Somatic therapy for pregnancy is a powerful approach to emotional and nervous system support during this transformative time. Whether you’re facing anxiety, past trauma, or simply feeling disconnected from your body, somatic therapy offers gentle, body-based tools to help you feel safe, grounded, and empowered. By addressing your physical and emotional experiences together, this approach nurtures deeper self-trust and supports a more connected journey through pregnancy, birth, and beyond.
Pregnancy is often spoken about in glowing terms: a miraculous, joyful, life-giving journey. But for many women, especially those navigating anxiety, high-risk pregnancies, past trauma, or complex emotional terrain, pregnancy can feel anything but idyllic.
It can feel like your body is no longer your own.
Like you’re holding your breath between appointments.
Like the system is more interested in your blood pressure than your emotional wellbeing.
Like your intuition has been drowned out by protocols, data, and fear.
If this resonates, please know: you are not alone. And nothing about what you’re feeling makes you a bad mother or broken woman. You’re having a very human reaction to a profoundly vulnerable experience—one that deserves far more care, attention, and support than many women receive.
This is where Somatic Therapy can be transformative.
Pregnancy and Emotional Health: How Trauma and Anxiety Surface.
Pregnancy doesn’t just happen in your uterus. It happens in your nervous system, your memories, your relationship to control, to safety, to your body, to your identity.
Many women find that during pregnancy:
- Past traumas resurface—sometimes vividly.
- Anxiety and hypervigilance increase, especially with medicalised or high-risk care.
- They feel disconnected from their changing bodies—objectified, medicalised, or even betrayed by them.
- There’s a deep sense of emotional overwhelm… and nowhere to put it.
- The pressure to feel “excited” and “grateful” leaves little room for the complexity of real emotions.
And while friends and professionals may offer practical advice, what’s often missing is someone who can sit with you in that emotional and embodied experience. Someone who helps you reconnect with yourself—not to manage or fix you, but to support you in feeling safe again. To help you remember that your body is not the enemy. That your intuition matters. That you are not alone inside this experience.
What Is Somatic Therapy in Pregnancy and Why It Matters.
Somatic therapy is an approach that honours the body as the place where emotion, memory, trauma, and healing live. It’s not just talk therapy. It’s not prescriptive advice. It’s a gentle but powerful way of coming home to yourself.
Pregnancy heightens your nervous system sensitivity—physically, emotionally, energetically. You’re more open than usual, often more vulnerable. If you’ve ever felt dysregulated, anxious, numb, overwhelmed, or unsafe in your body, pregnancy can amplify these sensations.
Somatic therapy uses tools like:
- Breathwork to regulate and soothe the nervous system
- Touch (where appropriate and consented to) to help create a sense of groundedness and trust in the body
- Movement and posture awareness to release stored tension and cultivate agency
- Guided body awareness to explore where emotions or beliefs may be held physically
- Resourcing and safety-building practices to create stability and strength internally
This work isn’t about fixing you. It’s about nurturing the connection to yourself, so you can begin to feel safe within. And from that safety comes something incredibly powerful: trust—in your body, in your instincts, and eventually, in your ability to birth, to bond, to mother.
Building Inner Safety in Pregnancy Through Somatic Support.
What we cultivate in pregnancy isn’t just for the here and now. The internal safety and connection we build through somatic work is what fosters autonomy in birth—a sense that, even if things change or become medicalised, you remain centred in yourself. It’s what supports strong attachment to your baby, confidence in your intuition, and resilience in the early days of motherhood.
When your nervous system feels resourced, when you have a felt sense of “I am safe” or “I can cope”, everything shifts:
- Birth becomes something you move with, not endure.
- You can respond instead of react.
- Your connection to your baby is rooted in presence, not performance.
- You begin to parent from a place of embodied confidence, not anxiety.
A Personal Note
I didn’t come to this work just through training—I came to it through my own lived experience. During my pregnancy, my unresolved PTSD resurfaced in a way that felt all-consuming. I wasn’t prepared for how raw, exposed, and dysregulated I would feel. And I certainly wasn’t offered the kind of care I needed to make sense of it all.
In the absence of real, embodied support, I made the difficult decision to end the pregnancy. It’s a decision that still carries grief, but also clarity. What I needed at the time was safety, nervous system regulation, connection to my body—and none of that was offered to me.
That experience is a big part of why I do this work. Not just to help women “cope,” but to help them feel supported, seen, and empowered in a system that so often misses the depth of what they’re carrying. You deserve more than clinical care. You deserve compassionate, trauma-informed support that meets all of who you are.
Why Trauma-Informed Prenatal Care Matters.
The NHS works hard and saves lives—but it is not designed to meet the emotional, embodied, and trauma-informed needs of pregnancy. Many women find themselves falling through the gaps, told they’re “fine” when inside they’re far from it.
In my practice, I offer the kind of care I believe every woman deserves:
- Deep listening without judgment.
- Support for your nervous system, not just your symptoms.
- Space to feel—whatever is true for you.
- A return to your own inner knowing.
Because the most powerful thing I can offer you is not advice. It’s connection—to your body, to your voice, to your experience. From that place, your next steps (in birth, in motherhood, in life) become clear and rooted in your truth.
Upcoming Posts on Prenatal Somatic Therapy & Pregnancy Support.
In upcoming posts, I’ll dive deeper into some of these topics:
- Navigating prenatal anxiety through the body
- How trauma often resurfaces during pregnancy—and how to work with it
- Making peace with a changing body: identity, embodiment, and self-image
- Somatic tools for high-risk pregnancies and medicalised birth journeys
- Supporting your nervous system for labour, birth, and beyond
But for now, know this:
You are not alone.
You are not failing.
And your experience is valid—no matter how messy, complex, or different from what you expected.
Somatic therapy is not just about managing symptoms. It’s about reclaiming your connection to self. And from there, building a grounded, empowered path through pregnancy, birth, and beyond.
If you’re interested in exploring somatic therapy for pregnancy or prenatal trauma support, check out my pregnancy support services.
Finally before I leave you today, I want to give you 3 simple Mindfulness Practices to Support You Right Now.
If anything you’ve read here feels familiar, I want to offer you something tangible—a few simple tools you can try right now to begin reconnecting with your body and creating a sense of safety inside.
These are small practices, but they’re not insignificant. Practised regularly, they help regulate your nervous system and build internal trust.
1. Hand on Heart + Belly
- Sit or lie somewhere comfortable.
- Place one hand over your heart, one over your lower belly.
- Notice the warmth and weight of your hands.
- Breathe gently. On each exhale, invite a softening. Imagine your hands saying: “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
- Stay for 2–5 minutes. Let your body feel held.
2. 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique
Use this when you feel anxious, ungrounded, or disconnected.
- 5 things you can see
- 4 things you can touch
- 3 things you can hear
- 2 things you can smell
- 1 thing you can taste or are grateful for
This helps anchor your awareness in the present and remind your nervous system that you are safe right now.
3. Orienting
- Sit or stand somewhere quiet.
- Slowly turn your head and eyes to look around the space you’re in.
- Let your eyes land on something neutral or pleasant (a plant, a soft blanket, a piece of art).
- Let yourself take it in. This tells your nervous system: There is no danger here.
- Repeat as needed when you feel tense or on edge.
For a Brucey bonus- I am also recommending my favorite FREE meditation app- insight timer. You can find it here and enjoy a whole host of talented teachers providing amazing guided meditations, relaxing soundscapes and sound healings- even talks!
Let me know your favourite exercise in the comments below. Until next time, much love x
