My Story

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” ―Robin Wall Kimmerer

Hi, I’m Emily Stewart (she/her), and I’m glad you’re here. I hope you will get a sense of who I am, where I come from, and how I might support you as a somatic coach. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to connect.

During one of the most difficult times in my life, I knew I needed to make a change, and I kept hearing the words fall back in love with the beauty of the world. I listened and it’s been an invitation back into a deeper relationship with myself—appreciating the support of my body, trusting my intuition, and re-aligning with joy, wonder, and awe—even in the midst of incredibly challenging times.

It was also an invitation to slow down, take walks and listen to the life happening all around me—the beauty of the sunrise, a bird’s nest outside my window, the feel of the wind on my skin. I started noticing how these small experiences made me feel inside. The practice of walking and listening began to cultivate in me a sense of gratitude for everything. I began to notice all the sensations I tuned out when I was simply in my head (worried about work, childcare, the lasting impact of the pandemic, and devastating world news). 

As a parent and human, it can sometimes be hard to dream, especially when you barely have time to sleep. Our skin is a thin barrier between the many realities of now—ecological crisis, systemic racism, wars, structural poverty—that are impacting us all in different ways.

This work together is not about escape. It is about tuning into your body in this moment and all it offers you, in this space of possible change, shifts, or imagining new ways of being. It’s about deepening your relationship with yourself and everything you are in relationship with. It’s about falling in love with the beauty of the world, of which your body is an essential part. 

“I dreamed about a culture of belonging.
I still dream that dream.
I contemplate what our lives would be like
if we knew how to cultivate awareness,
to live mindfully, peacefully;
if we learned habits of being that
would bring us closer together,
that would help us
build beloved community.”
~ bell hooks, Belonging: A Culture of Place

What is coaching?

Coaching is an intentional, personalized exploration to help you clarify and achieve your goals, whether they be personal, professional, relational or emotional. It's a partnership built on trust, where you are guided and supported by a certified practitioner in a way that empowers you to uncover your own insights and solutions. Coaching encourages you to explore, question, play and expand your capacity for growth.

Somatic Coaching is a particular type of coaching that helps you be present to your full experience—finding your path forward by integrating the wisdom of the body and the mind. Somatic coaching supports you listening to this internal guidance, creating a deeper connection between what you think, what you feel and how you act. This approach can nurture self-awareness and emotional intelligence, aligning your core values with your actions, and can be a powerful tool for personal healing. Whether you’re seeking clarity in personal or professional realms, to nurture more meaningful relationships, or to find a greater sense of balance and well-being, somatic coaching invites you to access your full potential and embody it.

The benefits of somatic coaching:

Somatic coaching helps you integrate cognitive and embodied self-awareness, which can bring growth and balance in your life. Some benefits might include:

Calm and clarity
It can help you regulate your nervous system, easing anxiety and stress and allowing you to feel more peaceful and balanced.

Deepen connections
Somatic coaching supports you listening to your whole body, which can help you be more in touch with yourself and others. It can allow you to communicate more authentically, with integrity and empathy.

Alignment of values
By connecting with your intuition and the other ways your body communicates with your brain, you can make important decisions from a more self-aware place.

Self-awareness and emotional intelligence
By paying attention to your emotions and personal triggers, you can learn more about yourself and how you show up in personal and professional spaces. You can deepen your relationships by focusing on your emotional intelligence and how you are present to yourself and others.

Leadership and professional development
Somatic coaching can help you lead with emotional intelligence and presence, making you a more compassionate and effective leader.

Change conditioned tendencies and patterns of behavior
You can identify ways of responding or reacting that no longer serve you and begin practicing new patterns that resonate more with your values and commitments.

Self-discovery
By tuning into your bod'y’s biological signals, you can uncover some of your true desires and make choices that reflect who you really are or want to be.

Vision and Intention

My vision is of abundant love and care for every body—every size, every shape, every color, every ability, every age—diverse, beautiful and honored.

My intention is to work with individuals who are looking to connect with themselves, so that each person sees their sense of belonging in their own body and as part of the interconnected healing of the world. 

I believe we can transform our relationship with ourself and one another, and that somatic practices can offer tools for embodying new ways of being. 

The experience I bring

I’ve grown up in the red clay of the North Carolina Piedmont, and I am a mother, partner, sister and daughter. I’m a certified body-oriented coach through The Somatic School, and have been practicing self-inquiry meditation and other somatic practices for over 15 years. Growing up with Quaker values of equality, integrity, simplicity, community, peace and social justice led me to study sociology and then pursue a career focused on intentional education and change-making. I bring 20 years of experience working in university and nonprofit settings – in human rights and racial equity education as well environmental justice partnerships. I’ve spent years creating and co-facilitating equity workshops and love collaborating with the Joy Hope Collective. This is our tenth year offering the Teaching for Equity Fellowship at Duke University. I write weekly at the intersection of parenting, spirituality, social and racial justice, embodiment, ecology and nonviolence. I’m also a lifelong dancer and soccer player, which gave me a foundation in practicing tuning into my body at a very young age.

Techniques and communities of practice

In my somatic coaching practice, I integrate techniques from Hakomi, Focusing, Systems Constellations, Eco-somatics, Self-Inquiry Meditation, Quakerism as well as principles from Polyvagal Theory. I am part of community practice spaces through The Embodiment Institute, The Strozzi Institute, Generative Somatics and a local Qigong community. I’ve learned from and have been inspired by embodied scholar activists creating space for personal and collective transformational healing – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill, Resmaa Menakem, Valerie Kaur, adrienne maree brown, Pauli Murray, Sonya Renee Taylor, ALOK, Kazu Haga, bell hooks, and Cole Arthur Riley.

Somatics training 

I have an accredited diploma in Body-Oriented Coaching from The Somatic School and am working towards the International Coaching Federation Associate Certified Coach credential.

Additional trainings 

  • Body as Healer: Freedom from Chronic Pain course with Peter Levine (founder of Somatic Experiencing), August 2024

  • Why Feel? Workshop with The Embodiment Institute, July 2024

  • Somatic Trauma Healing Summit with The Embody Lab, June 2024

  • Generative Somatics Practice group, March 2024-present

  • Exploring Somatic Opening for Change workshop with Staci Haines (from Strozzi Institute) through the California Institute of Integral Studies, February 2024

  • Embodiment Basics course with The Embodiment Institute, August 2021

  • The Embodied Social Justice Summit with The Embody Lab, February 2021 & 2022

  •  Self-Inquiry meditation and mindfulness trainings, September, 2012 – present 

  • Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course (created by John Kabat Zinn) at the University of Pennsylvania, Winter, 2008

  • Mother and entrepreneur

    "I was amazed how impactful the work was, particularly in tandem with my talk therapy sessions. I had talk therapy first and then got to work with what I had been processing on a more psychological and cognitive level in my body. This therapeutic pairing helped me move more quickly through some of the heavier content that had been surfacing in therapy and gave me practical steps from a more intuitive, less verbal internal place. I appreciated Emily's gentle approach that helped me feel safe to drop into this deep work."

  • Student

    "Working with Emily has been amazing. This work has allowed me to get more in touch with my body, with my wants and desires. As we engage in various exercises and meditation, Emily seems to be beautifully aware of my body and mind, able to facilitate at the perfect moment to bring light to a feeling or thought I might be turning away from, or to help ground me in moments of dissociating."

  • Massage therapist

    “Emily beautifully integrates the body, mind, heart, and nature into her coaching. She has a deep understanding of connections between the individual experience, collective, and earth, and holds deep pain and deep wisdom with radical care. She asks intentional questions to identify and understand my goals for the session, which not only helps me come to deeper clarity and honesty within myself in the moment, but helps to extend the fruits of the session into the rest of my life. It has been healing and illuminating for me to work with her."

  • Mother and small business owner

    “Working with Emily has been incredible. As someone who has always moved through life in her head and not in her body, I thought I was a lost cause. But through my sessions with Emily I have started to listen to my body in a way that I never knew I could. Her exercises and thoughtful questions and guidance have opened up so much for me."

  • Woman in tech

    “Emily really helped me trust my body's inherent wisdom during a time of uncertainty in my life. She showed me some embodied choice-making techniques that I am excited to use again!”