There is more than one form of somatic therapy, but broadly speaking, it refers to therapy with a mind & body approach. What didn't work for me about the particular somatic therapist is that she assumed I had a physical problem and needed to use my mind to deal with it-- for example, learning techniques with the breath to relax the body and reduce pain. That backfired because I had to buy in that my body was the problem. I literally felt the pain increase when I did her exercises. In my case, I battled with various forms of therapy for 3 years. I knew it wasn't working and I suspected it was TMS, but I kept letting myself get convinced it was physical. The breakthrough was when I finally said to myself, "Enough! It's not physical." I know that is hard to do when it hurts--whether it is crunching or any other symptom. The pain is real. It's just that the cause is not physical. And when I let myself accept that, I was open to also accept the emotional cause, which related to my feeling about a ruptured relationship. So, the 3 years was a long time, but the actual healing was very fast.