Meaningful support for uncertain times
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 our deep human needs when times are tough and demands are high.
As we develop body fluency, we expand our capacity to provide attuned care—both for ourselves and others.
Services
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Massage Therapy
Trauma-informed, somatically oriented massage to support recovery and wellbeing. Restorative care through an evidence-informed lens.
In person in Ottawa, Canada.
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Mentorship & Coaching
Reliable support for helping professionals Prevent burnout and deepen career satisfaction by incorporating principals of somatics, mindfulness and trauma-informed care.
In person and online.
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Soft Skills For Hard Times
A professional development newsletter for massage therapists that explores the intersections of trauma, burnout, mindfulness, somatics and more…
Coming Soon
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, mentorship and teaching 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.
As a massage therapist and 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 challenges. And the ordinary magic.