What Is Healing Touch Therapy?
If you’ve lived through trauma or carry attachment wounds, you may find it hard to fully feel at home in your body. Relaxing might not come easily. Feeling safe, with yourself or with others, might feel just out of reach. Even when you’ve talked about your experiences, there can still be something deeper inside that feels tense, guarded, or quietly aching for comfort.
Healing touch work offers a gentle, body-based way to reconnect with a sense of safety and ease. Through steady, attuned contact, it helps your nervous system soften and settle. It’s a way of creating connection not just through words, but through presence, offering your body the chance to feel what it may have missed: safety, trust, and the quiet possibility of healing.
How Can It Help You Heal?
Touch is one of the first ways we learn about safety, connection, and comfort. As infants, we depend on safe, nurturing touch to regulate our nervous systems and form a sense of trust in others and ourselves. Imagine an infant, overwhelmed and crying, their little body tense and scared. A caregiver gently picks them up, holds them close, and offers soothing presence through touch. The baby doesn’t need to understand words, their body feels safe. Their breath slows. Their muscles release. Their nervous system begins to settle as they take in, I’m not alone anymore.
Healing touch work invites the body into a new experience of co-regulation. An experience that doesn’t aim to fix or change you, but instead gently offers the felt sense of safety, connection, and care. Over time, this steady, attuned presence can help your nervous system begin to shift toward more trust, ease, and a deeper sense of belonging within yourself.
What Does A Healing Touch Therapy Session Look Like?
Healing Touch Therapy is gentle, respectful, and always centered around your comfort and consent. Every session is different because it's guided by you and what your system needs.
We’ll start by checking in together, giving you space to share how you’re feeling physically, emotionally, or anything that’s been on your mind lately. From there, we’ll explore whether incorporating supportive touch feels right for you in that moment. If it does, I’ll walk you through exactly what to expect, including what kind of touch may be offered, where it would be, and how long it might last, so you feel informed and in control every step of the way.
You will then decide to either lie on a massage table or sit in a chair, depending on what feels most comfortable and safe for you. Touch may involve light, steady contact, often on the shoulders, back, hands, or feet, guided by your preferences. Sometimes the touch is quiet and still; other times, we may stay in gentle conversation as we notice together what sensations, emotions, or shifts begin to emerge.
Throughout the session:
You are always in control.
You can ask to pause, stop, or change the contact at any time.
I will continue checking in with you to support a sense of safety and collaboration.
I’m not sure how I feel about touch in therapy. Is that normal?
Absolutely. Many people feel unsure, curious, or even uncomfortable at first, especially if touch has been a source of confusion, harm, or absence in the past. It’s completely okay to have mixed feelings. Part of our work together is creating space to explore those feelings at your pace, with care and consent.
What if I don’t want to be touched?
Then we won’t use touch. You are in complete control of what happens in our sessions. There are many powerful ways to work with trauma, regulation, and attachment wounds that don’t involve any physical contact. Supportive touch is just one of many tools, never a requirement.
How can touch help with trauma or attachment issues?
Touch can offer something words can’t: a direct, sensory experience of safety, support, and connection through co-regulation. For people who’ve experienced neglect, abuse, or early attachment disruptions, this kind of contact, when safe and consensual, can help the body begin to rewire patterns of hypervigilance, disconnection, or shutdown. It’s a way of restoring the trust and connection that may have been missed early on.
How do I know if it’s right for me?
You don’t need to decide right away. We’ll check in regularly, and your comfort and agency will always come first. If and when it feels right, we can explore it together in a way that feels grounded, supportive, and completely at your pace.
Healing Through Touch: Somatic Experiencing and Attachment Repair
Healing touch work is often integrated with Somatic Experiencing and other body-based therapies to gently release stored trauma and rebuild a sense of trust and connection within yourself.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your healing, unable to fully “think” your way out of emotional pain, this kind of work can be a powerful next step. Healing is not about rushing or forcing, it’s about creating the right conditions for your body and nervous system to naturally repair and reconnect. And you don’t have to do it alone.
Take the First Step: Healing at Your Own Pace
If you’re curious about how healing touch therapy might help you feel more regulated, connected, and at ease in your body, Schedule a Consultation. I offer a free 20-minute phone consultation, OR if you have any questions, send a message through my Contact Form.