Davidson Yoga Therapy
SOMATICS AND BREATH THERAPY
I'm Samantha Leonard
A somatic and yoga therapist with 30+ years of experience specializing in complex PTSD, chronic pain, and treatment-resistant anxiety. I work at the intersection of nervous system regulation, trauma healing, and depth psychology—helping people heal what talk therapy alone cannot reach.
This work is for people whose symptoms persist despite insight and effort. People who need to work with their bodies and nervous systems, not just their thoughts.
Specializations
I work with adults and parents navigating complex presentations—particularly when symptoms persist despite insight, effort, and previous treatment.
Complex PTSD & Trauma
When traditional PTSD and trauma treatment hasn't been enough and your body still reacts as if danger is present—hypervigilance, panic, dissociation, emotional overwhelm.
This is particularly effective when you understand what happened to you intellectually, but your body hasn't gotten the message that the danger has passed.
Chronic Pain
Fibromyalgia, persistent back pain, neck pain, headaches—pain that continues despite medical treatment or after the original injury has healed.
Using Pain Reprocessing Therapy and somatic approaches when your nervous system has learned to produce pain signals even when tissues are healthy.
This approach addresses the mind-body components of chronic pain that traditional pain management often misses.
Treatment-Resistant Anxiety
Anxiety that feels physical more than mental. Panic attacks that come "out of nowhere."
Hypervigilance. Chronic tension. Emotional overwhelm that doesn't respond to traditional anxiety treatment or medication alone.
When you know logically that you're safe, but your body hasn't gotten the message—this is nervous system work.
What Clients Say
Conditions like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, IBS, and insomnia often have significant nervous system components. When your autonomic nervous system is chronically dysregulated, it affects everything—pain perception, digestion, sleep, energy, and immune response.
Somatic and yoga therapy help by:
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Regulating your autonomic nervous system
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Reducing the chronic stress response that maintains symptoms
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Working with your body's natural rhythms through breath and gentle movement
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Addressing trauma or unprocessed stress that keeps your system on high alert
"Samantha is the real deal.
Few practicing yoga therapists have this level of qualification, dedication, compassion, and
commitment to truly helping others."
Sara Faircloth
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic work understands body symptoms
as messengers.
Pain, anxiety, tension, and fatigue are ways your system communicates what has been carried, ignored, or endured.
Why Guidance Matters
It's not about fixing you. It's about finding you.
When emotions and pain are intense, calming the nervous system is often the first step—but it’s rarely as simple as using a generic breathing technique.
Different bodies respond differently, and what helps one person may overwhelm another.
A skilled guide can help you understand your unique breathing and holding patterns and find regulation strategies that actually work.
Working with anxiety rather than against it can begin to clarify what needs to change for life to feel more meaningful and aligned.
1. We begin with a free introductory call: This is a chance to slow things down, talk about what you’re experiencing, and sense whether this work feels like a good fit. There’s no pressure and no expectation to know exactly what you need yet.
2. Your first session is about listening and orienting: We’ll explore your breathing, movement patterns, nervous system responses, and relevant life history—physical, emotional, and relational. From there, we’ll begin with a simple, personalized practice designed to meet your system where it is right now.
3. Ongoing sessions are shaped by your goals and what’s happening right now: We track what’s present in real time—stress, symptoms, relationships, decisions—because the present often reveals an older pattern or wound that’s still running underneath. We explore these threads through breath and somatic work, and almost every session ends with a practical, personalized home practice that fits your actual life. Over time, the focus becomes less about “fixing” and more about learning how to practice: tuning in more subtly, building interoceptive awareness, and making meaningful changes between sessions.
About
With our 30+ years of education and experience, Davidson Yoga Therapy offers many tools, techniques, and therapeutic modalities to help you manage, or even eliminate your condition.
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About Me
My Name is Samantha Leonard
I have 30+ years and over 50K hours of experience and education as a yoga therapist, somatic coach, health coach, and depth-oriented practitioner who works at the intersection of body, nervous system, and psyche. I’m drawn to the places where symptoms persist—where pain, anxiety, or overwhelm don’t resolve through insight or effort alone.
My path into this work grew from years of studying trauma, somatic healing, Compassionate Inquiry, IFS, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, and Jungian Depth Psychology, alongside my own lived experience of how the body carries what the mind cannot always hold.
Over time, I’ve learned that real change happens when people feel safe enough to listen to their bodies, their emotions, and the deeper patterns shaping their lives.
I don’t approach this work as an expert with answers to dispense. I work relationally, with curiosity and care, helping people make sense of what their symptoms are responding to and how their lives are asking to change.
This work matters to me because I’ve seen what becomes possible when someone is truly seen, listened to, and supported in reconnecting with themselves.
Services
1
Free Discovery Call
2
First Appointment
Call to schedule
980-322-4518
3
Therapy Session
Get in Touch
Willow Center for Resilient Living
21223 Catawba Avenue
980-322-4518