Somatic Transformation Coaching is a therapeutic model for creating change in our lives through releasing activation and integrating the body’s wisdom into our lives.

Somatic Leadership and Impact Coaching brings this same approach to your professional life and the change you are making in the world, while Somatic Creative Writing Coaching focuses on impact through writing and creative work. 

My practice is trauma sensitive, and I know a lot about trauma through my studies and my life, but I am not a therapist, and this is not therapy. Therapists manage mental illnesses and diagnoses, coaches do not. Coaching sessions do not replace medical, psychological or drug-treatment therapy. This means I will never diagnose, assess, label or report you. 

Somatic sessions involve talking as well as a practice component, with guided embodied practices, movement and breathwork, all of which will help us familiarize ourselves with your unique nervous system. I’m eager to guide you through techniques designed to complete and transform old traumas that have become stuck in your body and formed habits that no longer serve you, making it possible to respond to stress and activation in new ways. I offer these coaching sessions in order to help you align your personal healing and transformation with the change our world desperately needs.

I work with clients across the globe via Zoom. I also offer hands-on, in-person Somatic Bodywork sessions in the California Bay Area upon request, and I travel to facilitate Workshops with my co facilitator Amutabi Haines. Different pricing applies.

Sessions last one hour.

I usually recommend weekly sessions for the first three months to build familiarity and rhythm, then we can create a custom path based on each individual. 

Perhaps you’ve tried talk therapy but found that talking about your problems is not enough. You might be an activist obsessed with justice for others who struggles to take care of yourself. A former parentified child who is conditioned to think of everyone else’s needs before your own. An antiracist who feels inauthentic around people of color. An artist stuck writing on the topic you’re known for but bored and uninspired. You feel isolated, disconnected, with a shrinking view of yourself and the world. You long to lead with your heart but keep getting caught in cycles of burnout, conflict and ill health. How do you reconnect with your passion and vitality and sustain it over the long term? All the above examples have been me, at one point or another in my life. These are ways of being that still show up from time to time, but thanks to somatic practice I can catch them quicker, tend to the overwhelm and make the choice to move in a different direction. 

You might recognize me from the most known chapter of my life as a political hostage in Iran. I was in the news a lot and my companions and I were often called the American Hikers. Likewise, if we’re friends, in the same community or social networks, or follow my work we may still be a good fit for coaching. On my end, I’ll let you know if I think there is any blockage or conflict of interest.

I ask for your commitment to attending your session on time. 

If you cannot make a session at short notice, we can try to find a replacement time within the same week, though I can not guarantee my schedule will allow for that. If you cancel within 24 hours before the scheduled session, and there is no other time that works with my schedule, the full fee is due. 

Everything you share with me during our sessions will be 100% confidential. I will never share any of your information with anyone else. 

Results of somatic coaching are not guaranteed and are dependent on the individual. Everyone is different, therefore previous results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Sarah Shourd is a certified Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner. She is also a Mind-Body Coach certified by The Embody Lab. She has additional training in Somatic Narrative, Conscious Leadership, Somatics for Racial Justice Leaders, Vipassana Silent Meditation, Stanford’s Women in Leadership and more. She has been a Certified Tui Na Massage Practitioner since 2006. 

Please note, this is not psychotherapy. My role as a Liberation Coach is to help guide you from insight into action through the wisdom of your body. I work with trauma transformation but I am not a therapist and my services are not a substitute for physicians or mental health treatment. I do not diagnose, treat or report mental or physical health conditions. The scope of my practice is to help empower clients to move farther down their path of embodiment by developing and achieving self-determined goals, as well as teaching somatic practices that support their healing, transformation and growth. Feel free to sign up for a free discovery call so we can discuss further and If I am not  the right fit for you I can recommend other practitioners.