Somatic Internal Family Systems
Somatic IFS is the integration of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy with body-based practices that help us access, understand, and heal the nervous system’s role in trauma and inner conflict. While traditional IFS emphasizes getting to know our parts—those subpersonalities within us that carry burdens, protect us, or long for connection—Somatic IFS brings the body into the conversation.
We don't just talk to parts. We feel them. We breathe with them. We notice where they live in our muscles, guts, throats, and hearts.
As much as 80% of trauma is stored in the body. So are habits of protection, shame, vigilance, and self-rejection. Talk alone can't reach what’s been buried in our tissues.
Somatic IFS recognizes that our body is not just a vehicle for experience—it is an active participant in our internal system. It holds the frozen impulses of the past and the wisdom needed for present healing. That tension in your jaw or your upset stomach are likely a part trying to communicate with you.
In a Somatic IFS session, we still begin with the foundational IFS questions:
What part needs your attention right now?
How do you feel toward it? (Note: this is specifically not “about” it)
What does it want you to know?
But instead of staying in the realm of ideas, we anchor in the body:
Somatic Awareness: We tune in to sensation such as tightness, heat, movement, and stillness as the language of parts.
Conscious Breathing: Breath becomes a bridge to deeper presence and regulation.
Radical Resonance: We practice attuning to the felt sense of a part with gentleness and respect.
Mindful Movement: When the body wants to move, we let it. Sometimes healing comes not through words, but through a shift in posture, a tremble, a gesture finally completed.
Attuned Touch (when appropriate and consensual): Supports re-patterning safety and co-regulation.
Somatic IFS isn’t about fixing or forcing change. It’s about creating space for self-energy—that calm, curious, compassionate presence at the core of every person—to enter even the most dysregulated body states. As we befriend our protectors and unburden our exiles, we also re-pattern the body to feel safer, more open, and more integrated.
Many clients know something is wrong, but they can’t name it. They feel numb, frozen, or “too much” all the time. Somatic IFS gives them another way in—through breath, sensation, movement, and presence. It’s not just insight; it’s embodied transformation.
In this approach, we don’t leave the body behind. We lead with it because true healing is not just a mental shift, but a full-body return to wholeness.
For me, adding somatic work allows me to integrate a lifetime of dance and movement along with an awareness of how the body can communicate if we listen. I’m excited to do more of this work with clients. In case you are wondering, while I’d love to have you come to my office, Somatic IFS can be done online.
