Julie Teetsov SEP®, SME, Ph.D
Somatic Movement Educator and Touch Therapist
I was born in the United States, first generation. My parents and ancestors are from Estonia and Poland. I immigrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2010 after living in many countries around the world. I acknowledge that my presence in Aotearoa is made possible through the commitments of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed by Māori and the Crown.
I have a private practice in Auckland on the North Island. I work primarily with adult clients who have experienced early birth trauma and/or childhood medical trauma; I specialise in using touch and movement to help clients resolve the underlying survival energy that fuels their debilitating somatic symptoms. My scope of practice is helping clients develop the capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation as well as building their somatic skills to negotiate past trauma and shift their trauma physiology to a physiology (and felt sense) of safety and resilience.
I have been practicing as a touch therapist and movement educator for 20 years and am passionate about helping people come back into relationship with their whole self, body, mind, and spirit, by healing trauma in the body.
I am forever grateful to the science of Yoga. My daily yoga practice and the relationship with my body-mind-spirit that it affords, continues to light the way for my own healing journey and my capacity to help others.
I am a graduate of Kathy Kain’s Touch Skills for Trauma Therapists and Diane Poole Heller’s Dynamic Attachment Reparenting Experience training. I am a techniques certified Craniosacral Therapist with the Upledger Institute and certified Somatic Movement Educator with the School of Body Mind Centering® These trainings have deeply informed how I work with clients, how I learn and how I teach Somatics.
I teach somatic skill-building workshops for working with trauma using the Body Mind Centering® approach to learning through Embodied Anatomy and Physiology. I also lead a movement class at our town hall with the intention to foster community resilience.
I had the privilege to work for many years teaching movement classes and offering SE™ sessions at Refugees as Survivors, an NGO offering mental health and wellbeing services for people from refugee backgrounds in Aotearoa. It was during my time at RAS that I truly connected with the power of human resilience and the way that we can connect across language and culture through the body.
While I enjoy being involved in the global SE™ community, it has been very rewarding to serve on the Steering Committee of our local association of Somatic Experiencing® Practitioners in Aotearoa/New Zealand, supporting the growth of SE™ and the professional development of SEPs in Aotearoa, and having fun together as a community.
It is an honour to teach Somatic Experiencing® and to pass on what I have learned from my teachers and mentors, from my students and from my own trauma healing journey.
I live with my partner and our dog Jack and our chickens in rural Aotearoa. My favourite ways to decompress are going on adventures in the forest with my friends and our dogs or going for a swim with my partner in the ocean.
Instructor Level: SE Professional Training Faculty
Levels Taught: Beginning Level of the SE Professional Training
Teaching In: New Zealand
Sees Private Clients: Yes
Offers Individual or Group Case Consults to SE Students: Yes