Jodi Schwartz-Levy, PhD, LPC

With her doctorate in Clinical Psychology with a Specialization in Somatic Psychology, Jodi offers a uniquely integrative approach to mind/body healing. Her background in dance, movement, massage and energy healing enable her to recognize the importance of embodiment practices. She has been in practice for 20 years and specializes in working with trauma. The term soma is an ancient Greek concept that refers to the body as the container of all of our experiences (including the mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual). That is to say, that we cannot have any experience unless we are living in a body. The body therefore is an energetic system that is deeply and curiously interconnected. Our feelings effect our thoughts, our thoughts effect our posture, our beliefs influence our behavioral patterns, our experiences effect our movement patterns — the web is endless. We are a dynamic and amazingly interconnected system and our symptoms (depression, anxiety, pain, etc) point to such imbalance. In somatics we deeply listen to the language of the body (sensation, movement, breath, voice, etc) to not only better understand unconscious material, but to also be better resourced. The body gives us an incredible amount of information on how to navigate the world, but we have been taught to ignore such bodily cues. By working with the body in psychotherapy, we can work directly with the nervous system while also clearing and creating new patterns of embodiment.