When we bring somatics into the therapy room, we invite our clients to access the innate intelligence that lives beneath their narratives. The body doesn’t just carry our history—it carries the pathway toward integration. Every sensation, impulse, and contraction holds wisdom, and when met with awareness, these embodied experiences become the doorway to transformation.
In my approach to psychotherapy, which integrates Gestalt, polyvagal theory, and awake awareness, the therapist’s role is not to analyze or fix, but to create the conditions where the body’s natural intelligence can reveal what is incomplete. The questions we ask—and the way we ask them—shape whether that intelligence is amplified or interrupted.
Why Somatic Questions Matter
Traditional talk therapy often centers the mind—what happened, what we think, and what we understand. Somatic therapy, on the other hand, centers direct experience. Instead of talking about emotion, we support clients to be with the sensations and energetic expressions of emotion as they arise in the here and now.
This orientation honors the truth that the body never lies. As the vessel of our vital force, the body continually reflects our alignment, fragmentation, and regulation. By attuning to it, we access the wisdom that the ordinary mind cannot reach.
Principles of Somatic Inquiry
Before we explore the questions themselves, it’s important to remember a few guiding principles for somatic inquiry:
- Ask from awareness, not from agenda. Somatic questions should arise organically from your attunement, not from a mental checklist.
- Stay in the present moment. The body can only be contacted now.
- Honor sovereignty. Every question is an invitation, never a directive.
- Welcome all that arises. Even numbness, confusion, or resistance are part of the body’s wisdom.
- Let awareness lead. Somatic questions are not about gathering data—they are openings for awareness to unfold.
Foundational Somatic Questions
These simple, present-moment inquiries invite awareness into the body:
- “What do you notice in your body right now?”
- “As you say that, what sensations are you aware of?”
- “What do you notice about (this particular part of your body)?”
- “What do you notice about your breathe right now?”
- “What do you notice in your body as you talk about this?”
- “If that sensation had a voice, what might it say?”
These are not diagnostic questions; they are doorways. Each one invites clients to drop below narrative into the living field of experience where healing happens.
Questions for Tracking Regulation and Energy
Somatic work is not simply about asking body-based questions—it’s about tracking regulation through our own embodied attunement. As therapists, our nervous system and awareness become instruments that mirror the client’s subtle shifts. We sense changes in breath, tone, or posture and bring gentle inquiry to what we notice, allowing awareness to deepen in both of us.
Some attuned invitations might include:
- “What do you notice as your breath moves through you?”
- “Your arms seem braced. What do you notice there?”
- “Your energy seems more expanded right now. What do you notice?”
- “It seems like your capping your emotions in your throat. What do you notice there?”
When these questions arise from resonance rather than technique, they become a living dialogue between two nervous systems. Through this co-regulated awareness, the client’s body naturally begins to organize toward balance, coherence, and aliveness.
Questions for Integrating the Emotional Body
When emotion arises somatically, we can deepen contact by asking:
- “What does this feeling need from you right now?”
- “I want to invite you to let yourself stay with this sensation. What do you notice now?”
- “If this emotion could move, how would it want to move?”
- “Without trying to fix (the sensation) or figure it out, I want to invite you to wrap the sensation with awareness. What do you notice now?”
These questions restore agency and compassion to the body’s experience, transforming defense into integration.
Questions to Avoid
Certain questions can unintentionally interrupt awareness or pull clients back into the analytical mind. Examples include:
- “Where do you feel that?” (invites analysis rather than presence)
- “How does it feel to be (confused/tired/etc.)?” (creates distance through self-objectification)
- “Why do you think that happens?” (shifts from awareness to cognition)
Instead, stay with “what” and “how”—and stay with the direct experience rather than interpretation.
The Therapist’s Somatic Awareness
The power of somatic questions depends on the therapist’s own embodiment. The more we attune to our own subtle sensations, breath, and energy, the more we become a clear mirror for the client’s process. As I teach in The Awakened Therapist Signature Training, our embodied awareness is the intervention.
When we hold the field with energetic coherence and compassionate curiosity, our clients’ nervous systems receive the implicit message: It’s safe to come home to yourself.
Continue Your Learning
If you want to deepen your capacity to bring somatic awareness and energetic attunement into your clinical work, I invite you to join me for The Awakened Therapist Six-Month Live Training.
Together, we explore how to integrate Gestalt principles, somatic intelligence, and subtle-energy awareness into a truly holistic practice. You’ll experience live demos, guided practices, and group supervision designed to help you embody your therapeutic presence and guide clients toward profound transformation.