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Felicia Samata Mihich is a Los Angeles–based Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner.

Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a gentle, body-based therapeutic approach that helps relieve anxiety, stress, and pain while restoring a sense of presence, relaxed alertness, and curiosity for life. This work supports your natural capacity to reconnect with your authentic Self, fostering emotional stability, resilience, and grounded embodiment.

Somatic Experiencing honors the dynamic interrelationship of all aspects of the human experience—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. By cultivating awareness of internal sensations, healing can occur across multiple interconnected levels.

SE is effective in addressing the effects of accumulated stress from everyday life, shock trauma, and the lingering impacts of emotional, relational, and developmental trauma. By supporting healthy nervous system regulation, Somatic Experiencing works at the root of stress patterning, often producing tangible and lasting change.

Symptoms of accumulated stress or trauma may include anxiety, depression, fear, chronic pain, dissociation, loss of self, or a diminished connection to the body.

Healing Through Somatic Experiencing®

Somatic Experiencing therapy supports the resolution of trauma-related symptoms by:

  • Releasing trauma and injury held in the body

  • Re-establishing a sense of safety and repairing breached boundaries

  • Developing somatic mindfulness and present-moment awareness

  • Creating conditions that allow the nervous system to return to regulation

  • Strengthening connection to organic intelligence and innate healing capacity

  • Addressing relational patterns rooted in early life coping strategies

How I Work

Somatic Experiencing is similar to psychotherapy, yet distinct in its emphasis on bodily awareness. Sessions gently integrate attention to physical sensations alongside emotional experiences and personal narrative. This may include exploration of memories, images, spontaneous movements, gestures, or shifts in posture. Imagination is also used as a powerful and essential tool for healing.

The goal of this experiential process is to renegotiate past traumatic experiences that have been stored in the body at a neurobiological level. As inhibited life energy is gradually released, self-protective responses find completion, and distorted self-perceptions dissolve, a renewed sense of vitality and possibility can emerge.

In addition to my private practice, I serve as an assistant in the national Somatic Experiencing® training programs in Los Angeles and have coordinated and hosted SE trainings and workshops for over a decade.

Sessions are conducted via Zoom on a HIPAA-compliant platform.
Please contact me to schedule an appointment.

How Somatic Experiencing® Was Developed

Wild animals are consistently able to return to normal functioning after traumatic experiences and rarely develop the long-term symptoms commonly seen in humans.

Dr. Peter A. Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, developed this approach by studying the innate wisdom of nature—particularly how animals recover from life-threatening events. He sought to understand why humans tend to store trauma in the nervous system while animals instinctively discharge survival energy and return to equilibrium.

With over 50 years of research and clinical application, Somatic Experiencing is now practiced worldwide as an effective trauma-resolution modality, offering a pathway back to wholeness and embodied well-being.

Somatic Experiencing® Compared to Other Approaches

Psychotherapy
Somatic Experiencing is an effective complement to psychotherapy. By including bodily experience alongside narrative, clients are less likely to become re-traumatized through repeated retelling and more likely to develop a felt sense of safety and embodiment.

Health Care
While Western medicine excels at life-saving interventions, it often lacks trauma-sensitive tools. Medical procedures themselves can inadvertently cause additional trauma. Somatic Experiencing can support nervous system regulation during or after medical treatment, contributing to more comprehensive healing.

Conditions Supported Through Somatic Experiencing®

Telehealth Somatic Experiencing sessions may support healing for:

  • Attachment trauma

  • Anxiety

  • Accidents and falls

  • Boundary violations

  • Car accidents and whiplash

  • Chronic pain and difficult-to-treat symptoms

  • Chronic illness and endocrine imbalances

  • Depression

  • Developmental trauma

  • Domestic violence

  • Grief and loss

  • Injuries and post-surgical recovery

  • Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

  • Pain management

  • Paralysis

  • Pandemic-related stress and PTSD

  • Relationship challenges

  • Reproductive health concerns

  • Sexual abuse and assault

  • Shock trauma

  • Stress and nervous system overwhelm

  • Wildfire-related trauma