Rosen Method Bodywork · Somatic Experiencing · San Francisco

Come home to your body.

Gentle, present, unhurried work that helps you listen deeply to yourself — and rediscover what is most alive and essential in you.

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So much of daily life pulls us away from being in our bodies. This is a practice of coming back — to sensation, to breath, to the quiet intelligence the body already holds.

A red-and-cream dahlia in full bloom
Camano Rascal — from the garden

For over two decades I have kept a private practice in Rosen Method Bodywork and Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Resolution in Noe Valley, San Francisco. I combine the presence, sensitivity, and conscious touch of Rosen Method with Somatic Experiencing to help people listen deeply to themselves.

My work helps people reclaim their connection to their bodies and emotional life through touch, sensing, and feeling. I work with the unconscious holding patterns we carry — bringing ease, awareness, and freedom from the patterns that once protected us but now confine us. The work can be deeply relaxing, nurturing, and insightful.

Practice
Rosen Method & SE
Experience
22 years
Location
Noe Valley, SF
Lineage
Shambhala Buddhist
Rating
4.9 ★ · 10 reviews

San Francisco

The nervous system settles when it feels held by something larger.

Three ways in
to the same stillness

Distinct practices, one intention — to help the body find its own way back to ease. Read more about the work →

01 Touch

Rosen Method Bodywork

Where the muscle lets go, the feeling can come home.

A gentle, non-intrusive form of touch and verbal awareness that works with the relationship between chronic muscle tension and the feelings we hold out of awareness. I don't work on the body so much as listen through my hands — following the small changes in breath and muscle as they begin to soften.

  • The touch listens rather than pushes — no deep pressure, no working of knots
  • Simple verbal reflections invite you to notice what you feel
  • As a muscle genuinely relaxes, what it was holding can rise gently into awareness
  • Not massage, not manipulation — a practice of awareness and ease
02 Nervous system

Somatic Experiencing®

Trusting the body's own movement toward healing.

A gentle, body-oriented approach to stress and trauma developed by Peter A. Levine. Rather than asking you to recount a difficult story in detail, SE works slowly with the body's present-moment experience — its "felt sense" — so the nervous system can settle at a pace it can tolerate.

  • Works in small, careful steps, always within your window of tolerance
  • Attends to sensation, breath, and subtle impulse — not reliving the event
  • Lets held survival energy complete and release
  • Offered alongside, never in place of, medical or psychological care
03 Awareness

Embodied Meditation

Meeting whatever arises with steady, compassionate presence.

Grounded in decades of practice in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition and the teachings of Pema Chödrön, my work carries a contemplative thread. This is "meditation in action" — awareness cultivated in stillness, then brought into the body, the breath, and everyday life.

  • Present-moment attention that stays with discomfort without recoiling
  • Self-compassion — softening rather than bracing
  • Embodied practices you can carry off the table and into your days
  • Offered one-to-one and in eight-week groups
Charity Martin, somatic bodyworker, in a garden
Charity Martin — Noe Valley, San Francisco

The practitioner

A grounded, gentle guide.

For over twenty years, Charity Martin has taught bodywork and somatic therapeutic work to individuals and groups through her private practice in San Francisco. She is a teacher and student in the Rosen Method Training program, and has practiced in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage for 25 years, teaching Shambhala Training since 2001.

She has been a student of — and Bay Area personal secretary to — Pema Chödrön for twenty years, and has worked closely with John Welwood in his psycho-spiritual groups. Her wide experience informs her passion to help people find openness, workability, and trust in their own lived experience.

Rosen MethodSomatic ExperiencingShambhala TrainingPema ChödrönJohn Welwood
Sutro Tower rising through fog over San Francisco
Fog over the city
Birds over the San Francisco skyline at dusk, seen past the Golden Gate
Dusk over the bay
Wild grasses against the ocean
Grasses, headlands

In their own words

What the work has meant

★★★★★4.9 average · 10 reviews on Yelp

Charity taught me that my body already knows, before my thoughts; it's just a matter of tuning in. You are in very good, wise, caring hands with her.

Cody C. · Nashville, TN

Charity Martin's embodiment group has fundamentally changed my relationship with my body. The tools I learned have been the perfect complement to my meditation practice.

Eric W. · Alameda, CA

With her help, I've learned what it means to 'come home to my body.' Her presence is real and welcoming. She is warm and caring but not afraid to tell you what she thinks.

Katy P. · San Francisco, CA

The bodywork is very gentle and subtle in nature and it has translated into profound changes in my life. She works through a skilled and kind touch that brought forth radical change.

Paddy G. · Brooklyn, NY

I began to understand what it is to be with the body: the flesh and bones, making friends with it, and beyond that, the coming home to it. Her presence is absolutely for real.

Susan G. · Richmond, CA

Charity opened a whole new door to understanding the wisdom of my own body. She helped bring me back to my heart at a time I really needed it. I will always be deeply grateful.

Osal D. · Seattle, WA

She is a very skillful teacher with a depth of experience that makes her a wise and compassionate guide. A brilliant therapist whose deep insight and loving support have helped me immeasurably.

Nancy S. · San Diego, CA

Charity has helped me to let go of old trauma and free up new energy in my body. I'm impressed with the Rosen work that she does. It's subtle, yet powerful.

Ways to work together

One to one

Private sessions

Individual Rosen Method and Somatic Experiencing sessions in Noe Valley — or by video, wherever you are. A slow, attentive space to reconnect with your body and work with what it holds.

Enquire about sessions
In a group

Discovering Our True Wealth

An eight-week experiential group cultivating our capacity for embodiment and self-connection, with embodied meditation practice and instruction. Good for new and experienced meditators alike.

See the group offerings

Begin

Listen deeply
to yourself.

If the work speaks to you, reach out. Sessions begin with a conversation — no pressure, just a chance to see whether this is the right fit for where you are.

Email Charity (415) 305-4446
Email
[email protected]
Phone
(415) 305-4446
Studio
1545 Church St
Noe Valley, San Francisco
Reviews
Read on Yelp →