Somatics is a broad field - a vast landscape of approaches that all involve the body (the word soma comes from the Greek for body). They share much in common, yet differ enormously in lineage, purpose, and method.

If we imagine somatics as the trunk of a colossal willow tree, then somatic therapy and somatic coaching are two major branches growing from that trunk - each branching off into many different modalities, with yet more offshoots cascading down from each of those.

Somatic Coaching is a term that has become increasingly widespread. However, like “somatic therapy”, it does not refer to a single method.

That’s what we mean when we say Somatic Coaching is an umbrella term.

Under this umbrella sits Body-Oriented Coaching - a distinct modality that is process-oriented, body-centred, influenced by whole systems thinking, and grounded in relational presence. It integrates the intelligence of the body with a deep commitment to the core competencies of professional coaching, allowing both coach and client to work with the whole human being - not just the thinking mind.

This article explores what makes Body-Oriented Coaching unique, why that distinction matters, and how it fits within the wider somatic ecosystem.

Somatic Work Has Roots That Run Deep

To understand Body-Oriented Coaching, we first need the bigger picture.

In much the same way that coaching, as a helping profession, emerged out of the lineage of psychotherapy - and therefore owes a great deal to that world - somatic coaching owes a great deal to the world of body psychotherapy.

For the sake of this article, when we refer to somatic therapy, we are specifically talking about body psychotherapies. There are other forms of therapy that involve the body but are not psychotherapeutic in nature - such as certain types of bodywork (e.g. Body-Mind Centering, Continuum or Structural Integration) or practice-based therapies (e.g. TRE, RMT, and Hanna Somatics).

The inheritance of somatic therapy (body psychotherapy) stretches back through:

• Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions including Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, and indigenous ways of knowing
• Humanistic psychology (Rogers, Gendlin, Perls)
• Psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung, Reich)
• Bodywork-based modalities like Rolfing and Feldenkrais
• Holistic psychology
• Gestalt psychology
• The influence of expressionist dance
• Influences from theatre and psychodrama

If you look at genealogy charts tracing the roots and influences of somatic work - such as those found in The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy & Somatic Psychology - a clear picture emerges:

Somatics has always been a diverse ecosystem - not one method, but many.

Out of these diverse roots, particularly in the 1960s and largely emerging from Esalen in California, psychotherapists began integrating the body directly into their work. This included figures such as Fritz Perls (Gestalt Therapy), Ron Kurtz (Hakomi), Eugene Gendlin (Focusing), and Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing).

Somatic therapies have been explicitly incorporating the body for over sixty years.

However, the body has only relatively recently begun to be embraced within the world of coaching.

For over 40 years, Strozzi Somatic Coaching was essentially the only widely recognised form of somatic coach education and practice. Over time, other approaches emerged - including Presence-Based Coaching and Ontological Coaching - followed by Body-Oriented Coaching and, more recently, by a wave of new “somatic coaching” certificates, such as Focusing-Oriented Coaching and Hakomi-Informed coaching, amongst others.

This is why clarity matters.

Somatic coaching is a category within the broader field of somatics.
And under that umbrella, different modalities operate with different principles, philosophies, and skill sets.

So Where Does Body-Oriented Coaching Fit?

Body-Oriented Coaching is a specific modality within the wider category of somatic coaching.

Its distinctiveness comes through in three key ways:

1. It is truly coaching - not therapy dressed as coaching

Many approaches that call themselves “somatic coaching” drift toward therapeutic territory:

• becoming more directive
• assessing and prescribing
• prioritising discharge, catharsis, or emotional release

Body-Oriented Coaching is intentionally different.
It stays rooted in an ICF-aligned coaching stance:

• nondirective
• partnering, client-led process
• attunement over interpretation
• emergence over intervention

It honours the principle found in traditions like Taoism and Zen:
Change unfolds best through non-interference.

This is coaching with the body, not therapy through the body.

2. It is process-oriented, not technique-driven

Many somatic trainings focus on tools: techniques, protocols, or structured somatic exercises.

But here’s the truth shared by modalities like Hakomi, Focusing, Gestalt, and Organic Intelligence®, which Body-Oriented Coaching draws upon:

The technique only works if the conditions are right.

The real engine of transformation is not the tool -
it’s the conditions the practitioner cultivates:

• nervous system capacity
• relational safety
• attunement
• non-interference
• an orientation toward emergence

Most modalities assume these conditions.
Body-Oriented Coaching teaches them explicitly.

We often say:
Skills are the watering can. These essential conditions are the water inside.
Without the water, nothing grows.

This is why Body-Oriented Coaching is uniquely suited to client-centric coaching contexts - it recognises that the work only unfolds in life-forwarding directions if the conditions support self-organisation.

3. It aligns with a modern, scientifically grounded theory of change

Body-Oriented Coaching is informed by the latest understandings from:

• Interpersonal Neurobiology
• 4E Cognition / Enactivism
• Polyvagal Theory / Affective Neuroscience
• Complexity Science / Complex Adaptive Systems Theory
• General Systems Theory
• Process-Philosophical Biology 
• Relevance Realisation
• Predictive Processing / Active Inference

The worldview behind it is simple yet profound:

Human beings are complex living systems. Change does not come from controlling them, but from supporting the conditions under which their own self-organising intelligence can unfold.

This is the same principle you see in:

• Taoist wu-wei (“effortless action” or “non-interference”)
• Indigenous relational wisdom
• Carl Rogers’ assertion:
  “I have learned that my total organismic sensing of a situation is more trustworthy than my intellect”
• Gendlin’s work on the felt sense
• Process-oriented approaches to self-actualisation

Body-Oriented Coaching takes this theory of change seriously - and applies it directly to coaching practice.

Why These Distinctions Matter

Because without them, the field becomes blurry, confusing, and ethically risky.

We’ve reached a point where:

• some “somatic coaching” approaches inadvertently mimic therapy
• some trauma-oriented programmes teach methods inappropriate for coaching
• and many newer offerings ignore the deeper history and lineage entirely

Clarity protects clients.
Clarity strengthens practitioners.
And clarity elevates the entire field.

Body-Oriented Coaching contributes something vital to that clarity:

A way of working somatically that is ethical, rigorous, embodied, relational, processual and distinctly coaching - not therapy.

A Return to the Roots - and a Future Direction

Something fascinating is happening right now.

Even though the body is also starting to be embraced more fully into coaching, somatics is actually not “new” to coaching.

We believe it’s at the root of coaching - through the humanistic movement, the experiential traditions, and the wisdom lineages that informed them.

For years, coaching evolved in a more cognitive, goal-oriented direction and away from the body, or the acknowledgement of the whole of a person.

Now, however, we are witnessing a return - a remembering.

And Body-Oriented Coaching is part of that return:

• back to felt-sensing
• back to organismic intelligence
• back to emergence over effort
• back to the whole human being

It brings the depth of the somatic traditions into a coaching frame that is truly coaching.

And that makes it not only a modality within somatic coaching -
but a clear, coherent, and future-aligned expression of it.

If You Take One Thing From This Article

Hopefully, it might be this:

Somatic coaching is an umbrella term.

Body-Oriented Coaching is a specific, distinct modality that falls under that umbrella -
one with deep roots, a clear worldview, and a uniquely coaching-aligned approach.

It honours both:

• the ancient traditions that understood the body as a source of intelligence
  and
• the modern science that now confirms it

And it brings these threads together in a way that is grounded, relational, ethical -
and deeply resonant for the world we’re living in now.

Ideas forged in the ivory towers of academia can float high above the lived experience of daily life - elegant in form, yet disconnected by abstraction. At The Somatic School, our work is to ground that knowledge in the body.

There is a lot in this article - articulated lineages, a tracing across history of the importance of somatic psychology, and conceptual reasoning about why this work matters. And as the Asaro people of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea remind us: “Knowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the muscle”.

True understanding comes not just from hearing or reading information, but from embodying it through experience and practice - until it becomes part of your very being.

If something in this article spoke to you, how would it be to not just understand it intellectually, but to know it in your bones?

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