Gaining New Clients & Building Community

How Somatic Training Can Build Your Practice (Without Feeling Like Marketing)

Every once in a while I end up reading through therapist groups just to get a pulse on what's being talked about. Lately I've noticed something I didn't used to see nearly as often. Somebody will ask, "What's a good somatic intervention for trauma?" and within a few minutes there are dozens of responses.

I love that people are interested. Really, I do.

What keeps bouncing around in my head though is that if someone asked, "What's a good intervention for depression?" I don't think we'd answer it with one sentence. We'd probably ask a few questions first. We'd wonder who the client is, what else is going on, what we've already tried.

Maybe that's where we're in kind of an awkward stage right now. Therapists know the conversation has moved toward the nervous system and bottom up therapies, but a lot of folks were never formally taught how to think through it. So we collect little pieces from different places. One breathing exercise here. One movement there. A vagus nerve video on YouTube. A weekend training somewhere else.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's how most of us learn.

At some point though, I think there comes a day where you stop asking, "What's another intervention?" and start asking,

I also think clients are becoming surprisingly sophisticated. They'll come into therapy talking about polyvagal theory, fascia, the vagus nerve, or something they saw on TikTok the night before. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're.....creative. Either way, they're interested in how their body fits into healing.

That isn't a trend I see slowing down. Actually, I think we're still at the beginning of it.

One thing I've noticed with our graduates is that many of them end up using their training in ways they never expected. Yes, they bring it into the therapy room, but that's almost the obvious part.

Some of them start a chair yoga class at a senior center. One teaches at a recreation center. Another teaches at a yoga studio one evening a week because she missed being around people when nobody was talking about trauma. We laughed about that because I knew exactly what she meant.

Over time, some of those people become therapy clients. Some never do. Yet I think that's almost beside the point.

I've also watched graduates rediscover a part of themselves that they may have lost. Therapy can become very serious work. It should be serious work. But teaching one yoga class a week has a completely different feel. You get to laugh with people. You watch someone who's sixty-five touch their toes for the first time in years and the whole room claps. It's a balancing type of energy their bringing into their lives that helps reduce the burnout that's so prevelent in this field right now.

When I started Clinical Yoga Institute, I wasn't thinking, "This will help people market their practice." I was thinking, "I wish more therapists understood the body this way."

The marketing part happened almost by accident.

People are looking for therapists who understand trauma. Increasingly, they're also looking for therapists who understand what trauma looks like when it shows up in breathing, posture, movement, tension, and the nervous system.

I believe it's something your clients require, and it also aids the therapist in becoming more fulfilled in their own lives. Learn More

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