A New Chapter: Completing My Somatic Experiencing® Professional Training

I am so excited to share that I’ve just completed my three-year Somatic Experiencing® (SE) Professional training! This has been an incredible journey of learning, growth, and personal transformation. Most of all, I feel deeply grateful to now be even more skilled in helping people heal from developmental, acute, and complex trauma by addressing trauma where it lives: in the physiology of the body.

In our last six-day module, we learned how to incorporate gentle, therapeutic touch into SE sessions. With full consent, touch can be used to support the joints, diaphragms, and the viscera (our gut organs). Why? Because trauma often leaves survival energy locked inside the body, bound up in these systems.

This can come from experiences of “big T” trauma (such as accidents, surgeries, or violence) as well as “little t” trauma (such as ongoing stress, early developmental disruptions, or attachment wounds). These experiences can overwhelm the nervous system, preventing it from fully processing the event. Instead, the energy gets stored in the body, leaving behind patterns of tension, pain, or dysregulation.

By offering the body support through SE touch work, these bound survival responses are given the opportunity to unwind and release safely—sometimes for the first time.

One of the beautiful things about SE training is that we don’t just learn the techniques, we practice them with each other. During this recent module, I personally experienced profound shifts in my own body. It’s incredible how much tension we can carry without even realizing it… until it is finally released.

These moments of healing reminded me again how powerful and gentle SE can be.

At its core, SE helps the autonomic nervous system (the part of us that runs survival responses like fight, flight, and freeze) learn how to regulate itself again. Since the nervous system touches every aspect of our being, this regulation brings wide-reaching benefits, including:

• Better emotional balance and mood regulation

• Relief from symptoms of PTSD and traumatic stress

• Support in unwinding addictive patterns

• Reduced or eliminated chronic pain

• Relief from trauma-related symptoms in the musculoskeletal system

• Increased resilience and vitality in everyday life

Because trauma can also contribute to the development of complex syndromes and diseases, SE may help in unwinding underlying patterns that feed into chronic health issues (often in collaboration with other healthcare professionals).

Finishing this training feels both like a culmination and a beginning. I am thrilled to bring this deeper skill-set into my practice and to continue supporting people on their healing journeys.

Trauma is not a life sentence. With the right support, the nervous system can learn to settle, complete old survival responses, and find new patterns of ease, resilience, and connection.

I am so honored to walk alongside others in this process.

✨ Here’s to new possibilities—for myself, for my clients, and for anyone ready to reclaim their health and wholeness.