I spent nearly two years searching for a trauma-training program that fit with my understanding of the body, had diverse and vetted teachers, but didn’t ask me to put aside my own frameworks in order to take on theirs. I didn’t want to become part of someone else’s modality; I wanted the tools needed to support the energy work I was already doing (and yes, you can picture me stamping my foot here!)

When I saw the curriculum and teachers for the Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy certificate through the Embody Lab, the heavens parted and angels may as well have trumpeted, because holy smokes, there it was, the training I had upended couch cushions searching for.

This program didn’t rely on one trauma healing approach — nor did it restrict me to a certain type of embodiment ideology or practice. It was the freedom I needed to continue developing my work and client safety, and a somatic embodiment curriculum I was salivating over.

As an energy healing? work? Practitioner, I’ve had a hard time defining where my work fits with concurrent practices of trauma and embodiment. I teach embodiment without a standard set of tools and practices, which is pretty ass-backwards compared to most of what’s out there.

Energy Archaeology® is body-led, so I use what I see and hear from your body to bring in the practice you need most in the moment; whether that’s a particular breath, grounding practice, bilateral tapping, or humming. 

I’ll always be an energy-first practitioner, but the Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy certificate helped me develop the technical skills and biological/physiological understanding I needed to support clients at a deeper level, and situate Energy Archaeology within three interrelated but diverse fields of practice.

Somatic Embodiment, Your Energy, And Healing Trauma

I had a huge lightbulb moment during a lecture with Staci K. Haines, and it underscored why this ‘energy first’ approach to healing trauma and somatic embodiment actually works — and why it’s so effective in easing you back into your body while simultaneously unraveling the trauma patterns held there.

Paraphrased from her lecture “From the Individual to the Systemic: Sites of Trauma and Healing” she recounted that changing your narrative or mindset takes roughly 300 repetitions of the new belief; she then went on to teach that actually embodying that new narrative in a way that is habitual, requires 3000 repetitions.

So let’s do some math around those figures: if you repeat mantras to yourself about a new belief you want to take on twice a day, that’s almost five months before it’s your new narrative. Five times a day shortens it to two months.

But to EMBODY the new belief?! 10 times that.

Mindset-First Embodiment Practices

When you start with mindset and thought-work, you’re putting a new belief on top of an old one and slowly creating space in your body for the latest pattern to “edge out” the one that exists.

Imagine having a container of blue water, and you want it to be yellow, so you slowly and consistently pour yellow water into it day after day. At first, it’ll still be primarily blue — or dark green. Slowly, it will become lighter until the water in the container is (mostly) yellow.

So, what happens when you take an ‘energy first’ approach?

Energy-First Embodiment Practices 

Instead of starting with your mindset, you begin by uncovering the energetic threads, knots, and tangles that are keeping patterns anchored in your body and repeating in your mind. We witness them in their entirety using the Cycle of Communication, a mind-body integration approach, and create space for them to resolve.

Essentially, we rinse out the container first.

By the end of your energy work session, you’re no longer working against an old pattern or belief and trying to create a new one. You’ve poured the blue water out, rinsed the container, and now have a vessel ready to receive whatever new color you can dream up or imagine!

Healing Trauma Through Body And Mind Integration

An energy-first approach to how trauma impacts your body offers an alternative path to healing — one that addresses and resolves the energetic root of trauma patterns.

By starting with your energy, you’re clearing space for transformation to arise, allowing yourself to embody new patterns, and welcoming new beliefs as a result. It’s far easier to believe something new when your body is already giving you proof that it’s true rather than when you have no evidence!

I invite you to contemplate:

If you could release an old pattern or what you feel you’re working against, how would that spaciousness feel? In your wildest, most expansive dreams, what would you replace it with?

Trust that your body and its energy know exactly what to do. Ready to let your bones lead you to your deepest embodied wisdom and recognize the guidance inside yourself? This is for you.