Meaningful Support for uncertain times.

  • Somatic Mentorship for Helping Professionals

  • Trauma-informed Registered Massage Therapy

  • In person and remote options are available

Your body can be a portal

To more coherence, connection, and resilience.

Bodies are brilliant. They’re great at relationships. Full of ideas. And deeply perceptive — given the right support.

Somatics help us learn to speak our body’s language. We discern how to meet deep human needs when times are tough and demands are high. 

As we develop body fluency, we expand our capacity to provide attuned care. And to engage both the hard stuff in life, and the joy. 

What are SOMATICS?

Somatics (from soma, which is Greek for body) is a term that was coined to describe a range of conscious and unconscious things humans do to support and regulate ourselves. It can include, but is not limited to:

Dancing, hugging, massage, meditation, taking a yoga class or just an intentional breath.

Somatic practices are things we do to cultivate calm, security, aliveness and embodied awareness so we can:

Feel, connect, create, rest, work and play…

Somatics is not just one thing… To learn more read this article I wrote.

I’m Annie Bray (she/her)

I’m a Trauma-Informed Somatic Practitioner and Registered Massage Therapist.

My somatic approach to massage therapy is informed by 20 years of manual therapy and concurrent work and study in trauma recovery, community mental health, applied polyvagal theory, meditation, yoga and somatic coaching.

It takes resilience to be here. The wear and tear is real. The reasons to check out, reasonable and plenty. 

Exhaustion is normal. All of us are living in an unjust system that asks us to bypass our physical and emotional needs, disconnecting us from our bodies. 

Somatics can help us reclaim the experience of feeling reliably well-met, relatively safe and capable of engaging with life meaningfully.

Why does this work matter?

We live in an extractive culture that values relentless productivity. 

Meanwhile, living on this beleaguered planet in a collective state of eco-grief can make it legitimately hard to stay present and embodied, let alone productive.

In my work as a somatic practitioner I support you to unravel rigid cultural and personal expectations, so you can experience yourself beyond that particular tangle of judgement. 

We take the time to slow down, honour and soften shame, and learn how to experience the emotions and sensations moving through our bodies. 

When we practice staying in our bodies through the messy feelings, big questions and tense conflicts, we expand our capacity to ride the big waves:

The pleasure. The love. And the ordinary magic.

Offerings

Somatic Mentorship & Coaching

1:1 customized support for helping professionals and clinicians. Heal burnout and reconnect to meaning and joy amidst the intensity.

Massage Therapy

Warm, trauma-informed & patient-led massage therapy in downtown Ottawa, Canada.

  • I cannot recommend Annie enough

    I cannot recommend Annie enough - as a guide, coach, and all-around beautiful soul to work with!

    I’m a hospitalist physician and creative nonfiction writer and I’ve worked with Annie for about nine months now.

    Our time together, for me, has been absolutely transformative.

    Sarah/ Hospitalist Physician & Writer

  • Annie is the safe space that you’ve been looking for.

    I work as a massage therapist and I’m a highly sensitive person that struggles with anxiety. Like many other medical professionals, I found that practicing during the thick of the pandemic started to take its toll on me.

    I began coaching with Annie when I decided that burning out from compassion fatigue wasn’t good for my health anymore.

    Our coaching sessions have guided me back to taking care of myself by learning how to resource within my life and own body through somatic movement practices and breath work.

    Jennifer/ Registered Massage Therapist

  • Annie is so supportive and it was wonderful to work with her.

    As a healthcare provider directly involved in the pandemic response while also parenting 2 small kids and trying to break unhealthy intergenerational cycles, I had been struggling for years. Working with Annie helped me apply what I was learning in therapy and implement practical changes in my everyday life using somatic practices. I was able to find more space for my own emotional experience and more connection with my family, in addition to making significant improvements in my job situation.

    Physician

  • Unique and healing

    I want to share how unique and healing your approach is and how clearly you embody the principles you are sharing. I am very glad I reached out to you when I did as the caregiver me has been more than pressed upon for a long time now. I am even allowing myself to dream that the creative me could live beside all that I swim in right now rather than thinking it had to do with finding time. Really what you offer is space, time-less-ness, and the permission to soften as a matter of course.

    Naome Howe, Course participant 2022

  • More confidence and excitement

    I started working with Annie during a time of transition as I was wrestling with how best to tap into and use my creative energy. Annie helped me access what I knew to be true for me so I could move forward with confidence and excitement!

    Jen/ Social Worker & Counselor

  • I feel less alone

    This program has been really beneficial in two key ways: 1) helped me feel less alone in the complexity of my midlife transitions, and 2) helped me synthesize much of my lived experience, lifelong writing practice, past somatic training (Zen Shiatsu/5 element theory + meditation) and current training as a psychotherapist. In other words, it's helped a lot with my self-integration.

    Fire Season Participant- Meredith/ Psychotherapy Student