Learn
How Many Sessions Does Somatic Therapy Take?
Most people notice something shifting within the first three to five sessions: a bit more space around a reaction that used to be instant, the body slightly less braced. For deeper work with complex or long-held trauma, six months to a year of regular sessions is a more honest horizon.
How long it takes depends on a few specific things, and this isn't open-ended therapy with no end in sight.
Here's what shapes the timeline, and what tends to happen along the way.
Sessions 1 to 3
Settling in. We map what's going on and your body starts to learn the room is safe. Often the first shift is simply feeling less alone with it.
Sessions 3 to 8
Building capacity. Reactions that used to be automatic start to have a gap in them. You catch yourself mid-pattern instead of long after.
Three to twelve months
Deeper change. For long-held or developmental patterns, the nervous system slowly rebuilds its baseline. This is where change moves from understood to embodied.
What affects how long it takes
- The kind of trauma. A single recent event tends to resolve faster than patterns laid down early or carried for years.
- How long it's been running. Something braced into the body over decades takes longer to unwind than a recent shock.
- The capacity you start with. Your current support, stress load, and nervous system state all shape the pace.
- What you're after. Relief from one specific symptom is a shorter road than a deeper reorganisation of how you meet the world.
- Consistency. Regular sessions build on each other. Long gaps mean re-establishing ground each time.
What a session looks like
Your first session runs 90 minutes, so there's time to understand your history and what you're hoping for without rushing. Sessions after that are 60 minutes. Most people start weekly or fortnightly, then space sessions out as capacity grows.
There's no fixed package to buy and no minimum commitment. We work to what your system needs, and we keep checking whether it's still serving you.
Most of the work happens between sessions
This is the part people don't expect. The session is where something shifts. The integration happens in the days afterward, in how you sleep, how you handle a difficult conversation, how your body meets the next stressor.
Change is felt, not only understood, and a feeling becomes familiar through repetition. A rough rule I use: thirty repetitions for something to feel familiar, three hundred for muscle memory, three thousand for it to become who you are. That's not session count, that's life. The work is teaching your system a new default, and most of that teaching happens out in your actual days.
Want to talk through what your situation might need?
Book a free consultation