“A body centered path to healing”
Through the gentle yet transformative power of integrative somatic therapy, movement therapy and fascial release , I guide you on a journey of inner recalibration, healing, and embodied renewal.
i’m joana
My journey in holistic health and somatic practice started 16 years ago with Ayurveda and Yoga. Since then, my passion for holistic healing practices led me to formally train in naturopathy, fascial therapy, sound therapy, movement therapy, and integrative somatic therapy. These practices not only inform each other but work along side each other harmoniously.
What Is Somatic Therapy?
A Body-Centered Path to Healing
Somatic Therapy is a body-based approach to healing that supports the resolution of trauma, anxiety, and emotional distress through attunement to physical sensations and nervous system patterns. Grounded in the understanding that the body holds experiences the mind cannot always articulate, this work fosters deep integration between body, mind, and emotion.
My Approach
I use a variety of somatic modalities to guide clients in safely reconnecting with their inner world. Whether you are navigating chronic stress, grief, emotional chaos, or simply lack grounding and safety within your body, Somatic Therapy offers a gentle, yet profoundly effective pathway toward healing, resilience, and deep self-trust.
“Our body is a learning system. It’s not something to fix but rather, something to feel , and build relationship with. Every human being is a self organizing system with the innate intelligence and capacity for complete healing.”
In my approach I honour 3 core principles:
Awareness ALWAYS creates change.
Regulation effects ; movement, expression, and function.
What cannot be regulated shows up in function
The body is one system - movement and breath, connects all of it.
Joana Peixoto Santelli, B.A.Soc, FST, IPHM, IST.
inside my approach
Trauma-informed, bottom-up practice for a cohesive path to healing and transformation:
Mindfulness — cultivating awareness with intention.
Body - you don’t have a body, you and the body are one.
Movement - the language of our body. Let the body talk, and learn how to listen.
*this is the most powerful tool for transformation.
Breath — how we receive life and experience it’s deeper layers.
*the most powerful tool for intentional awareness.
Restorative Posture — to support nervous system regulation through safety, ease, and unrestricted movement.
Sound Healing — regulating through vibration.
Somatic Bodywork — restoring connection through sensation and touch.
Ceremony — creating meaning through intentional practice.
Ancestral Connection — honouring inherited wisdom.
Energetic Unwinding — releasing held patterns within the body.
Embodied Resilience — strengthening the capacity to stay present.
Integration — grounding insight into daily life.
Through this work, healing becomes a lived experience—rooted in presence, guided by the body, and sustained through integration
INTEGRATIVE SOMATIC THERAPY
The wisdom beyond intellect
True healing unfolds when body and mind move in sacred partnership. Within Integrative Somatic Therapy (IST), trauma resolves through gentle reconnection, where body and mind are brought back into relationship and held within a wider field of wholeness and reverence for the human experience. When we honour the body’s intuitive knowing alongside the mind’s understanding, we create the conditions for transformation that is authentic, embodied, and lasting.
Rather than focusing solely on symptom relief, IST invites a compassionate inward journey, an exploration of how our inner world shapes our lived experience. As we learn to inhabit the body more fully, we reconnect with a deeper intelligence. Here, healing is not simply the absence of suffering, but a return to authenticity, connection, and wholeness.
What Is Integrative Somatic Therapy?
Integrative Somatic Therapy (IST) is a body-centered, spiritually attuned approach to trauma healing. Rooted in humanistic and relational frameworks, it supports emotional, psychological, and spiritual integration. As body, mind, and spirit come into alignment, the inner self becomes clearer. Balance is restored naturally. The body becomes a vessel of insight—revealing layers of being often hidden beneath habitual patterns. This often involves a blend of body work focussing on fascial release.
How Somatic therapy Works
Understanding Why Trauma Gets “Stuck”
When experiences are overwhelming or unresolved, the nervous system may not fully process them. As a result, these experiences can become “stored” in the body, often showing up as hypervigilance, anxiety, chronic pain, or a sense of disconnection. Somatic Therapy works by bringing mindful awareness to the body’s natural signals. Rather than focusing solely on retelling or analyzing past events, we tune into present-moment sensations, impulses, and subtle movements. These experiences carry vital information and allow the body to complete previously interrupted survival responses—restoring regulation, balance, and a sense of safety.
Benefits of Somatic Therapy
Through this work, you can begin to:
Understand how your body holds and expresses past experiences
Strengthen emotional resilience and nervous system regulation
Cultivate a deep, embodied sense of safety and connection
Restore your natural capacity for pleasure, vitality, and ease
Somatic Therapy honors the intelligence of the body as an essential partner in healing, guiding you beyond insight and into lasting, embodied transformation
Movement Therapy is a work that uses movement and awareness to help your body release tension, and shift how it responds to stress and how it moves through the world. Some of what we do comes from somatic approaches that focus on body awareness, other parts like breathwork, come from other traditions and lineages of work. Movement therapy is a combination of many disciplines aligned toward 3 core outcomes; regulation, expression, and function of each individual. When someone feels more regulated, they feel more capable in their body and their experience of themselves changes. Because movement and inner state continuously influence each other - Movement is a practical and powerful way of working with the whole system.
whAT IS MOVEMENT THERAPY?
THE LIFT METHOD™
Joana is the founder behind THE LIFT METHOD™, a holistic approach to natural beauty and inner transformation that's become a trusted practice for 100’s of women. The Lift Method is not about aesthetics, it is a science-based, neuro-somatic fascial therapy for the whole body, that improves body mechanics, nervous system recalibration, and authentic rejuvenation results that last and compound with time.
Her work blends her extensive education and clinical training in holistic medicine, movement, fascial therapy, somatic therapy, and energetics. Her Method offers visible lifting, postural change, and emotional integration. Clients describe embodied vitality, clarity, and lightness after a single session.
HOW IT WORKS
The LIFT Method follows a layered, integrative approach:
Regulate the nervous system
Create safety and shift tension patterns held in the body
Release fascial restrictions
Restore flow, mobility, and structural balance
Re-align posture and breath
Reduce downward pull and support natural lift
Integrate through somatic awareness and ritual
Create lasting, embodied change
The result is not just visible lift, but a profound shift in how your clients feel in their body.
one connected system
A Neuro-Somatic Approach to Rejuvenation
This is not a course about looking younger. If you are looking for quick fixes, surface techniques, or trend-based beauty this is not for you.
The LIFT Method is for practitioners who know there is something deeper.
Who feel that the face cannot be separated from the body.
Who understand that true transformation does not come from force, but from integration.
THE LIFT METHOD™
A holistic rejuvenation therapy rooted in whole body fascial release, somatic work, and face sculpting massage. Here we treat the face as part of an integrated system, where beauty and rejuvenation are not superficial outcomes but instead, the reflection of internal balance and ease.
Return to embodied beauty through science-backed techniques rooted in ancient healing practices.
A NEW PARADIGM IN BEAUTY- THE SCIENCE
With the Lift Method, the face is treated as part of a full body fascial and postural network.
We align the head, neck, and spine to reduce downward pull on the face.
We restore balance across deep fascial lines, enhancing natural lift.
We combine fascial release, sculpting massage, and somatic awareness for a layered results.
We create harmony between ; structure, function, and expression.
Embodied beauty starts here!
tHE pHILOSOPHY
The beauty industry has taught women to resist time.
To smooth the lines.
To conceal the silver.
To preserve who they once were.
But your clients are no longer looking for that.
They are looking for:
• Relief from the tension they carry
• A deeper connection to their body
• A way to feel at home in themselves again
The LIFT Method meets them there.
This is not about reversing time.
It is about supporting the body to hold life with more ease, balance, and harmony.
whAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT
Most facial trainings focus on muscles and surface-level techniques. The LIFT Method works through a completely different lens. We treat the face as part of one interconnected system.
We work with:
• The nervous system
• Fascial lines and structural alignment
• Posture, breath, and movement
• Emotional and somatic patterning
This allows us to address tension at its root, not just where it appears.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Inside The LIFT Method, you will learn how to:
• Treat the face through a full-body, neuro-somatic framework
• Work with fascia to create structural change
• Address TMJ, jaw tension, and cranial restrictions
• Restore posture, breath, and upper body mobility
• Develop therapeutic touch and deep proprioceptive awareness
• Create treatments that go beyond aesthetics into transformation
WHO IS THIS FOR
• Practitioners in skincare, bodywork, or holistic therapies
• Those who value long-term, sustainable results over quick fixes
• Professionals ready to offer a deeper, more meaningful client experience
• Women who resonate with a more embodied, honest approach to beauty
THE RESULT
After this training, you will:
• Understand the true foundations of the face
• Offer results that are visible, felt, and lasting
• Differentiate yourself with a method that goes beyond trends
• Support your clients in feeling more at home in their body
This is work your clients will not forget, This is work they will return to.
A NOTE FROM joANA
“At a certain point in my work, I realized women were not looking for another facial.
They were looking for a place to land.
A place where they could breathe.
Where they could soften.
Where they did not have to be anything other than who they are.
The LIFT Method was created to hold that space.
Not to change women, but to support them in becoming more of themselves.”