“the body always leads us home.”
-Pat Ogden
- Pat Ogden
Somatic & Attachment-Based Therapy in Portland, OR
MY APPROACH
My work as a somatic (body-centered) and attachment-focused therapist centers on supporting folks in re-finding home within themselves. I hold the belief that our bodies carry both the imprint of our wounds and the innate wisdom to heal them—and that because wounding happens in relationship, healing must, too.
At this site of embodiment within safe relationship, profound transformation naturally occurs: wounding becomes self-knowing, constriction unfolds into aliveness, and pain transmutes into resource.
Therapy is not a set of techniques; it is a living, breathing relationship—a space of attuned contact where your system can begin to rediscover safety, trust, and connection in real time. In the presence of another who truly sees and stays, the body’s long-held patterns can finally begin to soften.
Alongside my foundational modalities—Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy, Primary Attachment Therapy, and NeuroAffective Touch—my work is grounded in contemporary neuroscience as well as current attachment and trauma research. I draw from the lineages of Interpersonal Neurobiology, CIMBS (Complex Integration of Multiple Brain Systems), Janina Fisher’s parts work (similar to Internal Family Systems), Relational Psychoanalysis, Psychodynamic Therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Continuum, Expressive Arts Therapy, Jungian depth psychology, and Play Therapy.
Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy
Hakomi invites us to slow way down and bring curious attention to the fabric of your inner world. Through mindfulness, we attend to the small gestures, sensations, images, and impulses that quietly reveal the unconscious patterns shaping how you relate to yourself and the world.
Rather than trying to “fix” what hurts, we bring loving curiosity to what arises—getting to know old survival patterns, where they came from, and what nourishment they need to soften and heal. The therapeutic relationship offers both a gentle mirror and invitations to experiment, allowing new data to emerge from the body’s own intelligence and new ways of being to take root. Transformation unfolds not through effort, but through presence.
NeuroAffective Touch
NeuroAffective Touch (NAT) uses mindful, meticulously consented touch to access the body’s earliest layers of experience—those formed before language and conscious memory were available. Touch is our first language, and when that language is spoken again through attuned contact, the body’s implicit memories often begin to surface more vividly and directly. In this way, NAT invites what has long been held beneath awareness to come forward for witnessing, integration, and healing.
Sessions often unfold on a soft treatment table layered with memory foam, creating a gentle, nest-like space where the body is supported to exhale its vigilance. Warm flaxseed pillows may be used to offer weight and warmth—small gestures that remind the body it is safe to rest, to receive, and to be met.
These moments of connection allow the body to feel supported, seen, and safe in ways it may never have known, offering the co-regulation and containment needed to allow bracing patterns to yield and find home in being held. Touch becomes a conversation between nervous systems, helping what was once frozen begin to flow with aliveness again.
Primary Attachment Therapy
Primary Attachment Therapy (PAT) unfolds within the living field of the relationship between us. Together, we attune to the subtle ways your system learned to reach, to protect, or to pull away—early attachment templates shaped by your first experiences of care. This process takes place in the present moment, guided by mindfulness and attunement, as we notice how those early patterns express themselves here and now.
Rather than analyzing from a distance, we stay close to the felt experience of connection, rupture, and repair as it moves between us in real time. Through this moment-by-moment exploration, we begin to build a new attachment map together—one in which safety, responsiveness, and trust become possible. Over time, this lived experience of attunement, repair, and the freedom to be fully yourself weaves new pathways of security, allowing the heart to rest and relationship to become a place of nourishment and homecoming.
My style is warm, collaborative, and intuitive—at times quietly spacious, sometimes gently directive, sometimes decidedly playful, and always rooted in mindful presence. This work is also held within a larger awareness of systems and belonging: how oppression, marginalization, and intergenerational trauma live in the body and in our relationships. I am affirming of all relationship structures, the LGTBQIA+ rainbow, kink, and am actively (and forever more) learning anti-racism.
• Trauma (relational, developmental, systemic, intergenerational, shock) & PTSD
• Prenatal, perinatal, and parenting support
• Anxiety, hypervigilance, and stress
• LGBTQIA+ identity and belonging
• Disordered eating and body relationship
• Psychedelic integration
• Chronic illness and chronic pain
• Grief and loss
• Relationship conflict
• Codependency
• Insecurity, shame, and self-worth
• Existential confusion
• Spiritual inquiry
I work best with those who have already experienced the limits of traditional talk therapy and are ready to engage the body in a deeper, more integrated way. I especially love working with my LGBTQIA+ community, prospective parents or new parents interested in interrupting intergenerational legacies of trauma, and with fellow healers, caregivers, and space-holders who are seeking their own replenishment and healing.
Areas of Focus Include:
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Individual therapy
For adult & adolescent individuals looking to deepen self knowing, heal old wounds and come into a more fully expressed and at ease version of themselves. And for children needing extra support.
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RELATIONSHIP & Family THERAPY
For couples or any other relationship of two or more, looking to get unstuck from negative relational cycles + build healthy attachment, & for adults wanting support in the transition to parenthood.
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GROUPS
Process groups can be a powerful way to experiment with new ways of being with others & to experience a profound sense of connection around our peculiar human condition.