SOMATIC APPROACH

Trauma Healing Beyond Words

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Somatic Psychotherapy for

Trauma,

Complex PTSD,

and Dissociation

 

Our earliest experiences do not begin with words.

They begin with sensation, movement, rhythm, breath, and relationship.

Trauma can disrupt our connection with these fundamental experiences, leaving us feeling tense, disconnected, overwhelmed, or unable to feel fully present in our own bodies.

Somatic psychotherapy offers another pathway to healing—one that includes the body, the nervous system, and the lived experience of being here.

Japanese and English sessions available in Hermosa Beach and online throughout California.

 

Attuning to What Was Never Lost

You may already understand your experiences intellectually. You may know why you react as you do and recognize the patterns you developed to survive.

Yet insight alone does not always change what happens in the body.

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Your breathing may become shallow.

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Your chest may tighten.

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Your body may freeze, collapse, or prepare to escape.

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You may automatically accommodate others while losing contact with yourself.

 

These responses are not personal failures. They are intelligent adaptations that once helped you survive.

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Healing does not require rejecting them. It begins by meeting them with curiosity, respect, and enough safety for something new to become possible.

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An Embodied Approach to Trauma Healing

 

My approach integrates contemporary trauma psychotherapy with Japanese embodied clinical traditions.

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Rather than relying primarily on verbal explanation, we attend to the ways your experience is expressed through:

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sensation and movement,

breathing and muscular tension,

posture and physical orientation,

imagery and implicit memory,

autonomic nervous system responses,

and the moment-to-moment relationship between client and therapist.

 

Words remain welcome and important.

But you do not have to explain everything before your experience can be received.

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Together, we make room for what your body has carried—slowly, respectfully, and without forcing emotional expression or bodily awareness.

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From Observing the Body to Experiencing the Self

 

Many somatic approaches invite us to observe and describe bodily sensations. This can be valuable. Yet sometimes the mind continues to stand outside the body, monitoring and interpreting it.

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My work also invites a different kind of experience: not only noticing the body, but experiencing yourself through the body.

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A small movement, a shift of weight, a change in breathing, or the experience of receiving support may reveal how you organize effort, protect yourself, remain vigilant, or adapt to another person.

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The purpose is not to perform correctly.

It is to discover, from within your own experience:

I can move.

I can stop.

I can choose.

I can receive support without losing myself.

I can be connected to another person while remaining connected to my body.

 

This is embodied agency—the lived experience of participating in your own movement, boundaries, and life.

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Trauma-Informed Dohsa-hou

A Japanese Embodied Psychotherapy

 

Dohsa-hou is a Japanese body-oriented psychotherapy developed by Professor Gosaku Naruse, Ph.D. It works with the integrated process of intention, effort, sensation, movement, and relationship.

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Unlike approaches that begin by asking clients to explain or interpret bodily experience, Dohsa-hou begins with embodied action itself.

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Simple movements—raising an arm, releasing unnecessary tension, shifting weight, finding support, or standing upright—can become opportunities to experience oneself before experience is translated into words.

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I integrate traditional Dohsa-hou and Mogami Dohsa with contemporary knowledge from trauma psychology, dissociation studies, attachment theory, somatic psychotherapy, and autonomic nervous system regulation.

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I call this evolving approach Trauma-Informed Dohsa-hou.

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I experienced myself before I explained myself.

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Areas of Support

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My practice may be particularly helpful for people experiencing:

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Complex PTSD and developmental trauma

PTSD and traumatic stress

Dissociation or disconnection from the body

Chronic anxiety, tension, or hypervigilance

Freeze, shutdown, collapse, or emotional numbness

Psychosomatic symptoms

Difficulty receiving support

Overadaptation and compulsive self-reliance

Difficulty identifying or expressing emotions

The effects of cultural, relational, or intergenerational trauma

Integration following psychedelic experiences

Therapeutic Approaches

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Treatment is individually adapted and may include:

Somatic Psychotherapy

Trauma-Informed Dohsa-hou

Somatic Experiencing®

EMDR Therapy

Brainspotting

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Somatic Touch Therapy

Mindfulness and embodied awareness

Imagery, metaphor, breathing, voice, and sound

Psychedelic integration

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No single method is appropriate for everyone.

We will work collaboratively and follow your pace, needs, cultural background, and capacity for embodied contact.

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Yukari Makino, Ph.D., AMFT, APCC, SEP

I am a Japanese-English bilingual somatic psychotherapist specializing in trauma, complex PTSD, dissociation, and embodied approaches to healing.

My clinical work brings together more than three decades of experience in Japanese and Western psychotherapy.

I integrate contemporary trauma treatment with Japanese embodied clinical traditions, attending carefully to the cultural and relational environments in which patterns of survival develop.

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​​Yukari Makino, Ph.D., AMFT, APCC

✳︎ AMFT #134058, APCC#12036 / Supervisor: Rachel Cole (LCSW 24313)

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Clinical Psychologist in Japan #07628

Certified EMDR therapist in Japan  (Training: Part 1 2008・ Part 2 2009)

Certified Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner （Training: 2009-2011:  SEP 2011)

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