Somatic Art Therapy for Healing Trauma, Chronic Stress, & Anxiety

Alyssa Jurewicz-Johns, Trauma-Informed Somatic Art Therapist

Can words alone express a trauma, whether personal or collective, or should we explore other forms of expression to fully convey the complexity of our human experiences?

Somatic Art Therapy with Alyssa Jurewicz-Johns

There is a vast world of sensation happening within your body that is impacting your life.

Somatic Art Therapy for Deep Healing, Trauma Recovery & Lasting Change

It’s exhausting to feel like you’ve tried everything—talk therapy, medications, self-help books, lifestyle changes, and alternative therapies like reiki, acupuncture, and massage —just to be still left struggling with the same familiar relationship challenges, physical pains, emotional instabilities, mental health diagnoses, chronic illnesses, and overall feeling like your needs aren’t being fully met.

Despite many people’s best efforts and full awareness of their struggles, they stay stuck in symptom management rather than getting to the root of what brings them to therapy in the first place. Somatic art therapy goes beyond symptom management by including the body in the healing process, working with the nervous system to address the root causes of stress, trauma, and pain for lasting emotional and physical healing. Want to know what is somatic art therapy? Click here to learn more about it.

somatic art therapy

“Everything about working with Alyssa felt fated. Her guidance through the rooms of my own body, mind, and soul took time but has been powerful. The combination of somatic and expressive art practices she utilizes in sessions are perfect for me — I'm continually met with new revelations after each one.” ~ Kate G.


Unlock Healing: Body-Based Somatic Art Therapy

Your Body is a Vehicle of Awareness.

Trauma and chronic stress are not just a psychological event but a physiological experience that is stored in the body — often manifesting as chronic pain, tension, emotional overwhelm, auto-immune issues, brain fog, and other physical ailments like digestive issues and insomnia.

If left unresolved, trauma and chronic stress dysregulate the nervous system keeping you stuck in patterns of stress and emotional reactivity.

Using a body-based approach to somatic art therapy, Alyssa helps you become aware of your body’s learned nervous system responses, shaped by early life experiences. By working with your autonomic nervous system—the source of you survival responses—and integrating new non-verbal creative practices like movement and art to express and process your personal stories and traumas, somatic art therapy uses your body’s own innate wisdom to repattern your reactions to stress and emotional triggers, leading to lasting change and emotional resilience.


Alyssa’s Somatic Art Therapy Focus Areas

How somatic art therapy is tailored for your healing journey

Healing Unresolved Past Trauma

Unresolved past trauma lives in the body, shaping how we respond to stress, emotions, and relationships. Somatic art therapy helps rewire your nervous system for healthier, more balanced responses.

Healing Chronic Stress, Anxiety & Depression

Somatic art therapy helps manage chronic stress, anxiety, and depression by addressing physical symptoms and building emotional resilience through a deeper connection to your body.

Healing Functional Illness & Chronic Pain

If you're struggling with chronic pain, inflammation, fatigue, or digestive issues, somatic art therapy helps uncover the connection between your physical symptoms and stress, emotional overload, or past experiences, offering a path to healing and relief.

Body Trauma + Pre & Post Operation Counseling

Somatic art therapy helps rebuild trust in your body after surgery, a diagnosis, or physical trauma by using evidence-based methods to reduce anxiety, support recovery, ease pain, and reclaim resilience.

Somatic Art Therapy: A Grounded Approach to Deep Healing

Somatic art therapy is the difference between expressing yourself and explaining yourself.

somatic art therapy approach

Alyssa’s approach to somatic art therapy combines deep knowledge of Trauma-informed Polyvagal Theory, the Tamalpa Life/Art Process, and 5Rhythms® to work directly with your body and nervous system.

This isn’t talk therapy alone.

Using body based somatic art therapy, Alyssa guides you through body-based sessions to better understand your learned responses and sensations, gain insight that help you bridge how past experiences affect your current life, and gently shift habits that no longer fit the identity of the person you want to become.

Together, you’ll use movement, art, breathwork, psychokinetic imagery, and nervous system mapping to process trauma, reduce anxiety, ease chronic tension, get to the root of what brings you to somatic art therapy in the first place, and find a real sense of balance beyond symptom management.

This is about lasting change—grounded in science yet expanded to account for the vast wholeness of the human experience.

Work with Alyssa Jurewicz-Johns: In person & Online Somatic Art Therapy Sessions

Somatic art therapy is your path to repairing trust and safety in the body.

Somatic Art Therapy
5Rhythms
Online Courses

“Through the dance practice and1:1 work with Alyssa, I’ve become calmer, more excepting of how my life moves along — dynamic and ever-changing, but not so overwhelming. I’m learning about boundary setting, dealing with expectations, accepting my emotional way of being, accepting myself as I am.” ~ Zo R.

Meet Alyssa Jurewicz-Johns: Somatic Art Therapy

Alyssa brings over a two decades of experience in movement-based therapies and the mind-body connection, including extensive training with the Tamalpa Institute both as a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist, Tamalpa Life/Art Process facilitator, a certified 5Rhythms® teacher, certified 200-hr yoga instructor, as well as a Masters in Social Work with a decade long career working with Pittsburgh’s most underserved communities.

Her somatic art therapy expertise combines these modalities with trauma-informed care and Polyvagal Theory to offer a deeply creative approach to healing through movement, nervous system awareness, expressive arts, and psychokinetic imagery—a process that uses visualization to release trauma, connect with internal resources and work through pain, even when physical movement isn’t accessible.

The foundation of Alyssa’s approach to somatic art therapy is rooted in the belief that our bodies hold our entire life experience, and movement is the primary language of the body. She believes that that each client is already whole as they are and, even in the midst of healing, there is nothing to be fixed, only discoveries to be made.

somatic art therapist

Are you ready to begin your somatic art therapy healing journey?

This somatic art therapy practice is inclusive and welcoming to all.