Post-Therapy Plateau Clients
You have done the talk work, understand your patterns, and want embodied change rather than more insight.
Somatic Coaching · Los Angeles
Somatic coaching in Los Angeles: change that lands in the body, not just the story
The work you are looking for is not clinical treatment. It is body-based coaching for patterns conversation alone has not moved. Somatic coaching at our Los Angeles studio combines breathwork, Classical Pilates-informed movement, Reiki, and intentional conversation in one session. Jaime and Yonatan Elkayam, Certified Breathwork Facilitators and Reiki Master Teachers, see clients at their Los Angeles studio or on Zoom.
90-minute sessions · Los Angeles studio or virtual · Certified Breathwork Facilitators
Certified Breathwork Facilitators
Married practitioner team · Six years in LA
The Approach
What is the difference between a somatic coach and a therapist?
A somatic therapist is a licensed clinician, an LMFT, PsyD, or similar, who provides clinical treatment for diagnosed conditions using body-based interventions, the kind of psychotherapy the American Psychological Association describes as licensed mental-health treatment. A somatic coach is a non-clinical practitioner who uses somatic awareness, movement, and nervous-system tools inside a coaching, not therapy, container. Coaching does not diagnose, treat, or address clinical conditions.
What it does support is embodied awareness, nervous-system regulation, and pattern-level change for clients who are not in acute clinical need, often alongside their existing therapy. Neither Jaime nor Yonatan is a licensed therapist. If you need clinical care, we will tell you directly and help you find the right referral.
Who It Helps
Who somatic coaching is for in Los Angeles
Somatic coaching at Word of Mouth is designed for clients who are ready for body-based work in a coaching container.
Therapists & Caregivers
Your own nervous system is often depleted from holding space for others. This is a practitioner-for-practitioner container that respects what you already know.
Coaching for therapists →Creatives & Founders
Performance pressure that lives in the body under the achievement, common across LA's entertainment and tech scenes.
Over-Functioners & High-Achievers
Anxiety that lives in the doing, not just the thinking, and a body that will not stop even when you want it to.
Couples
Nervous-system patterns that show up in conflict, distance, or communication, worked with in a coaching, not couples-therapy, container.
Couples coaching →Burnout Recoverers
Too depleted to sustain purely cognitive approaches, needing the body to lead the way back.
Burnout recovery →Somatic coaching supports people moving through stress, burnout, and stuck patterns as a complement to medical or mental-health care. It is not a substitute for professional treatment.
Why It Works
How somatic coaching actually works
Somatic coaching starts with the body's signals: sensation, posture, breath quality, and muscle tension, as data. Sessions weave breathwork, Classical Pilates-informed movement, and Reiki together with conversation, calibrated to what the body needs that day.
Body-centered awareness
You learn to notice and work with the body's signals rather than override them. Over sessions, this builds a different relationship with your own physical state.
Nervous-system regulation
The nervous system runs patterns beneath conscious thought. Sessions work with regulation, helping the body move between activation and calm more fluidly.
Pilates-informed movement
Yonatan's Classical Pilates background makes movement available as a somatic tool, reorganizing how the body holds stress and pattern, not exercise for its own sake.
Reiki and somatic resourcing
Jaime's Reiki energy work can settle and resource a session, especially for a nervous system that needs an anchor before verbal processing.
Your Session
What a 90-minute somatic coaching session looks like
1
You arrive in the body
The first few minutes are somatic: a body scan, a breath, a posture check. This is not a ritual, it is diagnostic. Where you are physically tells us how to pace what follows.
2
We layer in what the body needs
If the nervous system is activated, breathwork comes first. If there is a holding pattern, Pilates-informed movement can reorganize it. If the energy feels blocked, Reiki creates a settling.
3
We talk from inside the body's experience
Conversation happens after or alongside the somatic work, not instead of it. Insights that arrive once the nervous system is regulated tend to be more integrative and easier to act on.
4
You close with something felt, not just understood
Sessions end with integration: what shifted physically, what you are taking with you, and what to notice before your next visit.
What this session is not: a talk session with a breathing exercise at the start. Breath, body, energy, and conversation are woven together inside the same hour.
Your Facilitators
Meet Jaime and Yonatan Elkayam
Jaime is a Certified Reiki Master Teacher, Certified Breathwork Facilitator, Energy Medicine Practitioner and Certified Behavior Change Coach, and has coached one-on-one for more than fifteen years. Her sessions bring movement, breath and somatic awareness into the conversation. Yonatan is a Certified Breathwork Facilitator, Certified Reiki Master Teacher, Classical Pilates Instructor, and musician with 30 years of vibrational study, which makes the somatic layer of sessions substantive, not decorative.
Neither Jaime nor Yonatan is a licensed therapist. Somatic coaching draws on frameworks developed by researchers including Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, Pat Ogden, and Dan Siegel, applied here in a non-clinical, coaching container. It is not equivalent to somatic therapy conducted by a licensed clinician, and outcomes are not guaranteed. Many clients find it effective, results vary, and that is why every program begins with a discovery call.
Learn more about us
In Their Words
What coaching clients say
Katie Swartz
I started with Reiki sessions and eventually joined Yonatan for longer‑term coaching. Working with both Jaime and Yonatan over time has helped me regulate my nervous system and trust myself again. This work is subtle but powerful. 💗🙏🏻💗
Amber Lavi
I started working with Jaime years ago and the evolution of the work has mirrored my own growth. Reiki, breathwork, coaching — all offered with so much integrity and care. I’m speak to myself more lovingly and feel lighter than I have in years. This work meets me where I’m at, and elves with me. So grateful.
Read on Google
Eric Sagotsky
I’ve been working with Jaime for over a year now. Her space is super calming and I find myself automatically smiling when I walk in the door. If you’re looking for a blend of fitness, mindfulness and life coaching with a healthy dose of relaxation, this is the place for you. I used to spend my time treating different parts of the body and mind in various places not considering the whole. Working at Word of Mouth has shown me a different way of approaching wellness uniting mind, body, emotion, spirit and community and it feels stickier and more transformative than other things I’ve done in the past. I can’t recommend it enough.
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Good Questions
Somatic coaching in Los Angeles, answered
Honest answers about how somatic coaching works, what it costs, and how it fits alongside therapy.
Somatic therapy is conducted by a licensed clinician and is a clinical modality. Somatic coaching is non-clinical and uses somatic principles within a coaching container. We do not diagnose, treat, or provide clinical care. If you need clinical support, we will tell you directly and help you find the right referral.
No. Somatic coaching is useful for anyone who carries stress, anxiety, or unhelpful patterns in the body, regardless of whether that traces to trauma. Many clients come for performance, burnout, relationship patterns, or simply the awareness that insight has not changed how they feel.
Somatic coaching does not require a clinical license. We are both Certified Reiki Master Teachers, Certified Breathwork Facilitators and Energy Medicine Practitioners. Jaime is also a Certified Behavior Change Coach and an ACE certified personal trainer. Yonatan certified in Classical Pilates through Equinox’s Comprehensive Program. None of these is a clinical license. We have six years of applied practice in Los Angeles.
If you are in active clinical treatment, we encourage you to discuss adding somatic coaching with your therapist. We work alongside therapy, not in place of it. For very recent or acute trauma events, clinical care should come first.
We start with a body scan and breath calibration, then layer in breathwork, Pilates-informed movement, or Reiki based on what the body needs. The last portion includes embodied conversation. The ratio of each element varies by session and by what shows up. We do not follow a script.
Reiki can be done hands-on or hands-off. We ask and confirm your preference before every session. Pilates-informed movement is mostly guided verbally. Touch is never assumed and is always negotiated explicitly before contact.
Most clients notice something after the first session, usually a shift in how the body feels rather than a dramatic narrative change. Deeper pattern work builds across sessions. We do not promise timelines and will be honest with you about what is realistic for your situation.
Both. In-person sessions are at our private studio on Highland Ave near Melrose. Coaching also runs on Zoom, wherever you live.
Ready When You Are
Ready to feel it in the body?
Somatic coaching sessions run 90 minutes, in person at our private Los Angeles studio or on Zoom. Apply for a discovery call to talk through where you are and what would actually help.
More Ways In
Other coaching at Word of Mouth
Holistic Life Coaching
Our full-program approach blending breath, body, energy, and coaching conversation in one weekly session.
Holistic coaching →Nervous System Coaching
A more targeted framework for clients who want to understand and support their nervous system's regulation patterns.
Nervous system coaching →Trauma-Informed Coaching
Somatic coaching with an explicit trauma-awareness frame, for clients whose patterns trace to adverse experiences.
Trauma-informed coaching →Breathwork
Conscious breathing for nervous-system regulation, often layered directly into a somatic coaching session.
Breathwork →Not sure which is the right fit? Book a discovery call and we will help you decide.