Our Approach
Integrative Mental Health
Integrative mental health is SOMA's foundational philosophy: care that engages the whole person, not just the verbal mind. Verbal processing remains powerful, but suffering does not live in one channel, and healing cannot either. We combine talk therapy with Internal Family Systems, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness, expressive practices, somatic awareness, and neuro-informed interventions.
It is not a service you choose from a list. It is the orientation running through all eight pillars below.
Explore our integrative approach →Trauma Work and EMDR
Trauma work is SOMA's clinical heart. We draw on the most well-researched modalities in the field, with EMDR at the center, used in the full eight-phase protocol. Stabilization and resourcing come first; memory work follows when your nervous system is ready. This pillar addresses single-incident, complex developmental, and chronic relational trauma, including the traumas people rarely say out loud.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
EMDR therapy (full eight-phase protocol)
Complex trauma and PTSD treatment
Sexual trauma and assault recovery
Medical, reproductive, and birth trauma
Trauma-informed care across the entire therapeutic relationship
Nervous system stabilization and resourcing
Recovery from single-incident, developmental, and chronic relational trauma
Nervous System Regulation
Trauma can keep the body in states of activation, collapse, or vigilance. This pillar translates polyvagal theory, heart rate variability, and autonomic regulation into accessible practice, helping you recognize your states, shift out of chronic dysregulation, and build the capacity for steadiness, recovery, and resilience. The same states that govern threat also govern arousal and desire. A body that cannot come off guard cannot open, which is why this pillar sits underneath the intimacy work as much as the trauma work.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Polyvagal-informed clinical care
Autonomic state tracking and shifting
Arousal and desire as nervous system states rather than matters of willpower
Recognizing freeze, fawn, and shutdown as they happen
Co-regulation within the therapeutic relationship
Psychoeducation on trauma physiology
Building long-term resilience and adaptive capacity
Somatic Therapy and Embodiment
Trauma often lives in the body, in tension, shutdown, breath, and physiological alarm. Through breath, awareness, gentle movement, and felt-sense work, we help you track and regulate your own nervous system experience. Informed by Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Gendlin (Focusing), and Porges (polyvagal theory). For many people the body became a place to leave. This pillar is the work of coming back to it, so that sensation can register as sensation again instead of as alarm.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Body-based and somatically integrated therapy
Felt-sense and focusing practices
Polyvagal-informed nervous system work
Embodiment, grounding, and orientation practices
Returning to the body as a place of sensation rather than alarm
Tracking bracing, guarding, and shutdown in the body
Restoration of a felt sense of safety, choice, and aliveness
Mind-Body Practices and Breathwork
Mind-body practices give you tools to carry between sessions. Grounded in Dr. Aday's E-RYT 500 yoga and meditation training, this pillar uses breath as a regulation tool, movement as a path to embodiment, and stillness as a doorway to integration, so healing extends beyond the session itself.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Conscious breathwork for autonomic regulation
Yoga nidra and guided relaxation practices
Somatic and gentle mindful movement
Mindfulness meditation tailored to trauma recovery
Interoception practices for reconnecting with physical sensation
Integration of contemplative practice with clinical care
Relational Restoration
Trauma rarely happens in isolation, and it rarely heals there either. Drawing on attachment theory and Internal Family Systems, we work to repair attachment patterns, build co-regulation, and use the therapeutic relationship itself as a corrective, trustworthy bond, rebuilding the capacity for safe connection. That capacity includes physical closeness. Trust and touch are built from the same material, and when one is damaged the other usually is too.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Attachment-informed care for relational and developmental trauma
Co-regulation and the therapeutic relationship as a healing agent
Internal Family Systems (IFS) and parts work
Repair of trust, boundaries, and safe connection
Intimacy, closeness, and rebuilding physical trust with a partner
Rebuilding the capacity for secure, reciprocal relationships
Emotional Sovereignty and Autonomy
Some relationships do not only hurt you. They rearrange you. You learn to read someone else's mood before your own, to manage their reactions instead of having your own, and to hand over the authorship of your inner life one small concession at a time. Emotional Sovereignty is Dr. Aday's framework for the way back, a neuroscience-informed approach to reclaiming psychological autonomy and the center of your own emotional life. The same principle holds in the body. Autonomy is not only the right to your own feelings, it is the right to your own yes and your own no.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Narcissistic abuse and coercive control recovery
Emotional Sovereignty and decentering practices
Reclamation of identity, choice, and inner authority
Bodily autonomy and consent after trauma
Recovery from religious, institutional, and relational coercion
Restoration of psychological autonomy and self-trust
Sexual Health and Intimacy
Sex is one of the first places trauma shows up and one of the last places people ask for help. The sexual response system depends on a level of nervous system safety that trauma quietly dismantles. Pain, absent desire, difficulty with arousal or orgasm, or a body that braces instead of opening are protective patterns, not personal failings. SOMA treats these as trauma care. Dr. Aday is a certified sex therapist, and this pillar brings EMDR, somatic therapy, and sex therapy into one plan of care, paced to your nervous system rather than to a schedule. It also holds the sexual changes that come with perimenopause, hormonal shifts, illness, surgery, and medication, which are common, treatable, and rarely discussed anywhere else.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Sexual pain, including vaginismus and related conditions
Desire, arousal, and orgasm difficulties
Intimacy and closeness after sexual trauma
Freeze, fawn, and shutdown responses during intimacy
Sexual changes related to perimenopause, hormonal shifts, illness, surgery, and medication
Rebuilding a relationship with your own body
Post-Traumatic Growth
Healing is not just the absence of symptoms. Moving through trauma can open into something more, a changed relationship with yourself, clearer values, deeper relationships, and renewed meaning. Post-Traumatic Growth (Tedeschi and Calhoun) is the integration phase: where stabilization, processing, and reconnection settle into a more grounded, more authored life.
Get the free guide →Core Focus Areas
Meaning-making and integration after trauma processing
Reconnection with values, identity, and purpose
Strengthening of relationships and self-trust
Building resilience and adaptive capacity for the future
Honoring change without minimizing what was endured
Consolidating gains into a sustainable, authored life
Integration
How the Pillars Intersect
Stabilization Before Processing
Nervous system regulation (Pillar 02) and mind-body practices (Pillar 04) establish a regulated baseline before deeper trauma work (Pillar 01) can be engaged without flooding. Safety comes first.
Body and Mind in Parallel
Somatic therapy (Pillar 03) and EMDR (Pillar 01) work together, somatic work releases what is held in the body while EMDR reprocesses the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the same material.
Safety Makes Closeness Possible
Nervous system regulation (Pillar 02) is what makes closeness feel survivable, and sexual health (Pillar 07) is where the same system either opens or braces. Trust and touch are built from the same material as safety.
Identity Follows Regulation
Relational restoration (Pillar 05) and emotional sovereignty (Pillar 06) become accessible as your system stabilizes. Reclaiming the self requires a regulated internal environment to grow from.
Growth Is the Integration
Post-Traumatic Growth (Pillar 08) is not a separate phase. It is the natural emergence of a system that has been through the preceding work, the whole arc made durable.
Your Personalized Pathway
Every pathway through the 8 Pillars is uniquely yours.
Not every pillar requires equal attention. Your clinical trajectory is calibrated to your specific nervous system, history, and goals.