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Somatic Therapy for Trauma Processing
&
Trauma-Informed Somatic Massage
for Women in Toronto

Nervous-system aware bodywork and relational somatic therapy for, trauma, overwhelm, and disconnection.

Begin With a Consultation

Welcome, brave heart.

Healing from trauma asks for more than insight alone. It asks for a conversation with both the mind and the body. My work brings these together through a relational and somatic approach to healing that is deeply felt.

I bring this as a Registered Massage Therapist, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and NARM Informed Professional, with over 16 years of clinical experience supporting women through trauma, from my studio in Toronto's St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood.

Many women arrive here having tried talk therapy, conventional massage, or self-improvement paths that felt incomplete. They sense that healing must include the body - but without being rushed, pushed, or overwhelmed.

Two distinct Pathways into healing

Trauma-Informed
RMT Somatic Bodywork

Trauma-informed bodywork that supports nervous system healing, emotional resilience, and a deeper connection with yourself.

Creating the conditions for your body to soften, settle, and remember its innate capacity to heal.

  • A specialized modality using gentle, supportive touch to stabilize the nervous system and promote deep states of rest. It involves no rubbing, kneading, or moving of tissues. It is purely a non-invasive, motionless placement of hands to help a highly dys-regulated body learn what safety feels like. Learn more

  • Somatic Massage Therapy is a trauma-informed, nervous-system-aware form of bodywork that supports women in reconnecting with their bodies with safety, choice, and presence.

    This approach weaves therapeutic massage with somatic awareness, helping to gently unwind patterns of tension, stress, and trauma held in the body. Rather than focusing only on physical symptoms, somatic massage honours the body as an intelligent system shaped by experience, emotion, and memory.

    I offer Somatic Massage Therapy in Toronto for women seeking bodywork that feels grounded, respectful, and deeply attuned.

    Learn more

  • My work centres on supporting women through the complex physical and emotional landscape that can follow breast reconstructive surgery. Over 15 years I’ve developed a gentle, clinically informed approach that helps women restore ease, mobility, and a sense of connection with their changing bodies.

    I blend manual therapy, scar-tissue work, nervous-system regulation, and trauma-informed somatic principles to create a treatment experience that is both effective and deeply respectful of each woman’s medical journey.

    Learn more

  • Dedicated therapeutic care for individuals navigating breast cancer rehabilitation. This RMT service supports tissue healing, addresses post-mastectomy cording (axillary web syndrome), and reduces physical discomfort in a safe, trauma-informed clinical setting.

Begin with a Consultation

Trauma Processing
through Somatic Therapy: Resilience & Integration

  • I offer gentle, attachment-focused somatic therapy and trauma-informed bodywork for women healing from the impact of sexual trauma.
    Learn more

  • Learn more

  • Learn more

A gentle, body-based approach to healing trauma, chronic stress, and nervous system overwhelm. These sessions support you to come into relationship with your body at a pace that honours your nervous system, your lived experience, and your innate wisdom.

Begin with a Consultation
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Where to Begin

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Begin by filling out the contact form. This first step helps us begin the conversation

Complete the Contact Form

We’ll meet online for a complimentary consultation to explore whether this work feels aligned for you.

15 minute Virtual Consultation

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Your first session is conversation-based and does not include touch. This session creates space to build safety, trust, and connection within the therapeutic relationship

In-Person Initial Session

Two Paths

Trauma Processing
through Somatic Therapy: Resilience & Integration Sessions

These ongoing sessions focus on nervous system regulation, somatic awareness, attachment patterns, emotional processing, and trauma integration through conversation-based somatic therapy. This path does not involve touch and supports developing greater resilience, embodiment, self-awareness, and relational capacity.

Trauma-Informed
Somatic Bodywork

This pathway integrates trauma-informed bodywork, somatic therapy, and co-regulating touch to support healing through the body and nervous system. Sessions may include gentle therapeutic touch, massage therapy, and nervous system support designed to help cultivate safety, regulation, rest, and reconnection with the body.

Begin With a Consultation

Meet Rachel

Rachel Pfau, RMT, SEP

My training has unfolded slowly, the same way I ask this work to unfold for the women I sit with. I came to this practice first as a Registered Massage Therapist, and over the years, that grew into deeper study as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and a NARM® Informed Professional, learning how trauma lives in the body and how it finds its way back to safety. I'm listed in the Somatic Experiencing International Practitioner Directory. This isn't a side offering I picked up along the way. It's the whole of my practice.

Begin with a Consultation
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This work moves at the pace of trust, not the pace of a typical appointment.

We begin with a consultation call, then an in-person intake session that's entirely conversation, no touch yet. This first meeting is where we build the safety and connection that everything else grows from. From there, some women move into bodywork. Many spend more time simply being met in conversation, because that's often where the deepest shifts happen.

If you're ready to be understood slowly and thoroughly, rather than rushed toward a result, you're in the right place.

What to Expect

A cozy window nook with a white brick wall, a white cushioned bench with textured pillows, and decorative items on the windowsill, including potted plants, bowls, a ceramic vase with flowers, and decorative plates.

Here, healing is not performance.
It is relationship.
If you’re looking for a quick fix, this may not be the right place. But if you’re ready for a slower, relational approach rather than rushed toward a result, you’re in the right place.

FAQS

What does a session look like?
We begin by arriving with an regulation practice to ground and attunement to what is present in your body, your energy, and your inner landscape. Together, we follow what is most alive and gently explore what’s needed: grounding, connection, release, or rest.

What if I'm not ready for any physical touch at all?
In early sessions , especially the first, we may not include any hands-on work. Instead, we tend to the essential foundations of embodied consent. This may include:

  • Tuning into sensation, boundaries, and body cues

  • Cultivating nervous system awareness and resourcing

  • Establishing safety, choice, and pacing in relationship

When and if touch becomes part of the process, it is always consensual, trauma-informed, and deeply attuned. Somatic bodywork may include gentle, therapeutic contact that supports healing, regulation, and reconnection.

Where are you located?

The studio is located in Toronto's St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood, close to the Financial District and Union Station, and Rachel works primarily with women in downtown Toronto and the surrounding GTA. All sessions are in person.

  • A space where I feel I can show up, be myself, and name my needs,

    My experience with Rachel at Embodied Life has been truly amazing. She is wise and intuitive. She creates a space where I feel I can show up, be myself, and name my needs, which she responds to with helpful care. I was in a really rough place, physically and emotionally, when I showed up 8 months ago and was desperate to see what somatic therapy could do for me. I feel like the care that Rachel has offered has been a critical piece in my healing and is a major part of why I’m now thriving. This is true so much so that in sharing my experience at Embodied Life with my employers, they offered to pay for a number of sessions as they saw the positive change in me and how it has helped me flourish in my own care-providing work.

    S.C.

  • A transformative journey.

    I walked into Embodied Life looking for a new massage therapist in the neighbourhood… little did I know I was about to embark on a transformative journey. I have been doing a lot of inner work and healing…. But the moment I met Rachel it was apparent to me that I am literally at the tip of the iceberg! It is only the beginning of my journey with her, but I am already captured by her healing touch, and new perspective! Definitely recommend to anyone who is curious to find the route cause of the physical pain they are experiencing…. Which is a transformative experience in every aspect of your life! Rachel is truly an expert in her field …and best of all she keeps it real! Now go get healed!

    K.S.

  • A kind, knowledgable and supportive healer/therapist/educator.

    Rachel is a kind, knowledgable and supportive healer/therapist/educator. My experiences working with her personally and professionally over the past 11 years have been exceptionally positive. I learn much from her and I have experienced her healing work as profound. As a somatic therapist, a yoga teacher and a massage therapist, I do not hesitate to say that Rachel is among the very best. The aesthetic space is a reflection of the depth of care she puts into everything she does. As a yoga teacher/therapist and the owner of a 27 year old Toronto yoga studio myself, I do not make these comments lightly.

    K.B.

  • So much internal progress towards true embodiment.

    I have just completed 5 sessions with Rachel (and will continue), and I am seeing so much internal progress towards true embodiment that it’s hard to even explain in writing. Rachel’s somatic therapy work is so unique and truly transformative! I am feeling more aligned with myself and walking in a sense of trust, ease and peace that I have only started feeling while working with Rachel. TRUST THE PROCESS is all I have to say, HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

    E.S.

  • I am more centered, confident and assertive with my needs.

    In my initial consult with Rachel, my body told me she is the practitioner for me. Even though it was just a consultation, Rachel related to me with so much care, centeredness and honesty, that I immediately felt safe. It was refreshing, comforting and hopeful all at the same time. I was debating leaving the city for a bit but she is one major reason that I have stayed. Ever since then, my journey with her has been an extension of those sensations. We worked every week to build safety within my body, practice being present in the now, listening to my body, amplifying the sliver of goodness buried under an ocean of trauma within my body, all without exchanging too many words. I have gone from saying "the" body to consciously owning it as "my" body. I am more centered, confident and assertive with my needs. Allowing and accepting where I am unapologetically. I felt my insides strengthening ever so slightly every week!

    S.T.

  • It is rare to find people who truly know how to hold space in silence.

    Rachel has taught me to ask for more, make something "even better" instead of settling for "good" without shame and without being attached to getting it every time. She has helped me begin my journey from head to body. My work with her has been extremely respectful, safe, consensual and truly co-creative. I have learned the value of my own voice and consent in places I didn't think it was necessary. My work with her is not done yet, but I have achieved a significant milestone in being able to function. I have huge respect for somatic work. It is rare to find people who truly know how to hold space in silence. Rachel is a gift for her clients and I am so grateful that she chose to serve the world with her magic!

    S.T.

  • A gentle yet powerful force.

    I had the pleasure of working with Rachel and it was a magnificent experience. She is a gentle yet powerful force and knows how to work with people, our nervous systems and help us transform and heal at our own pace. I have worked with many somatic practitioners over many years and none compare to Rachel's abilities. You can feel her authenticity and her compassion for the human experience and supporting people through it. Her wisdom created space for my needs (versus many other practitioners where I felt like I had to follow their script), Rachel flowed the session with what I was comfortable with and what I needed at any given moment. She also empowers her clients and helps us find agency in ourselves to create confidence and knowing of self. I'm so grateful I found her and look forward to many more sessions in the future! Bonus, her studio is absolutely stunning!!! Thanks Rachel you are an absolute light!

    SN

  • Rachel’s presence is ethereal yet grounded and her studio is a physical representation of her, inviting and warm.

    I worked with Rachel over the course of eight months and in that time, she became my primary support in my nervous system healing journey. Even though I had initially started with somatic touch therapy with her, she stayed flexible as my needs changed and we organically transitioned into her holding space for me as I faced and healed parts of myself. Rachel’s presence is ethereal yet grounded and her studio is a physical representation of her, inviting and warm. Rooted in training, she intuitively guides each session, and she knows how to seamlessly weave in and out of holding silent space for feeling and offering words of support. Rachel holds a witnessing presence, and she gently guides subtle shifts in the safety of the space she holds. With her steady support, I have faced and worked through lifelong patterns. Thank you, Rachel, for your unwavering support, I can’t recommend you and your services enough.

    GS

  • One honest, embodied, sacred moment at a time.

    Rachel brings an uncommon fusion of depth, lived wisdom, and reverent slowness that is increasingly rare.

    Guided by teachers like Francis Weller and Thomas Hübl, and held by her own spiritual lineages, Rachel walks a path of integrity, reverence, and love — even when it’s hard. Her deepest purpose is to contribute to the healing and restoration of a world in need, one honest, embodied, sacred moment at a time.

    SR

Begin With a Consultation