My Story

Woman with curly brown hair smiling at the camera sorrounded by green trees and plants

“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.

Reclaiming Joy: A Somatic Path Home
If you are currently feeling the weight of the world—the pressure of parenting, the exhaustion of modern life, and the reality of global crises—you know how easy it is to live entirely in your head.

I know that space well. During a period of profound transition in my own life, I realized I had been tuning out the very things that could sustain me. I learned that reconnecting with the world wasn’t about ignoring the difficulties we face; it was about finding the capacity to hold both the sorrow and the awe.

How We Work Together As a somatic coach, my practice is not about escaping our current realities. It is about helping you inhabit your body—your first home—to better navigate them. Together, we move beyond the doing and into the being.

We will work to:

  • Deepen your relationship with your body: Learning to listen to its wisdom, intuition, and signals.

  • Anchor in the present: Moving out of chronic worry and into the sensations of the now.

  • Re-align with wonder: Cultivating a capacity for joy that exists even in the midst of challenging times.

  • Create space for change: Using somatic inquiry to imagine new ways of being and navigating your life with more presence and resilience.

Is this for you? You don’t need to have it all figured out. Whether you are a parent feeling "touched out" and overwhelmed, or simply a human seeking to reconnect with yourself amidst the noise of the world, I am here to hold space for you.

Let’s Connect. If you are ready to stop just getting by and start deepening your relationship with yourself and the beauty of the world around you, I invite you to reach out.

“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.

Scenic view of mountain range with lush green forests, clouds, and mist, under a cloudy sky.

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 body’s biological signals, you can uncover some of your true desires and make choices that reflect who you really are or want to be.

Scenic view of a river with houses along the shoreline, surrounded by lush green trees, with mountain range in the background and a sky filled with dark and light clouds at sunset.

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. 

Sunlight filtering through a dense, green forest with tall trees and lush undergrowth.

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—we recently completed 10 years of 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 Focusing, Eco-somatics, Systems Constellations, Hakomi, 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.

Close-up of a fluffy, white seed head with brown seeds and spider webs, backlit by sunlight, with blurred green and yellow plants in the background.

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 

  • Transformational Characters training with Prentis Hemphill and The Embodiment Institute, September 2025-December 2025

  • Raising Kids in Global Crisis training with Jo delAmor and The Work That Reconnects, May-November 2025

  • Find Safety in your Nervous System (Polyvagal Theory) with Deb Dana, Summer 2025

  • Parenting in Tumultuos Times with Jo delAmor and The Work That Reconnects, January-March, 2025

  • Somatic Practitioner Mentorship with The Embody Lab, November 2024-April 2025.

  • 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-November 2025

  • 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!”