Somatic Therapy Rooted in
the California Coast
Evidence-based, trauma-informed psychotherapy for individuals and couples navigating the weight of unprocessed experience. From the place this work was built.
Where This Work
Began
I founded Embodied Soul Psychotherapy® on a simple and abiding conviction: lasting healing requires more than insight. It asks for the body's participation. I am a licensed clinical psychologist whose work sits at the intersection of evidence-based care, somatic awareness, and spiritual depth.
This practice is rooted in Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara, and it is where this work began.
I work with adults and couples navigating complex trauma, relational wounds, burnout, grief, identity transitions, and the quiet erosion of self that accumulates over years of performing wellness rather than experiencing it. My approach is integrative, individualized, and attuned, drawing from a broad range of clinical modalities to meet each person's unique history and nervous system.
LOCATION
Carpinteria, California
Serving clients statewide via telehealth
FORMAT
In-person & telehealth sessions
Licensed to practice throughout California
SPECIALIZATIONS
Trauma, relational healing, somatic integration, spiritual identity
APPROACH
Integrative, trauma-informed, body-centered
Healing in a State
That Asks a Lot
California carries a particular cultural current, one that celebrates resilience, productivity, and self-optimization. For many people living here, that current creates an invisible pressure: to have already healed, to be further along, to know better by now.
But insight and self-awareness, however well-developed, are not the same as integration. Many of the people I work with are deeply reflective, even therapeutically experienced, and still find themselves caught in patterns they cannot simply think their way out of. This is not a failure of effort. It is a signal that the body holds what the mind alone cannot fully reach.
Somatic, trauma-informed therapy offers a different entry point, one that honors both the complexity of California's high-achieving culture and the quieter, more embodied work of genuine self-understanding. Whether you are navigating Silicon Valley burnout, professional identity transitions in Los Angeles, or the dissonance of living beautifully while feeling disconnected, my work offers a space that can hold the full picture.
An Integrative Framework,
Tailored to You
No two people arrive with the same history, the same nervous system, or the same readiness. I draw from a range of evidence-based modalities, choosing and combining them based on each person's unique presentation rather than following a fixed protocol.
Somatic & Mindfulness-Based Approaches
The body remembers what language cannot fully name. Somatic-informed work creates an opportunity to notice, interrupt, and slowly reorganize the patterns held in the nervous system. Not through force, but through attentive presence. Learn more about the approach →
Yoga Nidra & Embodied Practices
Yoga Nidra is a guided awareness practice that supports deep nervous system rest. Used within the therapeutic frame, it offers a bridge between the analytical mind and the body's more intuitive intelligence. Explore all modalities →
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS offers a compassionate map of the internal landscape: the parts of us that protect, the parts that carry pain, and the Self that can hold all of it. This modality is particularly helpful for those who experience themselves as divided, performing, or exhausted by their own inner critic.
Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP)
ISP works directly with the body's felt sense to process emotion and experience that language alone cannot fully reach. It offers a precise, body-centered framework for understanding how sensation, movement, and breath participate in healing.
Polyvagal-Informed Therapy
Understanding how the autonomic nervous system shapes perception, relationship, and behavior gives both of us a clearer picture of what regulation and healing actually require. This framework informs how I pace and structure our sessions.
EMDR & Trauma-Focused Work
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) supports the processing of distressing memories and traumatic experience in a structured, evidence-based way. I integrate EMDR within a broader somatic and relational framework. Read more on the blog →
"Therapy is not about becoming someone new. It's about becoming less defended against who you already are."
— The Embodied Soul Approach
You May Recognize
Yourself Here
I work with high-functioning adults and couples who have often done the work of self-examination and are seeking a depth of care that matches what they already know about themselves. The people I see in California frequently navigate:
Complex or developmental trauma that hasn't fully resolved through previous therapy
Burnout, perfectionism, and the quiet loss of self that comes with sustained high performance
Relational patterns that repeat despite awareness and intention to change
Grief, identity transitions, and the disorientation of major life thresholds
Spiritual emergence, meaning-making, and questions of purpose that don't fit neatly into secular frameworks
Couples seeking to move from cycles of disconnection toward something more honest and sustainabl
Telehealth sessions make it possible for me to work with clients throughout California, from the Bay Area and Los Angeles to San Diego, Sacramento, and beyond.
Before You Begin: Questions Worth Sitting With
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Many people who come to me have already done meaningful work in therapy. They have insight, vocabulary, and genuine self-awareness — and still find themselves cycling through the same patterns, the same emotional weather, the same quiet sense of being disconnected from themselves. This isn’t a failure of effort or intelligence. It often means the work hasn’t yet reached the body. Insight lives in the mind. Somatic therapy invites what the mind already knows to land somewhere deeper.
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High functioning and genuinely okay are not the same thing. Many of the people I work with are accomplished, self-aware, and outwardly fine — and still feel a persistent flatness, a low hum of anxiety, or a sense of performing their own life rather than living it. That experience is real, and it deserves more than self-optimization strategies. Therapy isn’t only for crisis. It’s also for the slower erosion that doesn’t show up on the outside.
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Understanding a pattern and being free of it are different things. Patterns rooted in early experience, relational wounds, or unprocessed stress live in the nervous system, not just in thought. No amount of analysis fully reaches them. Somatic and parts-based work (like IFS) creates a different kind of access: one that works with the body’s own intelligence rather than trying to think your way past it.
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Numbness is often the nervous system’s most effective protection, and one of the most disorienting experiences to live inside. It’s not indifference or weakness. It’s a response that made sense at some point, and now may be limiting what’s available to you. This is territory somatic therapy is particularly well-suited for, because it works gently with the body’s protective responses rather than pushing past them.
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It means that healing isn’t only a cognitive event. When we work together, I’m attending to more than what you say — I’m also attending to breath, posture, pacing, the way your body organizes itself around difficult material. This isn’t abstract or esoteric. It’s a more complete picture of what’s happening, one that opens possibilities that insight-only approaches sometimes can’t reach.
Have more questions? Visit the full FAQ page for more on the approach, what to expect, and how to get started.
More From
Embodied Soul
Each area of my work is deeply interconnected. You may find it useful to explore:
MODALITIES
RESOURCES
ABOUT DR. HARDWICK
GET STARTED
Ready to Begin?
I offer a brief consultation to help you determine whether this approach and this relationship feel like the right fit. There is no obligation, only an honest conversation.
