I’m David McNamara, a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP), Certified Addiction Recovery Coach, and Credentialed Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor (CASAC). I created Somatic Recovery to support healing from addiction and overwhelm through a gentle, trauma-informed, body-based approach.

Somatic Recovery doesn’t view addiction as something “wrong” with a person. Instead, it recognizes addictive behaviors as survival strategies the body uses when stress or trauma feels too much to handle. When the nervous system feels unsafe, it turns to substances or behaviors for relief — whether that’s drugs or alcohol, food, sex, gaming, or other compulsive patterns.

This work moves at the pace of your own nervous system and offers a depathologizing lens—one that supports inner listening, compassionate understanding, and trauma resolution. Instead of asking you to override your experience, Somatic Recovery invites you to work with it.

While traditional talk therapy often focuses on story, thoughts, and cognitive insight, somatic approaches are grounded in the understanding that the body plays an equally essential role in healing trauma and chronic stress. Trauma is not only remembered—it is held in the nervous system.

A body-based process empowers people to be guided by their own inner experience rather than by external authority. Learning to experience life from the inside out can foster self-trust, heal our relationship with ourselves, and allow us to engage with the world in more connected and authentic ways.

Drawing from my training in Somatic Experiencing®, Somatic EMDR, Integral Somatic Psychology, Inner Relationship Focusing, and Integrative Harm-Reduction Psychotherapy, all work is carefully paced to support safety, awareness, and choice.

"When the body feels safe, change becomes possible."

Virtual sessions available · In-person sessions through Woodstock Healing Arts · Groups available via waitlist