“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.” Peace Pilgrim
Practices that engage the body have long been understood as ways of restoring connection within ourselves – bringing together bodily experience, awareness, and emotional life. At Breathe Mindfulness Centre, we approach somatic work as an invitation to gently cultivate inner steadiness, safety, and awareness through the body.
Grounding and somatic practices offer a way to settle, listen, and reconnect from the inside out. By working with movement, breath, and sensation, these practices support nervous system regulation and integration, creating the conditions for greater ease, presence, and resilience – both within therapy and in daily life.
Somatic-based practices offer a body-focused way of supporting wellbeing by working directly with the nervous system. While traditional counselling often works “top-down” – using reflection, insight, and conversation to influence thoughts and emotions – somatic approaches work “bottom-up,” beginning with the body’s internal experience.
By gently engaging sensation, movement, breath, and rhythm, somatic practices help create the physical conditions for steadiness, safety, and awareness. This can make emotional processing more accessible and help therapeutic work feel less overwhelming and more integrated into everyday life.
Somatic practices are not about doing more, pushing harder, or “getting it right.” They are about listening to the body and supporting regulation in ways that feel safe, accessible, and sustainable.
When offered alongside therapy, clinician-led somatic practices may support:
Nervous System Regulation: Helping the body move out of states of high alert (such as anxiety or panic) or shutdown (such as numbness or low energy) by supporting its natural capacity to settle and recalibrate.
Body-Based Integration: Providing a physical pathway for emotions and experiences that may be difficult to access through words alone, helping integrate insights gained in counselling and psychotherapy.
Accessible and Trauma-Informed Support: Practices are adaptable to all bodies and abilities, with no focus on performance, flexibility, or fitness. The emphasis is on safety, choice, and restoring a sense of agency.
Clinical Alignment: Because these practices are offered by clinicians, they are paced with emotional readiness in mind and thoughtfully aligned with broader therapeutic goals.
Clinician-led somatic-based services at Breathe Mindfulness Centre support therapy by gently engaging the body as a pathway to regulation, awareness, and integration. Offered by regulated mental health professionals, these practices may be accessed as stand-alone wellness offerings or thoughtfully interwoven with counselling and psychotherapy, depending on individual needs and goals.
These approaches are trauma-aware, evidence-informed, and designed to be accessible and adaptable. They focus on supporting nervous system regulation and present-moment awareness, helping clients develop greater capacity for steadiness, safety, and self-connection:
Grounding and stabilization practices focus on the “here and now,” using gentle, sensory-based techniques to support nervous system regulation. These clinician-guided practices help anchor attention in the body, cultivate a sense of safety, and support steadiness during periods of stress, anxiety, or emotional overwhelm. Practices are adapted to individual capacity and can be offered on their own or alongside therapy.
Mindful movement practices use slow, intentional, trauma-informed movement to support embodied awareness and nervous system regulation. Offered in a choice-based and non-performance-focused way, these practices may include gentle mindful movement, mindful yoga, and walking-based practices that integrate rhythm, pacing, and sensory awareness.
This category may include:
gentle mindful movement
mindful yoga (yoga-based practices offered in a trauma-informed, non-performance-focused way)
walking-based practices that integrate rhythm, pacing, and sensory awareness
These offerings support flexibility, presence, and integration and can be woven into therapy or accessed independently as wellness-based supports.
Clinician-led breath practices focus on gentle breath awareness and regulation to support nervous system balance. These approaches are subtle, evidence-informed, and offered within a psychoeducational and wellness context. The emphasis is on noticing and working with the breath to support calm, steadiness, and regulation.
(Note: These offerings do not involve intensive, expressive, or altered-state breathwork.)
In addition to clinician-led services, Breathe Mindfulness Centre occasionally hosts wellness offerings facilitated by community providers who rent space within the centre and operate their own stand-alone businesses.
Some community wellness offerings are facilitated by practitioners with specialized training and certification in areas such as breath-based practices, sound healing, or yoga. These offerings are wellness-focused and educational in nature and are not intended to replace counselling, psychotherapy, assessment, or other psychological or mental health services provided by Breathe Mindfulness Centre.
Community-led offerings may include:
Community facilitators are not regulated mental health professionals and provide services independently of Breathe Mindfulness Centre. Each facilitator is responsible for their own services, scope of practice, and professional coverage.
These offerings are shared through our events calendar and newsletter as part of our commitment to supporting complementary approaches to wellbeing. They are not designed to address acute mental health concerns or crises.
Clients who are currently engaged in psychological services are welcome to speak with their clinician if they have questions about how these offerings may fit alongside their care.