Why Nazra replaced 'Somatic Bodywork' with Holistic Bodywork

Part of my job as a healing practitioner is to educate people on the treatment they are receiving so they can continue to make well-informed decisions regarding their options for care.

I'm Nazra Peterson and while I am also Certified Massage Therapist (CMT) and a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT), I define myself and work as a Holistic Healer and Bodyworker. Here you're going to learn why.

While part of my foundation is anchored in manual therapy and human anatomy, true healing requires going beyond rigid, textbook massage routines. The Nazra Method was born out of years of deep personal practice, intuitively guided touch, and real, transformational client breakthroughs and feedback.

Rather than just rubbing tired muscles, my work focuses on the exact space where physical touch meets emotional release—helping your body let go of stored stress, anxiety, stuck emotions, trauma, and patterns that talk therapy alone doesn't always reach.

To my fellow chronic Instagram and TikTok scrollers out there who have spent any time on wellness posts, you’ve probably seen the word "somatic" attached to almost everything. From "somatic shaking" to "somatic breathwork," it has quickly become one of the biggest buzzwords in the holistic health space.

Why you may see me using hashtags for "Somatic Bodywork"

Yes, you probably have seen me use "somatic bodywork" in my own hashtags and titles! But I'm going to level with you about the language: the phrase actually makes zero sense.

Let’s look at the root: Soma is the Greek word for "body." So when someone says "somatic," they literally mean "of or relating to the physical body."

When you string it together as "somatic bodywork," you are essentially saying "body bodywork."

While it has become a necessary search term to help people find practitioners like me who facilitate deep, nervous-system-based healing online, there is a massive difference between a trendy social media hashtag and true, transformational healing.

That is why I've opted to use the term Holistic Bodywork—because it means treating the entire system: the mind, body, emotions, and spirit together. "Somatic," on the other hand, specifically relates to the physical body and its internal sensations.

So, while many of my clients have experienced profound somatic releases and healing through The Nazra Method, I am deeply curious about the deeper, emotional "why" behind your trapezius pain, your chronic neck tightness, or your back that keeps going out.

My curiosity asks: What is this broken heart that is collapsing your shoulders? Where are you not speaking your truth? Where do you not feel supported in your life?

The Nazra Method: A Holistic Bodywork Experience, formerly known as "Somatic Bodywork"

If you are new to the world of the infamous trend of "#somatic bodywork", it’s completely natural to feel a little uncertain about what the experience actually looks like. You don't need to know any special rules or jargon before you arrive. Every session is tailored specifically to your body on that given day, but generally follows three grounded phases:

• Phase 1: Grounded Check-In & Intake — We begin with an open, comfortable conversation. We’ll discuss where you are holding stress, physical tension, or emotional burnout, and set a clear intention for our time together.

• Phase 2: Tailored Bodywork & Energy Release — Using a customized blend of hands-on manual therapy, intuitive touch, breathwork, and energy work, we guide your nervous system out of "fight-or-flight" mode so your body can safely release deep-seated physical and emotional tension.

• Phase 3: Integration & Grounding — We wrap up with quiet reflection and simple grounding techniques, ensuring you feel centered, safe, and deeply reconnected to yourself before stepping back into your day.

  
  

Complementary Care & Potential HSA/FSA Options

Holistic Bodywork Los Angeles

It helps to view holistic bodywork as one supportive element of your personal wellness routine. Techniques focused on stress reduction and nervous system ease are strictly complementary practices meant to encourage relaxation and emotional balance.

While many clients find these sessions wonderfully supportive alongside care from licensed mental health professionals, this work is non-clinical and is not a substitute for medical diagnosis, psychiatric care, or psychotherapy.

(A quick note on HSA/FSA: Depending on your individual benefits provider, plan guidelines, or letter of medical necessity, select services may sometimes qualify for HSA or FSA reimbursement. Coverage varies wildly, so if you're hoping to use those funds, be sure to verify your specific plan's policies directly with your provider!)

Ready to Experience Real Somatic Healing Through Holistic Bodywork?

Whether we call it somatic work, intuitive bodywork, holistic healing, or nervous system regulation, the goal remains the same: helping months or years of stuck emotional energy move out of your body.

It's about releasing emotional pain from your fascia through breath, sound, or having a good cry session—so you can feel light, grounded, and truly at home in your body again.

If you’re ready to move past the social media buzzwords and experience treatments tailored entirely to your personal healing, explore The Nazra Method Services or reach out to book your session today.

Somatic Gateway Intensive™

$325.00

2h

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Stop Killing the Messengers: What your period and perimenopause are actually telling you.

As women, we are told from the first time we hear about the birds and the bees: Just wait for it. Wait for the moment you turn twelve and start your period—likely at the most embarrassing moment in class. From that day on, you’re branded. You’re told you’ll turn into a "hormonal lunatic," irrational and unstable, for 5 to 7 days a month until you magically "reset."

Then the narrative shifts to: Wait until perimenopause. We’re warned we’ll lose our minds, our emotions will shatter, and our logic will vanish. We go from being screwed to screwed2.0.

For generations, we’ve been conditioned to believe that for the majority of our lives, we are destined to lose discernment and abandon our senses. We are taught that being emotional is synonymous with being illogical.

But what if 90% of that narrative is generational ignorance? What if the "missing information" isn't a mystery, but a map to you reclaiming your power? If you are tired of feeling like a passenger in your own body—if you’re ready to stop blaming the chemistry and start claiming your agency—let’s zoom in on the fine print of what’s going on in your body. 

As a holistic healer based in Los Angeles, with over 80% female clientele, specializing in somatic emotional trauma release bodywork, a recurring pain point I've worked on with clients is the self-gaslighting I see many women do right in front of my eyes. Their truth is, "This relationship is draining me" while simultaneously subscribing to a narrative that's saying, "but you can ignore me because my hormones are making me irrational."

It doesn't take long to realize that the same issues and emotions that are present on the first of the month are also present every other day of the month.  Let’s take a peek into my one-on-one sessions.

Trauma Release Bodywork POV: The hips don’t lie

I’ve felt a lot of trauma and past experiences in my clients’ hips. I never know what I’m touching when I’m moving energy through the body. In emotional trauma release bodywork, you can feel a woman’s previous relationships and her current relationship.

As a healer, I can be touching someone’s lost love, their betrayal, someone’s miscarriage, their abortion, or their rape. I can be touching someone’s mother wound of the mother who gave them up, the one who never wanted them, who mistreated them, or the mother they were never close to. You can also feel the mom that was her best friend who passed away or the daughter diagnosed with cancer that she is terrified she's going to lose.

We carry a lot of emotions in our hips—including the energy of past sexual partners. Whether you loved them or not, you exchanged energy. The frequencies of that energy carry information: beliefs about love, inadequacy, loneliness, fear, hurt, connection, or lack thereof. 

EMOTIONAL TRAUAMA RELEASE BODYWORK

Something I’ve seen time and time again is the intensity of a psoas release. When working out the tight hips, many times women just think they’re ticklish. However, that sensation can go from giggling or hysterically laughing to uncontrollably crying in a matter of minutes or seconds.

These untold stories eventually manifest as physical messages. Your hips are talking to you through:

• Irregular Flow: Heavy cycles or the total absence of a period.

• Physical Pain: Debilitating cramps or clicking and popping hip joints.

• Medical Pathologies: Ovarian cysts, fibroids, infertility, etc.

  
  

I’m not saying don’t look at your hormone levels; I’m saying don’t stop there.  As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says, “the body keeps the score.” Don’t bypass the emotional and energetic trauma release bodywork once you leave your OB-GYN's office.

If you live in the Los Angeles area and want to learn more about The Nazra Method for Holistic Soma Integration plans, visit the FAQs page of the website.

The Science: Hormones Are a Volume Button

Medical literature, including Early Life Trauma, Emotion Dysregulation and Hormonal Sensitivity Across Female Reproductive Life Events in NIH National Library of Medicine, states: “standard hormonal fluctuations—whether during the premenstrual phase, perimenopause, or menopause—do not inherently cause severe emotional instability on their own. Instead, unresolved trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) act as the underlying catalyst, rewiring the nervous system and causing a hypersensitivity to normal biological shifts.”

Ever wonder why some women experience little to no symptoms during the menstruation or the menopausal chapters of their life while you can sometimes feel like the world is on fire and they’re sitting in front of the fireplace roasting marshmallows and daydreaming about daisies?

Well, add these two words to your vocabulary: allostatic load and differential sensitivity.  You might be saying, “alo…what?” Hold on to your period panties, ladies! Allostatic load is the cumulative, systemic "wear and tear" experienced by the body and brain when exposed to chronic, repeated, or unmanaged stress. So, in plain English, I want you to look at your body as a container or vessel, whatever floats your boat. The unresolved trauma is the physical weight within it. 

Trauma is more than a memory; it's a physical and energetic mass in your vessel. The more you are managing or mismanaging your mental and emotional stress on a daily basis, the more or less your body is going to notice strong emotional shifts when hormones naturally drop.  

That brings us to differential sensitivity.  This is also known as differential susceptibility hypothesis. When we’re susceptible, we are vulnerable to certain experiences we might otherwise not be if we’re in a more healed space. 

That means certain women with less unresolved trauma have a nervous system with the physical capacity and resilience to absorb the shift when hormonal drops occur. The woman with more unresolved trauma in her body is going to feel those drops more deeply in the parts of her that are still seeking to be seen and healed by her.

But I feel better after my IUD (or HRT)

While I love that for you—because stabilizing your chemistry is a vital first step—be sure not to mistake a presentable room (your body) for a clean one. We definitely want you to feel better and have a balanced hormone system, but here’s the caveat: Remember, any hormone drops that you experienced as being “hormonal, irrational, emotional” were just disabling the mute button to your unresolved emotions. 

Now that you can control the volume, many women will opt to “feel better” over addressing and healing the core issues and corresponding emotions the hormones were raising the volume to.  In a society that labels people experiencing unpleasant emotions as being “hormonal and unreasonable”, the trick is not to make yourself “okay” or “fine” with the unfulfilling career, the incompatible relationship, or the strained relationship with a family member or friend. 

The body is multidimensional in nature and so it needs multidimensional forms of healing to address the vastness of who we are and all of our needs. That means, while listening to your doctor and balancing out your body, don’t sweep the signals under the rug. 

You can clean up the parts of your home that all of your guests can see with the naked eye. But that doesn’t mean you shove things into the junk drawers or the closet that your guests don’t see. It’s like looking at the Emotional Whistleblower, aka your hormones, and saying, “Shhhhhhh…that will be enough of you.” 

The Audacity to feel Out Loud

The issues women face don't just "feel" real; they are stemming from a real place. But traditionally, women silence themselves by people-pleasing. And when you're people-pleasing you will avoid conflict, try to play the peacemaker, “look at the bright side”, suppress your anxiety and your anger until all of those emotions start to build like a pressure cooker. And like clockwork, every 28 days or so, the volume button gets turned up on these tricky little suckers called hormones, amplifying your unacknowledged and unprocessed emotions. On the outside looking in, you can look a little "emotional" aka "nuts". But on the inside, your hormones are giving you the audacity to feel out loud.

If your partner, family members, co-workers or boss lean towards disrespect or talking down to you, your hormones aren't making you angry; you're angry. When you haven't asked for that raise or promotion, it's not your period that is making you frustrated, it's the lack of speaking up for yourself that has you frustrated. It's not perimenopause or menopause making you upset about the opportunities you took for granted, the apology you never received, or the relationship you haven't taken the initiative to heal or pursue; it's you.

HOLISTIC HEALING: TRAUMA-INFORMED BODYWORK & ENERGY HEALING

Now maybe you haven’t yet figured out what or why you feel angry, frustrated, sad or upset, but your hormones need to have some unresolved emotions to latch on to. Now just because you cry at a toilet paper commercial doesn’t mean you have a trauma around toilets. But the moment you saw that commercial, your hormones gave you permission to feel something that was ready to come up and come out. 

It's not just in your head—it’s in your tissues, your fascia, and muscles. It’s in the knots in your back, the tightness in your neck, and the pain in your hips.

One of my favorite times of working with my female clients for their holistic bodywork, energy healing, and integration coaching sessions has always been when they complain about ‘that time of the month’ where they feel the most “hormonal”.  Why is that? It just means they are feeling emotions that they haven’t identified, accepted, or fully addressed where they’re coming from. And as a healer, I am ready for the purge. 

Whether you’ve done traditional talk therapy or not in the past and are curious about a journey of somatic emotional trauma release work, fill out an alignment assessment form and we will contact you for a discovery call, so you can see if we are aligned for this healing journey together.

Nazra Peterson

www.holistictouchbynazra.com

www.holistictrainingbynazra.com

IG: @holistictouchbynazra