What is The Somatica® Method?

Rooted in emotional and erotic connection, the Somatica Method combines talk-based coaching with experiential practices to help coaches and clients expand their skills and beliefs around intimacy. This process is the key to changing your existing habits, uncovering your true self, and unlocking a more fulfilling sex life and deeper relationships.

It takes more than traditional talk-based therapy to unlearn the sexual or relational patterns we’ve picked up throughout our lives. To incite lasting change, you have to identify and shift habitual behaviors. The Somatica Method facilitates this through an experiential, embodied process, which is more effective than simply using cognitive learning techniques.

Hundreds of sex and relationship coaches have chosen to learn the Somatica Method, our revolutionary approach to becoming a pleasure-based sex & relationship coach.

As a coach, the Somatica Method teaches you to build mutually vulnerable, two-way relationships with your clients. You then in turn teach real-life intimacy tools to them within a safe, non-judgmental space.

Somatica Institute co-founder Danielle Harel in a session with a client

How Is the Somatica Method Different?

Drawing on the latest neuroscience research, the Somatica Method is designed to support the way people learn through a unique coaching model that involves engaging in real-time interactions with support, guidance, and feedback. This experiential practice uses relationship tools (such as embodied empathy and decision-making, practicing sensuality, and two-way relating) to help clients learn how to have authentic intimacy.

The Somatica Method is based on these cornerstone beliefs:

  • Pleasure is the best tool for transformation. When people begin coaching, they expect the process to be difficult and painful. We’ve found that the most effective pathway to transformation is through pleasure — especially if they practice new skills in ways that are filled with joy, arousal, connection, and acceptance.
  • Emotional and erotic intimacy are learnable. Through the Somatica Method, we’re striving to teach the essential tools that lead to deep love and emotional connection — even for those with attachment or sexual trauma.
  • One size doesn’t fit all. True intimacy requires space for differences and a balance between attachment and individuation. We help people practice acceptance instead of trying to change them in ways they haven’t chosen for themselves. The Somatica Method celebrates what makes us all unique and beautiful.

Who Benefits From This Method?

Anyone can benefit from learning the Somatica Method, but especially:

Somatica students can join a global alumni network full of opportunities — meet your community here.

Why Is the Somatica Method Effective?

Compared to traditional therapy, experiential approaches like the Somatica Method are more effective at creating new neural pathways that change behavior.

We show you how to engage in honest, boundaried, authentic relationships with your clients instead of telling them how to theoretically be intimate via a detached client-coach relationship. By creating a foundation of mutual trust, acceptance, and safety, everyone feels comfortable to show up and share themselves fully and confidently — the first steps toward physical and emotional intimacy.

Two people in a sex coaching session

How Do Sex Coaches Use the Somatica Method with Their Clients?

Sex and relationship coaches trained in the Somatica Method use these learned skills to build successful practices:

  • We are vulnerable. We believe pretending to have it all figured out is the least compassionate way to coach and facilitate. Instead, we share emotions and erotic energy with our clients as well as our weaknesses, processes of growth, and mistakes to take away any perfectionistic pressure.
  • We teach self-awareness. To break away from habitual patterns, we need to identify our personal shortcomings and strengths. Gaining this perspective from a kind and inquisitive (as opposed to critical) place allows us to collect information about who we are, what we want, and how we behave in times of stress. It allows us to get comfortable with differences between ourselves and others, and helps us make choices that bring love, connection, pleasure, and intimacy into our lives.
  • We are empathetic. We put ourselves in the clients’ shoes in order to deeply feel with them. While we can’t save them from pain or suffering, we support them and honor their emotions. The Somatica Method includes tools for emotional self-awareness, self-soothing, and engaging others for support.
  • We help others become embodied. As a Somatica practitioner, you will learn to listen to your own embodied voice and help clients get out of their heads and into their own bodies to live in harmony with themselves and others.

Beyond teaching you the Somatica Method, the Somatica training also provides you with all of the tools, skills, and knowledge you need to become a successful sex coach and build a thriving business.