How Can Somatic Therapy Help Women Heal Their Relationship With Their Bodies?
Your body isn't the problem, the standard is. But sometimes knowing that isn’t enough. Somatic therapy goes deeper to help women transform their relationships with their bodies by starting at the root.
3 min read
Key points:
Many women in in a large city like NYC can feel body shame, food guilt, or a feeling of disconnection from their bodies
By reframing the invisible battles we fight with our bodies, we can learn to stop constantly criticizing ourselves
We can learn to understand our bodies as living records, identify outside intergenerational messages about food, size, worth, etc., contrast hormonal shifts with unwritten cultural rules, and change how we move, eat and rest
Somatic therapy is a healthy place to get to the root of women’s relationships with their bodies
If you’re like many women living in New York, you might find yourself struggling with body shame, food guilt, or a feeling of disconnection from your body. Maybe you’ve spent years trying to control or fix it, whether that’s through dieting, pushing through workouts, or comparing yourself to others. The net result, unfortunately, is that you only feel more distant from yourself.
At Downtown Somatic Therapy, we help women in New York reconnect to themselves through somatic and relational approaches that focus on the mind-body connection. Our therapists help clients:
Name the invisible battle many of us feel with our bodies:
Understand the body as a living record, as home, and as an ally
Unpack intergenerational messages about food, size, worth, and relational safety
Contrast hormonal shifts with internalized rules that fuel comparison or control
Practice reframing and somatically reflecting on how we choose to move, eat, and rest
1. Facing The Invisible Battle With Our Bodies
We see women every day navigating body shame and appearance pressure. As Daniela Krausz, psychotherapist and personal trainer puts it, “Many of the women I work with don’t meet the clinical definition of an eating disorder, but they feel stuck in a constant battle with their body to be smaller”.
This struggle shows up in different ways. Maybe it looks like feeling guilty after eating certain foods, comparing your body to others, or thinking you have to "make up" for what you ate. Maybe you use movement and exercise to curb those feelings, which can feel more like controlling your body than caring for it.
This idea that something is wrong with our bodies shows up for people of all genders, gender expressions, sexualities, identities, ages, backgrounds, and body types. In her work, Krausz most often supports people who identify as women across their lifespans, from those in their twenties, to postpartum mothers, to women navigating perimenopause and menopause.
Each stage of life brings hormonal changes like shifts in weight, mood, and energy. Yet our culture still insists that women stay the same in shape, size, and appearance no matter what season of life they’re in. Underneath that expectation is a deeper story: that smaller is better, that control equals safety, and that self-worth must be earned.
So how can therapy, especially somatic therapy, help you move beyond this cycle?
2. Understanding the Body as a Living Record
In somatic therapy, your body isn’t seen as a problem to solve. Your body is a vital living record of your experiences, emotions, and relationships. In this work, you’ll learn to notice the mind-body connection: how sensations, posture, and breath reflect your inner world. Rather than trying to change your body, we start from the premise that understanding and accepting your history will allow you to renegotiate your relationship to yourself.
Daniela couples somatic therapy with relational therapy, which emphasizes the healing power of connection: “when we feel safe, seen, and supported, this creates a space for true healing and growth.”
This can feel foreign and even challenging to women who have long felt estranged from their bodies. According to Daniela, “when a client says they hate a part of their body, that feeling can almost always be traced back to something deeper.” For example, it could be connected to times she was praised for making herself smaller, when she was rejected for not, or those moments where she felt love or acceptance based on the way she looked.
Through gentle awareness and creating a space to safely explore emotions, and drawing from modalities like AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) and IFS (Internal Family Systems), therapy can help clients reconnect with their bodies, and begin to view their body as an ally rather than an enemy. For example, a client who notices tightness in her chest when looking in the mirror might learn to pause, breathe, and identify the emotion underneath (such as grief, fear, or longing) and meet it with compassion and curiosity instead of criticism.
You don’t have to “love” your body to begin this work; you can start by listening.
3. Recognizing the Intergenerational Messages You’ve Inherited
Many women worry about passing their body image struggles down to their children. As a trainer and a therapist, Daniela Krausz hears this often.
So many of us grew up watching mothers and grandmothers critique their own bodies quietly in the mirror, aloud to their partners, and sometimes to their children. These spoken and unspoken messages shape how we see ourselves.
Daniela works with clients to trace how those messages may have taken root and begin to release what isn’t theirs to carry. By recognizing that these messages are inherited rather than innate, women can begin to depersonalize them and make space for new narratives of worth.
4. Navigating Hormonal Shifts and Societal Standards
Here’s something many people don’t know: the modern world is built around a 24-hour male hormonal cycle. Women’s hormones fluctuate across roughly 28 days and shift dramatically throughout life.
When women push themselves to eat, work, and move the same way every day, they may be working against their own biology. Somatic therapy helps clients tune into their body’s rhythm and honor change in energy, rest, and desire.
When women begin to honor these natural fluctuations, they often develop a greater compassion for themselves. This attunement can allow movement and nourishment to start feeling supportive rather than forced.
5. An Exercise in Shifting Narratives & Beliefs Around Food, Movement, and Rest
Below you’ll find some example narratives and beliefs Daniela hears from her clients, and some suggested gentle reframes.
As you read through this exercise, an invitation: notice any sensations in your body as you read the self-critical thoughts and gentle reframes below. Do you feel any sensation come up? Do you feel a closing or clenching, or something more expansive, warm, and open? Is there some familiarity to the sensation? Sit for a moment and see what comes up.
| Self-Critical Thought | Gentle Reframe |
|---|---|
| “I need to work out because I ate too much.” | “Movement can be a way to care for my body, not punish it.” |
| “I’ll be happier once I lose weight.” | “I deserve to feel good now, not only when I meet a goal.” |
| “I hate my (insert body part here).” | “This is the body that carries me through my life.” |
| “I’m lazy if I skip the gym.” | “Rest is part of honoring my body, too.” |
| “My body is changing and I can’t control it.” | “My body is responding to life. Maybe I can learn to listen.” |
Maybe that exercise brought some greater awareness to how you think of your body and yourself as you move through your day. Maybe some of those reframes brought a gentle flicker of warmth, were met with some sort of resistance, or something else entirely.
Whatever came up for you is worth noticing. As Daniela puts it, “Therapy is a space to explore your relationship with your body in a new way without shame, judgment, or pressure to fix. Together, this kind of exploration, when done with a trusted and caring therapist, can help us start living in our bodies with curiosity instead of criticism.
And when we do this, we make space for radical peace.