Breaking Free - A Body, Mind, Spirit Approach to Mental Health · Sommer A. Seitz, MA, LMHC

Episode 55: Returning to the Body: A Gentle Path Through Somatic Healing

·47 min·3 clips

Summer describes religious trauma as learning to distrust the body's signals and boundaries.

Andrew Zorich brings a background in massage therapy, bodywork, psychotherapy, and meditation. He and Summer Seitz begin by framing somatics as a way of working that was discovered and named later, not invented recently. Zorich describes how he kept noticing the body's role in healing long before he could fully explain it. A shoulder release, a craniosacral session, or work on the bodywork table can open into tears, memory, or sudden relief. For him, those moments are not random. They are the body speaking into the larger story. Seitz recognizes a similar pattern in her own practice. She talks about wanting to understand the mind while seeing how physical experience can shape the week around a person. The two of them return again and again to integration. That means holding sensation, story, and meaning together instead of treating them as separate lanes. Zorich says his model ends there on purpose. He has built a seven-stage path that begins with resourcing. The early step is not to dive into the hardest material. It is to make sure someone has enough steadiness to stay with what comes up. He contrasts that with the way some early therapy sessions can feel too intense. In his view, a person can leave a session impressed by the work and still never come back because it was simply too much. The episode keeps the tone gentle and reflective. It also stays honest about how slowly trust may need to build. Zorich connects the whole framework back to love, saying that holding presence and inner love sit near the center of the work. By the end, the invitation is simple: learn the method, move carefully, and let the body guide the next right step.

As heard by us

A calm argument for starting trauma work in the body, not rushing past resourcing.

Summer Seitz and Andrew Zorich make a calm case for trauma work that moves at the speed of trust. Their discussion keeps returning to somatics, massage, psychotherapy, meditation, and the idea that people should not be pushed past their capacity before they have enough support.

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Why you'd press play

You want a gentler, body-first entry into trauma healing.

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