Healing Through Sound and Somatics – Exclusive Interview with Alessandra Mantovanelli

From healing her own trauma and nervous system dysregulation to founding Waves for Thriving, Alessandra Mantovanelli has transformed a deeply personal journey into a holistic path of empowerment for others. In this interview, she shares how sound therapy, somatic healing, and subconscious reprogramming can help people move beyond survival mode and reconnect with their most authentic, thriving selves.

Alessandra Mantovanelli, Sound Therapy and Integrative Coaching

Who is Alessandra Mantovanelli?

A very curious human being and soul who has had a long term love affair with nature, as long as she can remember, particularly with the ocean. She sees nature as a living organism, a source of wisdom and knowledge. She appreciates simple life pleasures like dancing, hiking, writing, playing instruments, travelling, and spending time with loved ones and captivating people. Passionate about learning new skills, with a particular interest in energy, sound, and frequency medicine, somatic practices, and holistic approaches to healing the body and mind through ancient knowledge, healthy living, and nature, while bridging science and spirituality.

As a child, she was highly empathic. In her early adulthood, she trained as a scientist, which sharpened her analytical mind but disconnected her from her intuition. Feeling unsafe and unsteady, she lived a good portion of her life in survival mode, believing that was her natural state. After facing numerous challenges, traumas, painful experiences, and years of ongoing stress, she made many fear based decisions. Over time, she developed profound awareness, resilience, and compassion. Through her learning and experience with various healing modalities, she has discovered the power of embracing our whole selves to thrive. An alchemical transformation occurs when you listen to and nourish your body, transform your limiting beliefs into supportive ones with great compassion, and cultivate an intimate relationship with your wiser self. Life gets easier when we are on our own team.

She initially used food as medicine to heal, but soon realized that physical healing was only one layer. Despite progress, she continued to struggle with brain fog, fatigue, and anxiety. She entered a blissful state following her Reiki initiation in 2009, perceiving everything and everyone from her higher heart, which lasted for a few days. Reiki brought deep relief, but her body still held the trauma response.

After exploring various holistic practices, it was Sound Therapy that brought her to a deeper state of relaxation and surrender than she had ever experienced. As she learned Sound Therapy to become a facilitator, she reconnected with her higher self and inner guidance.

She sees life as a journey of self discovery and a remembrance of who we really are, our power within, and our freedom to choose presence. As a restless idealist, she embraces the vision and pursuit of helping create a world with more equity, biodiversity, health, cooperation, and connection. When we are free from distorted lenses of trauma and can finally indulge in the pleasure of being safe in our bodies and authentically be who we are, we can connect with and honor others.

Alessandra combines diverse approaches to help people move from survival mode into a state of thriving, integrating and harmonizing their body, mind, and spirit in a freeing dance. She holds a Master’s in Sound Therapy and certifications as a Mind Body Eating Coach, Somatic Trauma Healing and Reiki Practitioner, and Psych K® facilitator. Bridging her previous knowledge of physics and wave frequencies with sound and biofield therapies, she reconciles ancient healing techniques with modern science. Alessandra founded Waves for Thriving, and she helps individuals embrace their healthiest, happiest, and most conscious selves, unlocking their highest potential.

What inspired you to create Waves for Thriving and focus on whole person healing?

Personally, I started my journey searching for ways to heal trauma and bodily conditions, primarily using food as medicine, and then broadening my vision and awareness by exploring the human biofield and energy healing. I have been fascinated by the power of sound waves for healing for the last six years. Sound therapy is remarkable for mind body relaxation and has numerous health benefits backed by science. Sound frequencies release outdated energy patterns, raise awareness and connection, and transform lives. It is sublime.

I also realized the importance of healing the body and the effectiveness of somatic therapy practices in regulating the nervous system and healing trauma. More recently, I used this awareness and a powerful set of tools to shift beliefs limiting my self actualization.

These transformative experiences inspired me to change careers and focus on facilitating healing and empowerment for others. When we lose control, we gain power. Power within inspires, control micromanages. Power is not lost when you share it. Power is generous, freeing, visionary, and unlimited. Everyone can be powerful. I founded Waves for Thriving as a safe and elevated container to help people free themselves from trauma and overwhelm, reconnect with their inner wisdom, and regain their power, presence, and joy.

Although I had spent around two decades learning, researching, and wandering on my own healing and self discovery journey, it was during the pandemic that a series of personal challenges, losses, and the stress and loss of freedom experienced on a global level gave me the final push to take my learning and gifts and use them to help others. We are living through a very pivotal moment in humanity. We can either collapse or create a whole new world where people cooperate and commune with nature to elevate the collective and the planet.

In my opinion, now is the time to take radical responsibility for our choices, actions, lives, health, and what we think, eat, say, and create in this world, and to align our individual experience with the collective, as well as with natural law and intelligence. It is challenging, and we may not always get it right, but shall we keep moving towards our vision?

I remember a saying from Jean Houston, “The world is on fire, just pick up a bucket of water.” It helped me overcome my fears, my ego, and my deep discomfort with being visible, and inspired me to create and dedicate myself to something bigger than my personal story. Even if I help with just a few drops, it is better than watching passively.

What are the most common challenges your clients face before they find you, and what changes do they experience after working with you?

I have served hundreds of people, and while every person is unique and every session is also unique, holding on to emotional baggage and trauma is a very common theme. Although the types of emotions and their locations in the body and biofield vary, so do the traumatic circumstances, which for some have been very intense.

Firstly, clients often feel deeply relaxed, release stuck emotions, and experience a shift in their energy. They feel lighter, more open, and well. People's awareness of their energetic and emotional imbalances rises, as well as their awareness of what is triggering them, and they can take more proactive action. When working on changing subconscious limiting beliefs, they can confirm the change during the session based on muscle test responses before and after the balance.

They usually leave the session with a set of practical tools and ideas that they can apply in their everyday life. For some, their life can change quite dramatically. I have had clients who, by the fourth session, no longer even remember the original complaint or concern addressed in their first session. Their perception of their circumstances and attitude naturally change and become more aligned. It can be very supportive to reflect this to them so they can see how much they have achieved in a short timeframe.

What role does integrative coaching and mindful eating play in achieving lasting transformation in your clients’ lives?

We are complex and unique. Each person carries a distinct combination of qualities, experiences, and perspectives. The modalities I bring together honor this individuality, creating space for the wide range of human responses, life situations, and personal paths toward healing and growth. We heal by returning to wholeness and acknowledging the interconnectedness of the body, mind, and spirit. As we integrate and harmonize these aspects of ourselves, along with the experiences we’ve gone through, our awareness expands. We come to understand that our self worth is not dependent on outcomes. We are free to love, connect, and enjoy life as it is now.

Lasting transformation happens when we attend to all dimensions of our being. For instance, while healthy eating is important, if we are often resentful and unable to digest our emotions, this causes great stress in the body, mental imbalances, and even disease.

This understanding forms the foundation of my new program, From Survival to Thriving, which offers a safe container to support change and self discovery. The program honors each person’s uniqueness while working on various levels, energetic field, body, and mind. It is a reclamation of your whole self. Following your lead, I hold space and offer tools to regulate the nervous system, process emotions, and release trauma. The intention is to align all aspects of you so that your different parts are in harmony and guided by your soul’s wisdom.

Sound Healing

We begin by aligning, releasing blockages, and restoring flow within the energy centers and biofield using sound frequencies. Each sound healing session employs specific sound frequencies tailored to your current needs, creating a unique harmonic composition. Sound therapy is a deeply relaxing and calming process for the nervous system, offering numerous health benefits. You will also gain insights into what is out of harmony and what may be undermining your inner power. This energetic alignment provides a valuable starting point, helping you understand what is happening energetically and connect to your higher self.

Somatic Healing

The next step involves listening inward and connecting with your body’s innate wisdom, which guides the healing process. You will connect with your different parts, meet their needs, and extend love to your inner child, opening the path for healing.

Trauma sensitive somatic healing acknowledges that the body “keeps score,” it registers sensations and experiences that the conscious mind may have forgotten. You become whole by accepting and processing undesired feelings and by welcoming all parts of yourself rather than suppressing them.

Releasing subconscious trauma patterns, unresolved emotions, and stress responses in the body is as vital as mindful, conscious living. There is great relief in understanding that all your parts had valid reasons to act the way they did, often to keep you safe. Now, your adult, or higher, self can offer the love, support, and comfort those parts need.

This step helps you feel safe in your own body. Somatic trauma healing includes a range of tools and practices that help you connect with your body, regulate your nervous system, and release stored tension and trauma. Somatic healing is especially beneficial for those who have experienced complex trauma.

Through this work, you develop a deeper relationship with your body as a wise and valuable guide, learning to regulate your nervous system and provide the safety you need.

Subconscious mind reprogramming, free yourself from limiting beliefs. You have now worked with the energy field, sound healing, and the body, somatic healing. Following this, we support you by shifting subconscious limiting beliefs that may be preventing you from moving forward. With your energy, nervous system, and body aligned, we invite your subconscious mind to support your conscious goals and who you want to become. PSYCH K® offers a fast and effective way to transform limiting subconscious beliefs into empowering ones when aligned with your superconscious mind, or higher self. Early life experiences often shape subconscious programs that influence our adult patterns. Aligning the subconscious with the conscious mind is essential for meaningful change.

Integration

The final step is integration, bringing together everything you have learned and experienced. You will receive practical tools to help regulate your nervous system and continue to feel safe in your body. This session may offer guidance for your next steps, or a meaningful reflection on your journey, where you started, how far you’ve come, and how to honor and reinforce new habits. It may include hints on how to heal by nourishing the body with wholesome food, honoring our circadian rhythms, and creating a supportive home environment. The take home tools are selected specifically to support your uniqueness and specific goal.

This session serves as both a closing and an opening into a new path. The program runs over four months and includes six individual sessions, which can be experienced in person or online, email support throughout, including the integration session with personalized tools tailored to your journey and needs.

As a facilitator, I provide tools, guidance, and space for your transformation, honoring your uniqueness while supporting your journey back to wholeness.

What advice would you give someone who is ready to move beyond surviving and start thriving today?

1. Understand your nervous system and learn how to self regulate

You can start by becoming very intimate with your body mind system, understanding what triggers you and learning how to regulate your nervous system. The autonomic nervous system shapes the way you experience life. At each moment, it decides whether you feel safe enough to fall in love with life and thrive, or whether you shift into survival in moments of perceived danger.

Autonomic nervous system evaluation occurs at the subconscious level without conscious awareness. Our sensations are sent to our brain, which then tries to make sense of them. For instance, you may feel a “raw” sensation, such as tightness in the chest, which triggers an emotion, fear, resulting in a feeling, anxiety, shaped by your thoughts about that fear.

Polyvagal informed exercises are a good starting point. They can help you map your autonomic nervous system responses and identify the core beliefs at work in each state, parasympathetic dorsal vagal, for example absent or numb, and ventral vagal, for example open or trusting, or sympathetic modes, for example alarmed or buzzing.

There are also somatic practices to help you anchor yourself in safety. You can become conscious of the state you spend most of your time in. It may seem obvious, but it is not always. I spent many years in a hyper aroused state, and for me, that was my “normal,” the best that could be. Sometimes you are so immersed in habituation and certain environments that you adapt to them. For instance, you may adapt to a fast paced life in a big city, even if it feels stressful and misaligned with your natural rhythm.

In reality, we cannot be calm and perfectly balanced all the time, since our autonomic state shifts in response to the challenges of everyday life. However, we can learn how to move ourselves between states and achieve regulation in any situation. A natural stress response moves you through stages of activation, mobilization, deactivation, and restoration.

Under a regulated nervous system state, our body is coherent, meaning that all parts of the system work together in a harmonious and energy efficient way. Our heart rhythms can indicate coherent and incoherent states. Additionally, our emotions create a vibrational state that alters our biofield, biochemistry, and hormonal system. Emotions are faster than thoughts and influence our cognition, behavior, health, and interactions with others.

It does not matter how deep you have gone into dysregulation, everyone has a home in the “ventral vagus,” which is the part of our parasympathetic nervous system where you feel alive, safe, healthy, and in homeostasis, connected to self, others, and spirit, curious, flexible, resilient, and engaged in the present moment, resourceful, reaching out for social engagement and support, hopeful, exploring options, and having compassion for yourself and others. With a flexible vagal brake, we can rapidly engage and disengage, energize and calm, reflect and respond.

“Resilience is the ability to return to a ventral vagal state following a move into sympathetic or dorsal vagal responses” – Deb Dana

Working in partnership with our body is very powerful. I believe that most people are not using their body wisdom enough. There is room for further exploration. Sound therapy and somatic education are excellent ways to help us regulate our nervous system.

2. Heal trauma

“Trauma is any event that overwhelms the ordinary human adaptations to life. The event leaves us powerless or helpless, with losses of control, dignity, connection, sense of belonging, or meaning” – Judith Herman

It is usually a very intense experience that changes our perception of life, ourselves, and others, and takes us out of alignment with who we really are. It overwhelms our nervous system, too much, too fast, too soon, without adequate support. Trauma is what happens inside the individual, not the event itself, and is related to your perception of the event and your ability to cope.

People experience the symptoms of trauma differently, but it can cause physical, emotional, and mental imbalances to varying degrees. Common responses are continuously feeling unsafe, numbness, and dissociation from the body, leading to changes in posture and holding tension in some parts of your body. It often shifts the autonomic nervous system from connection to protection.

One common aspect is that a traumatized person often has a biased perception of reality, they filter reality through the lens of trauma. People may selectively focus on information that confirms their fears or distorted beliefs about reality, for instance, “people are dangerous,” while ignoring evidence of safety or kindness. Trauma can significantly change a person’s life and the way they relate to others. Traumatized people may expect limited or fixed outcomes rather than being open to what is and to new possibilities, limiting their expectations of joy, success, or stability.

For instance, unresolved trauma may cause you to become hypervigilant, constantly scanning for danger, even in safe environments, and minor setbacks can be interpreted as major, inevitable disasters. Present situations can also trigger old emotions, making a person feel as helpless or terrified as they were in the past, even if the current situation is safe.

As a survival adaptation, our brains predict safety based on past experiences. A trauma survivor often expects negative outcomes. If a child grew up in chaos, they learned to anticipate danger to protect themselves. As adults, they may expect abandonment, betrayal, or abuse, which can create a self fulfilling prophecy.

Healing trauma is of utmost importance in catalyzing change and growth, improving your health and relationships, and opening new paths and possibilities.

3. Change your perception

Using most of our energy to compensate for bodily imbalances and the constant release of stress hormones can cause ongoing fatigue. Once you heal trauma and learn how to reconnect with your body and release stuck stress, your perception of reality often changes. We can ultimately reach a stage where we are at peace with what is, leading to a path of least resistance and greater flow. We conserve energy and use it to deal with challenges.

From there, you can build resilience and meet reality as it is rather than wasting energy resisting it. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Make the present moment your friend, not your enemy, and your whole life will begin to change, because what we call the future is just an extension of your state of consciousness in the present.”

Personally, my stress levels dropped tremendously when I changed my interpretation of an ongoing, unavoidable, challenging life situation, even though the situation itself became even more challenging. You can either keep banging your head against the wall or befriend it and hang a beautiful picture there.

4. Reconnect with nature

We got into so much trouble as we moved away from nature, isolating our feet with rubber shoes, eating ultra processed foods coated in pesticides, spending more and more time indoors, and sitting for long hours. This disconnection has cost us in many ways, a loss of connection, health, knowledge, fertile soils, biodiversity, nervous system dysregulation, anxiety, and an epidemic of physical and mental health challenges. You name it.

I believe nature holds the key and the answers to help us overcome our collective crisis and guide our personal journey, including our own body, whose proper function depends on a symbiotic relationship with the microbiome.

5. Welcome and integrate your different parts

Everybody has parts that they reject, silence, or abandon. We cannot integrate something unless we move towards it. Kindly and gently, and with support and safety, we can bring all your parts back home.

Parts work, or Internal Family Systems work, is a powerful tool for self discovery and for extending support and compassion to our different parts from “Self,” or the higher self, our inner healer.

“In this model, healing is the outcome of a compassionate connection between parts and Self that creates sufficient safety and trust for parts to be unburdened and to release their legacies of the past” – Janina Fisher

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Alessandra Mantovanelli