In today’s world, navigating the complexities of relationships and intimacy can be challenging. Somatic intimacy coaching offers a unique approach that combines body-centered therapies with a deep understanding of human connection.
Meet Annie Boheler, a skilled somatic intimacy coach dedicated to helping individuals cultivate healthier, more fulfilling relationships. Discover how their expertise in somatic modalities, trauma healing, and relationship dynamics can support your journey toward greater intimacy and well-being.
What kind of training and experience do you have as a somatic intimacy coach?
As a somatic intimacy coach, I have experiential training based in pleasure positive ethics, acute and complex trauma renegotiation and decolonization process work. As a young adult, I worked a short stint as an adult dancer and have since then been an advocate for sex workers’ rights as well as proper consent based sexual education. This work in my early 20’s led me to the Somatica® Institute where I indulged in fundamental affirmations and authentic human relating based in sexual liberation and radical consent.
I continued my education with Somatic Experiencing® International and have been working at the intersection of trauma and sexuality for over five years now. The relational therapy frameworks required for intimacy, relationship and liberatory work are especially fulfilling and needed in this time.
Can you describe what somatic modalities are and how they can be used in intimacy coaching?
Somatic modalities support one in getting to know themselves better through embodiment. This can be defined as our relationship between our inner, emotional or intellectual experience, and our physical body. Somatics are equally relevant for our independent healing as well as our collective healing or evolution. Somatic frameworks are especially important for intimacy coaching because we cannot theoretically heal. Traditional talk therapy and other top down cognitive based modalities usually leave out the holistic relationship with the physical body, or ‘soma’, and reinforce just one way of thinking. It is important to remember that emotional intelligence, body intelligence, mystical and creative thinking are all equally as important as the intellect.
How does somatic intimacy coaching consider the social, environmental, and intimate aspects of a person’s life?
True somatics considers all of these things innately. When we are connected to our soma, or our whole self, we are connected inherently to our social, environmental and intimate lives. Our whole selves, our truly connected selves, are present within the context of our relational lives. This tender connection is intimate, whether it is explicitly sexual or not, whether it is explicitly spiritual or not, it just ‘is’ so. This realization can be overwhelming for some, especially those who have been living in any form of dissociation, spiritual bypassing, or trauma, so, we can hold each other in compassion as we awaken to the present joys and sorrows of our time.
This is why I have engaged as a professional intimacy coach and counselor, because of my love of life, from liberated feminine pleasure to ecological consideration, we can find joy in collaboration around all of life’s systems. When we can feel secure and safe in our innermost relationships, such as intimacy or sensuality, we can then use that as a baseline to explore and endeavor on a spiritual path of support for the betterment of the world. A healthy intimate life behind the doors of your home is not the end goal, it is the starting line, to further the basic human need of fulfillment which is genuine contribution to make the world a better place, no matter how big or small the contribution. We need a safe home base in order to do this. Successful intimacy is a safe home base.
In your experience, what are some of the most common challenges people face in their relationships?
I experience that shame is a huge blockade in personal relationship development. Every single one of us has been impacted by some aspect of shame from this society and it behooves the social leverage of control to not talk about shame. Most people’s challenges are quite normal and common. It is only in isolation and shame that these problems fester into overwhelming challenges in our lives. There are many reasons, of which I will not get into right now, that we reinforce the avoidance of these nuances and tender conversations with our friends and family but I will say, this is changing rapidly with the younger generation.
Me, as a millennial and gen Z are like, “What do we have to lose, we see the vail has been lifted and we see why these topics have been avoided. Compulsive traditionalism and abusive power dynamics are the reason we have been taught to avoid sensitive topics such as sensuality as well as finance and religion.” May we all be truly free to have choice and dignity, or worth, without assumptive power trips. We know we can have power with and not power over dynamics as a sustainable foundation of a society.
One reason Kink is becoming so popular now is because human beings are animals and we have evolved with power dynamics and adult play. We strive, and are currently letting go of, cultural non-consensual power dynamics. This is exemplified by more explicit conversations in the western world around racism, classism and gender inequalities. So, we crave consensual power dynamics which could be translated into adult play. This concept is just a teaser and was introduced to me through studies with Esther Perel.
How can somatic intimacy coaching help people improve communication in their relationships?
Our entire nervous systems are involved within our intimate lives. If we want actual support from a coach or counselor, that support must include our entire nervous systems. Somatics is the way to do just that.
What are some of the benefits of working with a somatic intimacy coach?
We can feel relief when a practitioner meets us in an authentic way. Traditional western psychology dynamics is couched in a one-way vulnerability dynamic which requires the clients to be vulnerable in the face of an invulnerable practitioner. This dynamic can be dehumanizing and just generally unhelpful for most people. So, I think many people are craving, deep down, to work with a practitioner who can model the authenticity that is required for intimacy healing.
We also just need to get out of our heads and uncouple from our obsession to intellectualize everything. Intellectualization is only one way of processing our experiences. Emotional, physical, somatic, mystical, creative, and spiritual intelligence are all equally valid ways of processing our experiences, as mentioned previously.
