NeuroAffective Touch® Therapy in the UK

What to expect in a NeuroAffective Touch® session

NeuroAffective Touch® is a somatic approach that brings together relational psychotherapy with the therapeutic use of attuned, fully clothed touch. In this post I share what a session can feel like from the inside, including my own experience on the table with the founder of the approach, and what you can expect if you choose to work with me in Beverley, East Yorkshire or online.

What is NeuroAffective Touch®?

NeuroAffective Touch® (NATouch) is a polyvagal-informed somatic approach developed by Dr Aline LaPierre. It works with the body directly rather than relying on talking alone, so that the parts of you that formed before language, the parts that hold the earliest imprints of safety and connection, have a way of being reached and supported. You can read a fuller introduction on my page What Is NeuroAffective Touch®?

Perhaps you know yourself well already, having done a good deal of talking therapy or self-development work over the years, and yet your nervous system still stays switched on even when nothing is obviously wrong. Perhaps you carry a quiet sense of holding everything together, or you have noticed yourself reaching for the things that take the edge off, such as a drink at the end of the day, overwork or staying too busy to feel. Often this shows up as pain, whether a physical pain with no clear cause, such as tight shoulders, a clenched jaw or an ache that moves around the body, or an emotional pain that surfaces at moments that do not seem to warrant it.

This kind of protective holding is sometimes called armouring, the tension we build, often without realising, to survive what could not otherwise be avoided at the time. For many people, this is the piece that has been missing. Understanding your patterns intellectually matters, and it can only take you so far, because some of what we carry was never stored as a story with words attached. It was stored in the armouring itself, in bracing, pain and a kind of readiness that never quite switched off, and this is the layer that somatic work is able to reach.

Why work with the body rather than talking alone?

This understanding is supported by research as well as clinical experience. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has argued that emotions begin as changes in the state of the body, which the brain then maps and interprets. The psychologist Eugene Gendlin found something similar in his research into what made therapy work, since the best predictor of good outcomes was whether a client could access what he called the felt sense, an inner bodily knowing that needs time to form before it can be understood. Both point to the same thing, which is that the body often knows before the mind has words for it, and healing tends to follow that order.

Research into touch itself adds another layer to this understanding. In 2009, a study published in Nature Neuroscience found that a particular type of nerve in the skin, known as C-tactile fibres, responds most strongly to slow, gentle touch, which is also the touch people find most pleasant, and the researchers suggested these nerves are likely to signal caring, social contact. More recently, a 2021 review of research into Somatic Experiencing, published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, found that clients and practitioners identified the careful use of touch as one of the key factors in what helps, although the authors note that more rigorous studies are still needed.

What is a NeuroAffective Touch® session like? My own experience

I want to share something of what this can look like, because I think it is more useful than trying to explain it in the abstract. Recently I was on the table myself, in a demonstration session with Dr Aline LaPierre. The session began at the thoracic inlet, the gateway where throat meets chest, where so many of us hold the bracing that keeps overwhelming feeling contained. Rather than following a fixed protocol, Aline followed her own intuition, and her hands moved to the back of the heart. There, she found what I can only describe as a portal, a place where I had been carrying months of muscular tension and pain, the same kind of armouring I have just described.

What came next arrived in waves. My mind labelled it grief, although labelling is really the wrong word, because my mind was barely involved. A guttural cry moved through me in surges, rising and softening and rising again, and I was able to feel all of it because Aline was there, present and witnessing without trying to shape or hurry what was happening. I could not have done this alone, and her presence alongside me was what allowed my body to trust that it was safe enough to let go this far.

This points to something important about how this work supports change. The practitioner's role is to create enough safety that your own body can do what it already knows how to do, in its own time and its own way.

Towards the end of the session, something shifted again. My body began to tremor, with small jerking movements moving through me that I did not choose and could not have stopped. This was my nervous system completing something. Survival responses that never had the chance to finish, and protective reflexes that had to be held rather than expressed, gradually find their way to discharge once the body senses enough safety to let them move, so the trembling was a sign that something long held was finally able to release.

After the tremoring, new sensation arrived in various places in my body. I could sense a new energy, the life force arriving, moving into places that had been closed for a very long time. It felt like arrival, as though something in me that had been waiting was finally being met.

In the time since, I have come to understand this as touching something close to the root of my own story. Early in life, before we have language, we are asking a question underneath everything else. Am I safe here? Do I belong? Am I wanted? When those questions go unanswered for long enough, the body organises itself around their absence, and it carries that organisation forward, often for decades and often without our conscious awareness. What I experienced on that table felt like those questions finally being answered through the body itself.

Yes, I exist.

Yes, I am loved.

Yes, my needs are important.

I felt these answers directly in my body, as something lived rather than something I thought.

What surprised me most was the days that followed. I felt more confident and more at home in my own body, as though I had quietly stopped minimising the space I take up. The biggest shift was in how I spoke with people. I noticed I had stopped filtering myself, working out in advance what I was going to say, rehearsing it internally and then never quite saying the thing. I was simply saying it as it arose, without the usual editing process running underneath.

This is often what people notice as this work unfolds, whether in a single significant session or gradually across many. A new sense of steadiness begins to emerge, as there is more room and more capacity to meet whatever arises, even when old patterns still visit. People often describe feeling more confident, more at home in their bodies, more able to say what they actually mean and more in touch with a felt sense of aliveness that had quietly gone missing along the way. This tends to happen slowly, layer by layer, and because it is lived and felt in the body, it is where lasting change tends to take root.

How does NeuroAffective Touch® help heal developmental trauma?

The following is written by Dr Aline LaPierre, founder of NeuroAffective Touch®.

NeuroAffective Touch® helps repair developmental trauma by offering clients the fundamental missing nonverbal experiences of connection, support, attunement, and nurturing. Sessions help build an in-the-body, bottom-up connection to physical sensations of trust and comfort that generate new emotional and cognitive options, and foster an enriched top-down life experience.

We help clients who suffer from nonverbal or preverbal distress, as reflected in difficulties with: experiencing that they actually exist, developing autonomic regulation and soothing themselves, trusting relationship, identifying and communicating their needs, and feeling trapped in states of self-judgment, shame, and guilt. NeuroAffective Touch® demystifies the seemingly endless number of emotional and cognitive problems that result from developmental, emotional, and relational distress and trauma. Without realising it, many individuals develop adaptive behaviour patterns that work against them.

NeuroAffective Touch® identifies these dysfunctional patterns and shows how what happens at each stage of development can impair the capacity to connect with self and others, and negatively affect future relationships and life choices.

What happens in a NeuroAffective Touch® session with me?

If you have not experienced somatic touch work before, it may help to say plainly what a session involves. We often begin with something called a nurture surround, which builds your capacity to notice what is happening inside you, moment to moment, while you get used to something many people find surprisingly difficult at first, being asked what you like and what you do not like, and having your answer genuinely matter. I might place heated flaxseed pillows around your body for extra support, gently inviting it to yield into the support of the table or chair and into the support of the therapist. Learning to notice and voice a need or preference, even a small one, is often an important part of the work in itself, especially for anyone who learned early on that their needs were not the priority.

Dialogue is woven through the sessions too. Understanding your history, including any adverse childhood experiences and earlier trauma, helps me know what your body may be carrying and what it needs from me in return. From there, we follow the body, letting it lead rather than directing it towards a particular outcome.

Underneath all of this, we are gradually building a different relationship between your mind and your body. Aline describes this as a bit like a couple who cannot divorce, two parts that once knew each other closely but have long since stopped speaking and rarely even occupy the same room. Through this work, we get curious about that relationship, helping the mind let go of its usual position of judging, managing and overriding, and learn instead to hold the body with care and curiosity, so that its critical stance towards the body can slowly begin to soften.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)

Do I stay clothed?

Yes, you remain fully clothed throughout every session, whether you are lying on a therapy table or sitting in a chair, and the pace is always yours to set.

Do I have to receive touch?

Table work is never obligatory. You can benefit from NeuroAffective Touch® whether or not touch itself becomes part of our sessions, and it may be something we work towards over weeks or months, always with your consent.

Can this work happen online?

Direct hands-on touch requires an in-person session in Beverley, although the same principles of tracking sensation, pacing and attuned presence can be adapted for online work through guided self-touch and verbal tracking together.

Taking a next step

If this speaks to something you recognise in yourself and you are curious about what this work could offer you, I would love to hear from you. One to one somatic therapy, including NeuroAffective Touch®, offers a relational, body-based space that works with your nervous system directly, with care, honesty and without judgement. Sessions are available online and in person in Beverley, East Yorkshire, and you are warmly welcome to book a free connection call.

BOOK A FREE CONNECTION CALL HERE

If you would rather explore at your own pace, the Sunday Pause is a gentle weekly email with a moment of reflection and a short practice to help your nervous system soften and reconnect. You are warmly welcome to sign up using this form below.

About the author

Laura Starky is an integrative somatic therapist based in Beverley, East Yorkshire, offering sessions in person and online. Her path into this work began in pre-hospital emergency care and continued through 25 years in social work across child protection, substance misuse and mental health. Her somatic training began with ISOHH and has since deepened through NeuroAffective Touch® training with Dr Aline LaPierre. She holds ACCPH Senior Member accreditation and works under regular professional supervision. Laura is also a qualified yoga and meditation teacher and a committed practitioner of contemplative practice, rooted mainly in the non-dual tradition of Shaiva Tantra.

Last updated: September 2026

Resources and references

Research

Kuhfuß, M., Maldei, T., Hetmanek, A. and Baumann, N. (2021) Somatic experiencing: effectiveness and key factors of a body-oriented trauma therapy. A scoping literature review. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 12(1), 1929023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2021.1929023

Löken, L. S., Wessberg, J., Morrison, I., McGlone, F. and Olausson, H. (2009) Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 12(5), pp. 547–548. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2312

Books

Damasio, A. (1994) Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.

Gendlin, E. T. (1978) Focusing. New York: Bantam Books.

Heller, L. and LaPierre, A. (2012) Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Further resources

The NeuroAffective Touch® Institute: neuroaffectivetouch.com