Reiki and Somatic Coaching both fall under the umbrella of body-based, holistic support.
From the outside they can sound kind of similar. Both involve slowing down and working with the body rather than just the mind. Both are supportive tools for nervous system regulation.
But they’re actually quite different in how they approach it, how they feel, and what they’re most useful for.
What is Reiki?
Reiki is a Japanese energy healing practice that works with the body’s life force energy. The idea at its core is that when our energy is flowing freely, the body can find its own way back to a sense of balance.
In a session, a practitioner channels Reiki through their hands, either resting on or hovering just above the body. You don’t need to do anything. There’s no talking required, no processing, no figuring anything out. You lie down, receive, and let whatever energy wants to shift, shift.
What people experience varies from session to session:
Deep physical relaxation
Warmth or tingling
Emotional or energetic releases
A sense of clarity, insight, memory or an intuitive knowing
A deep sense of rejuvenation and rest
One client described it as “acupuncture without the needles” or an “energetic massage”! People generally leave feeling nourished and replenished in a way that’s difficult to put into words until you’ve experienced it.
Reiki is available online and as distance healing, which means location doesn’t matter. The energy isn’t limited by geography.
Sometimes, Reiki can bring up emotions, stored unfinished life experiences or memories that have a charge to them - this is where Somatic Coaching can come in to support.
Learn more about what Reiki feels like.
What is Somatic Coaching?
Somatic Coaching is a body-led, nervous-system based, trauma-informed approach to working through stuck patterns, emotions, and experiences that have been held in the body throughout our life.
The word “somatic” comes from the Greek soma, meaning body. Somatic work is built on the understanding that our experiences (e.g. anxiety, self doubt, burnout, feeling not enough) and emotions don’t just live in our memories or our minds, they live in our bodies too.
While there is a mindset element to these experiences, they are often nervous system imprints and ways our body has adapted and learned how to respond to tricky situations.
Tightness in the chest before a hard conversation
Low-grade tension in the shoulders that never quite leaves
A freeze response when something feels overwhelming
Restless legs like you want to run, after a challenging interaction
These physical sensations aren’t random, they’re nervous system responses doing exactly what it learned to do - to keep you safe.
Somatic Coaching works with your body’s innate intelligence, your nervous system responses, rather than overriding it or reframing your perspective.
What happens in a Somatic Coaching Session?
In a somatic coaching session, we work with what’s actually happening in your body right now. Not the story of an experience, but the felt sense of it - tightness, heaviness, buzzing, an image or instinct or movement… And we follow that, gently and with curiosity, without forcing anything.
Somatic Coaching operates on the foundation that your body knows exactly what it needs to do, to heal. By being with and experiencing the sensations, images, memories that come up, we follow your body’s natural process and how it wants to digest these experiences or feel supported.
It’s not talk therapy. We’re not analysing the past or building new frameworks for understanding yourself. We’re creating the right conditions and right relationship for what’s been sitting in the body to be supported or metabolised.
Working with our bodily sensations and stored emotions, requires a different form of attention - an inner awareness and observing. Somatic Coaching is slow, gentle, titrated work where we work on building the body’s capacity to safely meet, be with, and process the sensations and bodily experiences. So your body has more options, choice, ways of being that can come forward once again.
So what’s actually different between Reiki and Somatic Coaching?
The simplest way I can put it:
Reiki is something you receive. You show up, lie down, and the energy does what it does. All you need to do is rest, receive and be.
Somatic Coaching involves more active participation. Not in a pushing through kind of way, but there’s a gentle engagement required, like talk therapy. We’re working together with what’s present in your body, noticing what arises, following it, giving it space.
While they’re both ways of working with the body and the body’s energy, and both create space for things to shift. Reiki does so from an energetic perspective, while Somatic Coaching works from the physical, emotional and cognitive perspective of supporting the human body to return to a state of homeostasis and a way of being you that feels more congruent.
When is Reiki the right fit?
Reiki tends to suit people who:
Are feeling energetically flat, stuck or just a bit off, and aren’t sure why
Need deep rest but can’t seem to access it
Feel there’s something in their energetic field that needs clearing or support
Want energetic support to feel refreshed or an energetic pick-me-up
Reiki is a beautiful complement to somatic work. A lot of people find Reiki brings things to the surface clarity, emotions, insight, which can then be explored further in somatic sessions.
When is Somatic Coaching the right fit?
Somatic coaching tends to suit people who:
Have done some inner work, like therapy, journalling, reading
Feel like something is still sitting in the body that talking alone can’t reach
Are navigating anxiety, burnout, self-doubt, or life transitions and want support that goes beyond the cognitive
Want to understand themselves through their own felt experience, not just through insight
This work builds gradually over time. It’s not a one-session fix, and it’s not for people looking for quick answers. It’s for the woman who’s ready to slow down, get curious, and follow what arises, and for the ones open to the idea that your body has been trying to communicate with you something all along.
Can you do both?
Yes, and a lot of people do.
I offer sessions that blend both, and many clients find the two work really well together. Reiki can open things up energetically, and somatic work can meet what comes up and help it move through.
If you’re still not sure which one is right for where you’re at, that’s what the Connection Call is for. A free, no-pressure 15 minutes where we can talk through what’s going on for you and figure out the right direction together.
There’s no expectation, just a relaxed chat.