Julie Teetsov
SEI Faculty, SEP™, SME Ph.D.
Somatic Movement Educator and Touch Therapist
I was born in the United States as a first-generation immigrant. My parents and ancestors are from Estonia and Poland. I immigrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2010, after having lived in many countries around the world. In accordance with the Treaty of Waitangi, known in te Reo Māori (the Māori language) as Te Tiriti o Waitangi, I am grateful to be welcomed to live in New Zealand.
I have a private practice in Auckland, on the North Island. I primarily work with adult clients who have experienced early birth trauma and/or childhood medical trauma. I specialize in using touch and movement to help clients resolve the underlying survival energy that fuels their often debilitating somatic symptoms. My practice focuses on helping clients develop the capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation, as well as building their somatic skills to navigate past trauma and shift their physiology to a state (and felt sense) of safety and resilience.
I have been practicing as a touch therapist and movement educator for 20 years, and I am passionate about helping people reconnect with their whole self by healing trauma in the body.
I am forever grateful for 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 certified Craniosacral Therapist through the Upledger Institute and a 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, learning through Embodied Anatomy and Physiology. I also lead a movement class at our town hall, with the intention of fostering community resilience.
I had the privilege of working for many years teaching movement classes and offering SE™ sessions at Refugees as Survivors, an NGO offering mental health and wellbeing services to 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 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 honor 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, our dog Jack, and our chickens in rural Aotearoa. My favorite 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.
Offers Individual Case Consults to SE™ Students
Instructor Level: SE™ Professional Training Faculty
Teaching In: New Zealand
Levels Taught: Beginning Level of the SE™ Professional Training