Change Doesn't Start in the Mind. It Starts in the Body.
Most of us try to think our way through change and wonder why it doesn’t stick.
That’s because our deepest patterns don’t live in our thoughts. They live in the body, in how we move, react, relate, and protect ourselves. And yet most of us have learned to treat the body as something to manage, push through, or ignore entirely.
Somatics starts from a different place. The word soma describes the living organism in its wholeness, not just the physical body, but the thinking, feeling, sensing, relational self all at once. You don’t have a soma. You are one.
This matters because all of your patterns, how you respond under pressure, how you connect, how you hold back, are held there. And that’s exactly where they can change.
When we’re under pressure, conditioned responses show up before we have a chance to choose. Somatics is the practice of changing that, not by eliminating pressure, but by building the capacity to feel it without being run by it, so that how you respond can be guided by what you most care about rather than by your oldest patterns.
It's Not Just You. It Never Was.
Social awareness is an essential part of this work. Without it, we risk looking at our patterns through only an individual lens, asking what’s wrong with me? when the more honest question is what shaped me? Recognizing that we aren’t alone in being impacted by these larger forces is itself part of the healing. It moves us from shame to clarity, and from isolation to a more grounded relationship with change.
How Change Actually Happens
This work isn’t a single technique. It’s a process that weaves together three elements:
Somatic Awareness: Learning to notice what’s happening in your body, sensation, breath, posture, tension, impulse. This is the starting point. You can’t shift what you can’t first notice.
Purposeful Practice: Building new capacity in the areas that matter most to you. Whether that’s giving and receiving love, navigating difficult conversations, setting limits, or staying steady under pressure, we practice it concretely, in the body, over time.
Somatic Opening: Old patterns and protective ways of being don’t just live in memory. They live in the body too. Somatic opening is the process of helping those patterns soften and release, making space for new ways of being to take root.
This Work Might Be For You If…
- You understand your patterns but can’t seem to shift them
- Under pressure, an older version of you tends to show up and you want more choice in those moments
- You sense that some of what you carry isn’t just personal, it’s cultural, systemic, or inherited
- You’re not even sure what you long for anymore, years of putting others first have made it hard to hear your own voice
- You’re longing for a way of being that feels more aligned with what you actually care about
- You’re ready to work with the whole of yourself, thinking, feeling, sensing, relating
What Happens in a Session
We begin our first session by identifying what you most long for, a change, a quality, a way of being you want to cultivate. This longing becomes the throughline and direction for all the work we do together.
Each session after that follows a simple arc. We open by checking in on what is alive for you and connecting it back to your longing. We then move into the heart of the session, working directly with a pattern, practicing a new way of responding, or supporting an old pattern to soften and release. We close by harvesting what emerged, connecting those learnings back to your longing, and identifying simple practices to support integration between sessions.
Over time, each session builds on the last, creating change that is felt, not just understood.
About Andrea
I came to this work the long way around. Years of therapy gave me real understanding of my patterns, but the shifts that actually changed how I reacted and related came when I began working directly with my body.
Part of what made that work feel honest and complete was learning to include the social and cultural forces that had shaped me, not just my individual story. Understanding that my patterns weren’t evidence of something wrong with me, but were natural responses to the systems and conditions I’d moved through, changed everything. That integration of personal and social is something I bring into every coaching relationship.
That journey led me to train at The Strozzi Institute for Somatics in California, one of the leading somatic coaching programs in the world. I’m now completing my certification and offering a small number of practice coaching sessions at a reduced rate.
Ready to Begin?
I’m completing my somatic coaching certification and offering a limited number of practice sessions at a reduced rate. These are real sessions, structured and grounded in somatic principles. The reduced rate reflects my training stage, not the depth of the work.
$30 / session · 1 hour · Weekly or biweekly Online via Zoom, or in person in West Michigan
Available: Mon, Wed & Thu · 6–9pm ET and Sat & Sun · 10am–2pm ET
The first step is a free 30-minute discovery call. It’s a chance for us to connect, talk about what brought you here and what you’re longing for, and decide together if working together feels like the right fit.
Schedule a Discovery Call or email Andrea at andreamarz@gmail.com