JUNE 29 • 2023 | 39

HEALTH

A 

new form of mental health 
therapy is making waves in 
Michigan.
While somatic experiencing is 
common in states like Illinois and 
Arizona, it’s just now expanding in 
Metro Detroit. Oak Park-based mental 
health therapist Sarah Rollins, 33, 
owner of Embodied Wellness, PLLC, 
believes this unique therapy is poised to 
grow.
She’s also one of the few somatic 
experiencing practitioners in Michigan.
“Somatic experiencing is a modality 
that integrates the body into healing,” 
Rollins says. “It isn’t traditional talk 
therapy. It adds sensations of the body 
into the experience.”
By using guided imagery, 
understanding how the nervous system 
plays a role in life experiences and how 
physical symptoms of stress and anxiety 
are connected to the brain, somatic 
experiencing aims to heal the body both 
inside and outside.
“We’re working with the body’s 
natural self-protection responses,” 
Rollins explains. These include fight 
and flight, which many people have 
heard of, but a lesser-known response 
that somatic experiencing addresses is 
freeze, or a physical immobility.
Somatic experiencing uses techniques 
to help self-protection responses get 
“less stuck in the body,” Rollins says, 
and to break free of symptoms like chest 
tightness and other often-unwanted 
physical sensations that go along with 
anxiety, depression and trauma.

BEING AWARE OF THE BODY
One of the main benefits of this 
practice, Rollins explains, is that it 
allows people to integrate what they 
know cognitively, or in the brain, and 
what they know in their bodies.
“People tend to move through the 

world in a more present and aware way 
after they’ve engaged in somatic work,” 
she says. “They’re less dissociated. They 
can engage more with people, so they 
feel more connected to others and to 
themselves.”
It also helps people better prepare and 
cope with life stressors. “Life is hard 
sometimes,” Rollins admits. “We can 
navigate and surf those waves better 
[with somatic experiencing] than in just 
cognitive work because we’re integrating 
the body and not just the mind.”
Somatic experiencing can be used for 
a variety of mental health needs, such 
as healing trauma, alleviating symptoms 
of depression and anxiety or to combat 
insomnia. Rollins says this therapy is 
best for anyone interested in going a 
little deeper into their healing.
It’s for “anyone who wants to 
understand what’s going on in their 
body,” she adds.
Rollins explains that when people 
experience trauma, it’s experienced both 
internally and externally. “If we’re only 
doing therapy that focuses on the mind, 
we’re ignoring a huge aspect of healing,” 

she says, adding, “A lot of trauma 
happens specifically to the body.”

A GROWING NEED
Rollins, who went to Temple Beth 
El and was one of the Jewish News 
36 Under 36, first saw the need for 
a therapy like somatic experiencing 
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a University of Michigan graduate 
and clinical social worker in practice 
for about 10 years, Rollins bore witness 
to the drastic need for increased mental 
health care as the pandemic caused 
unprecedented levels of stress and 
anxiety.
She also noticed a gap in healing as 
people addressed internal symptoms, 
like racing thoughts, but didn’t address 
external symptoms such as persistent 
aches and pains, fast breathing and even 
stomach churning that can stem from 
anxiety and depression.
When a friend clued her in to somatic 
experiencing, Rollins began to do 
research and picked up a book written 
by psychotherapist Peter Levine, the 
founder of the therapy.
“Everything that he was saying 
resonated with what I was already 
thinking,” she recalls. “I just didn’t have 
the words to put to the experience.”
Now, she anticipates somatic 
experiencing will continue to grow in 
popularity, thanks to its many benefits 
and its ability to heal the body as a 
whole, rather than in parts.
Instead of using it as a last-resort 
therapy after trying traditional talk 
therapy and still feeling the physical 
symptoms, Rollins hopes people can 
turn to somatic experiencing as a first-
line approach — to view their bodies as 
something to attend to right away.
“We’re not just floating heads,” she 
says. “Our bodies go with us throughout 
the world.” 

Somatic experiencing is a new form of mental health therapy.
Healing Both Brain and Body

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Sarah 
Rollins

