Somatic Trauma Therapy for individuals in California
You don’t need more insight. You need to feel.
Virtual and in-person support for high-functioning adults that want to heal trauma, reconnect with their bodies, and build more authentic relationships.
Trauma-Related Issues I Specialize In
I’m not a generalist therapist who treats everything and everyone. I work with what I know. The areas I specialize in are informed not only by extensive professional training, but by my own lived experience of healing through those issues. When you’re navigating the complexities of trauma and transformation, you deserve to sit with someone who understands that terrain from the inside.
Somatic Therapies I use to treat trauma:
My work is grounded in the body. In session, we’re paying attention not only to thoughts and stories, but also to the language of the nervous system: sensations, images, behaviors, affect, and meaning (SIBAM). In practice, this often looks like less talking and more noticing, feeling, and staying present with what is arising, with a lot of curiosity guiding the process.
Insight and reason doesn’t change the impact of traumatic experiences on our bodied. These experiences stay in the body until there’s enough safety and space to release them. When we work somatically, we create the conditions for the nervous system to gently unwind survival patterns, close trauma loops, and move toward regulation, choice, and deeper connection.
Each session is tailored to the pace and capacity of your nervous system and may include a blend of:
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Somatic Experiencing focuses on how trauma lives in the body and nervous system rather than only in memories or thoughts. By gently tracking sensations and survival responses, we help the nervous system release stuck activation (essentially extinguishing triggers) and restore a sense of safety and regulation.
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EMDR helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories that remain stuck in the nervous system. As memories integrate, the emotional charge softens and the past begins to feel like something that happened rather than something still happening. We’re not changing memories, we’re changing the way we feel and react to our memories.
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Parts work helps us understand the different “parts” of you that formed to protect, manage, or survive difficult experiences. Instead of fighting those parts, we build curiosity and compassion so they can relax their roles and integrate into a more cohesive sense of self.
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These practices help you recognize when your nervous system is moving into fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown. Together we develop simple, body-based tools that help your system return to steadiness, presence, and choice.
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Many of our patterns in relationships are shaped by early attachment experiences. Therapy helps bring awareness to these dynamics so you can build relationships that feel safer, more authentic, and more secure.
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Psychedelic-assisted therapy uses altered states of consciousness to support deeper access to emotions, memories, and patterns that can be difficult to reach through talk therapy or ordinary states of consciousness. I integrate somatic and trauma-focused practices to help you stay connected to your body, work with what emerges, and support meaningful integration afterward.
Is Somatic trauma therapy the right fit for you?
Many of the people I work with are thoughtful, self-aware adults who have done a lot of personal growth already. They may be high achievers, healers, or deeply feeling people who carry trauma histories that still shape how they relate to themselves and others.
They might look like they have it together on the outside, but internally they feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or stuck in patterns they can’t quite shift.
Individual therapy may be a good fit if you:
feel stuck in patterns of anxiety, perfectionism, or burnout
struggle with boundaries or people-pleasing
carry unresolved childhood trauma or attachment wounds
feel disconnected from your body or emotions
want deeper healing than talk therapy alone
Individual Somatic Therapy Options
IN-PERSON THERAPY IN LONG BEACH, CA
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VIRTUAL THERAPY IN CALIFORNIA
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THERAPY INTENSIVE in Long Beach, CA
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Kind Words from Colleagues & Clients
Meet your trauma therapist,
Clara Mackinlay
I’m a somatic trauma therapist who knows healing from both sides of the couch. My own trauma healing journey has been holistic, weaving together Western somatic therapy, psychedelic medicine, Eastern practices, nature and nutrition, solo work, and deep relational work. Because of this, my approach to therapy is integrative and whole-person focused.
Therapy with me is collaborative, honest, and deeply relational. My style is warm, direct, and grounded, and I show up authentically so you can too. I cuss a lot, sometimes I’m in sweatpants, and I’m always barefoot. I believe therapy is important work, but it doesn’t have to be super serious.
Before becoming a therapist, I built and led businesses across multiple industries in New York City and Los Angeles. My background includes nonprofit leadership, high-level business coaching, hospitality and event production, professional organizing, and digital design. I also spent six years working as the Business Operations Manager for trauma therapist Dr. Nadine Macaluso, widely known for her public story as the former spouse of Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street).
As the daughter of two immigrant parents from Argentina, I speak Spanish fluently and am proud to be descended from South American Indigenous lineage. When I’m not working, you can usually find me sitting ceremony, traveling to Peru, Mexico, or Costa Rica, cooking, or dancing to the Grateful Dead, or spending time with my long-time partner and our two cats.