My journey to becoming a Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) Organizer began at an assistants’ meeting. Our dear faculty member, Linda Stelte, offered the idea as a possibility: “You could organize the training in your country.” 

I thought: “…but I am a doctor, not an organizer. I don’t know anything about organizing, creating a business plan, making economic decisions, accounting, or marketing. I’ve never used social media, and social relationships and diplomacy are not really part of my skill set.” 

To put myself in a situation where I would need to make hundreds of decisions and respond to thousands of messages seemed like climbing the Himalayas—not impossible, but who would bother? And why? 

Not being attracted to the extremely lonely, cold, harsh, and windy environment at the top of high mountains, I dodged the proposition with a gentle smile and replied, “I could.” 

A few days later, while walking with my dog, Taiki, I realized that if “given the right conditions the renegotiation of trauma is possible” (one of the core concepts of Somatic Experiencing® theory), then becoming an SE™ Organizer would be a perfect opportunity to create those “right conditions” in a group setting—to help facilitate the renegotiation of trauma for seventy people at once. It would also help facilitate the learning of SE™ techniques, enabling students to multiply and spread the possibility of trauma renegotiation throughout our country, for past, present, and future generations. 

Having regarded community healing as the highest healing art—and having tirelessly traveled the world in search of medicines that could soothe wounds caused by war and violence—I began to feel genuinely enthusiastic about the idea. 

Quickly, the tentative “I could” turned into an inspired “I could!” I could learn the organizer’s skills with time. I could ask for help and support from others with better organizing skills than I. I could partner with Colombia’s astonishing natural resources to support me and all the people involved in the training. I could continue being a doctor—but from a different perspective. 

A perspective that made the cells in my body dance with excitement and hope, as I remembered Verse XI of Lao Tzu’s Dao De Jing: 

We join thirty spokes 
to the hub of a wheel, 
yet it’s the center hole 
that drives the chariot. 

We shape clay 
to birth a vessel, 
yet it’s the hollow within 
that makes it useful. 

We chisel doors and windows 
to construct a room, 
yet it’s the inner space 
that makes it livable. 

Thus do we 
create what is 
to use what is not. 

About six months after that conversation with Linda, I became an SE™ Organizer alongside my dearest sister, Maria Francisca, who graciously agreed to co-organize. Shortly afterward, we launched Colombia’s first generation of SE™ students. We now have two generations studying. 

Support has appeared in all sorts of forms—dear and familiar people, complete strangers, staff, assistants, faculty, students, friends, organizers, peers, elders, and youngsters. As I focused my energy on tending to the Colombian SE™ community’s seed so it could sprout and grow, I felt the larger Somatic Experiencing® International community embracing and supporting us. Humans from about fifteen different nationalities have offered their help. We could easily name at least thirty co-parents of this project. 

For forty-two years, I thought I understood the meaning of community. It was, in truth, only an idea—a concept. I had no embodied sense of what community felt like. Today, I can access, through my body, the somatic experience of community. 

The experience of being an SE™ Organizer has taught me—and continues to teach me—how much I still need to learn to become an integral human being, and how worthwhile that endeavor is. 

The challenges have been many, and they have not been light. The learning, however, has been immeasurable. 

Reading the hopes, dreams, and beliefs that students share in their letters of intention when applying for the program; looking into their eyes as they sit in silence in the classroom; witnessing how their lives transform month by month, year by year—how they empower themselves as new sparkles of hope light up their bodies; hearing their stories of success with their own communities, their struggles, and their growing edges—I cannot imagine anything more magical or inspiring. 

The amount of war and violence my generation in Colombia has been exposed to feels like a bottomless abyss—too much, too fast, too soon. For decades, I held a deep doubt about whether I could contribute to my country’s healing without being harmed. Since I wasn’t sure of the answer, I left for other countries, changing careers and jobs along the way. 

When the first SE™ module in Colombia concluded, I was the last to leave the classroom. As I walked to my car, I had the impulse to look back one more time. I did. A small rainbow shone against the mountain behind the classroom. That day, I felt in my body that there was nothing else I would rather be doing than what I was doing at that moment. The bottomless abyss in my heart now has a counterpart—an expanse of endless gratitude. 

Laura Botero

SEI Organizer, Colombia