your history or release what you have been holding all at once. Change happens gradually as the body becomes safe enough to feel, safe enough to slow down and safe enough to say no, and that safety builds slowly, through the relationship itself.

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Dive Deeper with Me

Somatic Therapist Laura Starky smiling at 1:1 client laid down in therapy room with plants, a lamp, and a colorful blanket, based in Beverley East Yorkshire

NeuroAffective Touch® Therapy in the UK

You might be wondering how NeuroAffective Touch actually works, and what a session looks like. I recently had my own experience of it, on the table with the founder of this approach, and it changed how I understand this work from the inside out.

What is Somatic Healing?

After years of therapy, self-help books and trying to heal from the neck up, I found somatic healing, a gentle way of listening to the body and helping the nervous system find safety and ease.

What to Expect in a Somatic Therapy Session (UK)

If you are thinking about somatic therapy, it helps to know what actually happens in a session. A UK somatic therapist explains the first session, pacing, touch, consent and how sessions end.