Where Somatic Psychotherapy & Body-Oriented-Practice Meet
Soma Mind is a professional platform dedicated to integrating embodied knowledge, clinical dialogue, and trauma-informed learning across disciplines.
About
Soma Mind
Soma Mind is Australia’s first and only platform dedicated to somatic, body-oriented professional development, trainings, workshops and events.
We curate workshops, supervision groups, and learning experiences for therapists, body workers, yoga therapists, movement practitioners, and allied health professionals seeking to deepen their trauma-informed practice through the body.
Focusing exclusively on somatic, body-oriented approaches to trauma we are Australia’s first national platform dedicated showcasing professional development education and professional development in the field of somatic psychotherapy and body-oriented approaches.
We offer access to high-quality, international somatic educators whose work supports nervous system regulation, embodiment, and clinically relevant integration of somatic approaches into trauma informed care and practice.
Soma Mind is informed by relational and phenomenological traditions that view meaning, ethics and identity as arising in relationship rather than isolation. ( Buber, 1958; Hadot, 1995)
Meet
Our Founder
Soma Mind was founded from my experiences as a therapist working in the field of trauma, discovering and somatic and body-oriented approaches to healing trauma.
My early training as a Psychotherapist, like many clinicians, was grounded primarily in cognitive and dialogical approaches. Language, insight, and relational meaning-making were central to the work. Whilst these frameworks served me well and offered important tools, it became increasingly clear in my practice that they were often insufficient when working with trauma, particularly early developmental and complex trauma. Word’s although powerful, were not enough. What was missing was the body.
Since my days as an early career therapist I have trainer in a number of somatic modalities. I am a certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist and consultant and Trainer with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI) and deliver Sensorimotor Psychotherapy trainings in Australia. I am also a Trainer and Facilitator for the Blue Knot Foundation ~The National Centre for excellence in Complex Trauma in Australia.
So Why Soma Mind? Soma Mind literally means = Body + Mind
Soma σῶμα ~ from the Greek, meaning ‘the living body’ represents the body as felt, experienced, and known from within.
Mind νοῦς ~ the greek word that refers to our intellect and understanding. Used philosophically to speak to the divine or human intellect
Soma Mind exists to support the field by creating a dedicated platform for somatic education bringing together psychotherapy-informed trainings, body-based practices, and interdisciplinary learning that centre the nervous system, embodiment, and trauma-informed care.
May hope is that Soma Mind is a platform that can elevate somatic practice, support clinicians at all stages of their development, and foster spaces where embodied knowledge is valued alongside clinical reasoning.
Soma Mind reflects my ongoing commitment to advancing somatic trauma work in Australia through education, collaboration, and integrity holding the body not as an adjunct to therapy, but as central to the healing process.
Hello, Im so glad you are here!
Somatic therapy addresses the body as well as the mind, recognizing that the body holds the legacy of trauma
~ Pat Ogden
Why Somatic, Body OrientedTrainings?
Psychological trauma is the unique individual experience of an event, a series of events, or a set of enduring conditions, in which, the individual’s ability to integrate his or her emotional experience is overwhelmed (i.e., a person’s ability to stay present, understand what is happening, integrate the feelings, and make sense of the experience. Saakvitne et al, 2000.
Trauma is not just the event. When we work with trauma, what are we working with? The event is over, however we are working with the impacts of that event. Trauma happens inside the body, when something is too fast, too soon, too much or not enough as in the case of childhood neglect. Its is this inability to integrate our experiences that results in the symptoms of trauma.
Research shows that traumatic stress is organised through autonomic regulation, sensation, movement, and implicit memory, often outside conscious awareness. Somatic and body-focused trainings equip professionals with practical, trauma-informed methods for working directly with these processes, supporting regulation, integration, and embodied safety alongside cognitive and relational approaches.
Honouring Ancient & Indigenous Traditions
Somatic psychotherapy reflects a truth long known within Indigenous and traditional wisdom systems: that the body is not separate from the mind, and that healing occurs through relationship, rhythm, regulation, and embodied presence.
Contemporary neuroscience and trauma research have since validated what these traditions have always held—that the nervous system carries experience, and that transformation requires engaging the body as an active participant in healing. Soma Mind recognises that many of the modern teachings we have today originate from ancient wisdom traditions and indigenous healers.